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A Death Sentence for a Life of Service
- openloop 8y agoI don’t like it.
- microtherion 8y agoI have an Uyghur acquaintance, and I keep wondering whether I should reach out to him, or whether contacts with foreigners are likely to make his life more difficult.
- loup-vaillant 8y agoIf you could establish a secure channel, perhaps?
- CharlesColeman 8y ago> I have an Uyghur acquaintance, and I keep wondering whether I should reach out to him, or whether contacts with foreigners are likely to make his life more difficult. Does he live in Xinjiang? I've read numerous reports the phones there are closely monitored, and receiving a call from overseas as a Uyghur can invite police questioning and perhaps detention, e.g.: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/world/asia/china-xinjiang-un-uighurs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/world/asia/china-xinjiang...: > The criteria for detention are unclear. Officials are rounding up members of the public to meet official quotas, Dr. Zenz noted, targeting specific groups, including people with foreign connections or who have traveled abroad, people who have received a phone call from overseas and people who are engaged in religious activities.
- microtherion 8y agoI believe he lives in a coastal city these days.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoHonest question: Has there ever been an example of mass internment, non-activists "disappearing" and other things like we're seeing in Xinjiang that wasn't followed by genocide? Edit: Genocide is probably the wrong word but the point is that events like we're seeing in China tend to be followed by other event that leave a lot of people who'd done nothing wrong dead.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- maxxxxx 8y agoThe internment of Japanese people in the US during WW2 didn't lead to genocide but that's probably an exception.
- nipponese 8y agoAmericans of Japanese ancestry.
- teachrdan 8y agoRelevant username
- Retric 8y agoThat’s a fairly nominal way of defining ethnicity. However, it was not limited to just Americans. Oddly, in Hawaii, where 150,000-plus Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were also interned.
- loeg 8y agoNot limited to, no, but the majority interned were US citizens. Yes, the internment was mostly limited to west coast mainlanders; Hawaii's economy would have fallen over if its Japanese-American population was interned.
- loeg 8y ago
- xrd 8y agoDoes anyone know if the "Gang of Four" who wrote the seminal book "Design Patterns" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns) intended to share the same name with the ignominious Gang of Four from Chinese history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Four https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Four, as noted in this article)? Was this a hidden reference? Or, was this obliviousness on their part? Or, were they branded that way without their consent?
- gumby 8y agoIt was just a fun play on words, especially as it jocularly made them out to be "promulgating a doctrine".
- lazyasciiart 8y agoI don't think they came up with it - http://wiki.c2.com/?GangOfFour http://wiki.c2.com/?GangOfFour
- xrd 8y agoI think nowadays the most interesting thing happening on Hacker News is why people downvote comments. Really?
- hd4 8y agoI realize leaving one's homeland is not ideal or desirable but is leaving an option for the Uighur, either through Pakistan (who, while I realize they are an ally of China, also happen to be Muslim) or Kazakhstan or any other adjoining country? Surely if the oppression is getting this bad that people are being killed then the wiser course of action is to find somewhere out of the reach of the Chinese state?
- lazyasciiart 8y agoIt's not as easy as it sounds a) to get out of reach you have to get your whole family out of reach, or accept that they may be punished on your behalf https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/china-uighur-repression-espionage-informants-muslim-terrorism-a8626526.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/china-u... b) to get into anywhere else legally you need travel documents from the Chinese government, or to apply for asylum which isn't a given - or you can choose to live illegally in one of the neighboring countries, which often means that any children you have will not be citizens of that country and China may not grant them citizenship either. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/world/asia/china-uighurs-sweden-asylum.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/world/asia/china-uighurs-...
