Congressman Ritchie Torres (NY-15) sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines in response to her office’s failure to meet the June 24, 2024 deadline to produce a report on the genocide of the Uyghurs, per Section 7408 of the FY 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. Last May, Rep. Torres filed the Uyghur Genocide Intelligence Review Act, which was passed into law via the NDAA in December.

The letter reads as follows:

“I am writing to express concern about the failure to implement a law enacted by Congress on a matter of grave importance. Contained within Section 7408 of the FY 2024 National Defense Authorization Act is the Uyghur Genocide Review Act, which requires the Office of the National Director of Intelligence (ONDI) to issue a report on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) genocide against Uyghur Muslims.

“Congress has long shown a bipartisan concern about the CCP’s oppression of its own minority populations including but not limited to Uyghur Muslims; the Uyghur Genocide Review Act is but the latest in a series of laws that Congress has enacted to hold the CCP accountable for violations of human rights and crimes against humanity.

“The crime of genocide is as much about intent as it is about the act itself. At the heart of genocide is the intent to destroy a people. There is clear and convincing evidence that the CCP is intent on the destruction of Uyghur Muslims as a distinct ethnic and religious minority within Han Chinese society. The CCP’s campaign of terror against Uyghurs—undertaken under the guise of countering terrorism, extremism, and separatism—has led to the largest imprisonment of a population since the Holocaust.

“The genocide against the Uyghurs is both cultural and physical in nature. It is cultural because the CCP has been forcibly assimilating Uyghurs into Han Chinese Society under a policy of Sinocization. It is physical because the CCP has been subjecting Uyghurs to forced sterilizations, forced abortions, and IUD insertions—all of which have driven down Uyghur birthrates to historic lows. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Uyghur birthrates have been cut in half.

“Words matter. Once the United States invokes the word ‘genocide,’ as we have done repeatedly in the case of the Uyghurs, then the U.S. is bound by the moral weight of its own words to exert international pressure on the CCP, rather than stand by idly. The indefinite delay of ONDI in releasing a Congressionally required review of the CCP’s campaign against the Uyghurs conveys the impression of complacency in the face of genocide. ONDI’s inaction is itself an action—not only against Congress (which required the release of the report by June 24th, 2024) but also against America’s moral standing as the leader of the free world.

“I am calling upon ONDI to release the report in compliance with federal law.”

A PDF of the letter can be viewed here.