- morpheuskafka 8y agoWe all ought to stop saying "Xinjian, China" or "Uyghur region of China." The proper name is (occupied) East Turkestan[1], which is not rightfully part of China. For all the talk about North Korea (which is by all means a despicable county), China not only treats its citizens (people who live in actual China) as badly as NK, but it illegally occupies East Turkestan and threatens to invade Taiwan if anyone questions their 2+2=5 stance that they control it. We ought to offer refuge to the Uyghur people, or better yet use our military forces to help them retake control of their county. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Turkestan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Turkestan
- Mediterraneo10 8y agoIn the 1990s I might have been sympathetic to insisting on the name "East Turkestan" and being idealistic about an end to the Chinese presence there. However, as I have seen personally from traveling in the region, China simply moved too many Han people into it already. That’s that, it’s over. The situation would nearly be like insisting that Kaliningrad is rightfully German after the Soviet Union managed to change its population demographics overwhelmingly and obscure so much of its pre-Soviet history.
- yummypaint 8y agoIf that's the case, then the discussion should be about reparations
- CharlesColeman 8y agoPerhaps not yet. If the colonization is mostly post-1990s (like the GP suggests), then it seems reasonable to insist that the colonists themselves leave. They're not innocent. It's only when you get to later generations, children and grandchildren that didn't choose to be born where they were, that it gets complicated to the point that there are no good solutions.
- thratchnee 8y ago
- hd4 8y agoI see the usual mass-flagging/mass-downvoting of the thread and all the comments of any thread talking negatively about China/Xinjiang is occurring. Wondering whether HN will step in or whether the admins here even consider doing so within their remit?
- sctb 8y agoWe're absolutely willing to oppose organized and targeted manipulation of votes/flags (and we write a ton of software and meta-moderation features to do so), but that's not what's happening. What's happening is legitimate division and difference of opinion. If it weren't so then it wouldn't be a controversy—and sure it is. Edit: I don't actually see the pattern of downvoting that you're describing in this particular thread.
- hd4 8y agoThank you for clarifying that. I apologize, did not intend to cry wolf, but I did notice at one point all the comments were getting downvoted.
- ssnistfajen 8y agoBecause the topic, as unfortunate as it is, has little in common with the usual types of content that appear on HN? Easy on the paranoia there, buddy. On the other hand, the extremely regular and clockwork-like appearance of China-related stories on HN that are all-politics and non-tech is eerie and bizarre.
- hd4 8y agoThat's fair but it's also fair to point out how "non-China-related stories on HN that are all-politics and non-tech" are also becoming prevalent. I also don't think that's a good thing, but since there is some kind of consensus here about letting those threads slide it doesn't bother me that much.
- csense 8y agoWestern companies make too much money by shipping jobs out to cheap Chinese labor for Western politicians to care that the Chinese government often executes dissidents and sells their organs.
- philwelch 8y agoThat's a stone-cold take right there. That might have been the case in maybe the early 90's at the very latest, but things have changed since then. Not the part about executing dissidents and selling their organs. I don't know a lot about the organs, but they're an authoritarian government and they always have been. That ship sailed when Nixon decided to stop pretending that the Nationalists were the legitimate government of China. (Except Chiang Kai-Shek was still alive at that point, and he was also an authoritarian dictator who executed dissidents, so...). And yeah, in general, I'm on board with the "let's not trade with dictatorships that kill dissidents" idea. Except the US tried that, too, with the embargo on Cuba. The US even agreed to unconditionally take in any Cuban refugees who reached the dry land of Florida. Did it make a difference? No. Would it have made a difference if Canada and Western Europe joined the embargo? Also probably not. But the part about "shipping jobs out to cheap Chinese labor" is extremely dated. Chinese manufacturing isn't a cost-cutting alternative anymore; it's, in some cases, the global state of the art. There is no country on earth that can match China's capacity for manufacturing or construction. Putting an embargo on Shenzhen at this point would be as crippling to Western economies as putting an embargo on Silicon Valley. Possibly more. It's not just that it would be more expensive--the infrastructure doesn't exist, and even if we built it out again, we wouldn't do as good of a job at it. To make matters worse, China has the most population, the most industrial capacity and the ability to construct infrastructure more cheaply and efficiently than any other nation on earth. If you embargo them, you immediately do two things: you remove any incentive they have to maintain friendly diplomatic relations with literally anyone else and you free up much of that industrial capacity for military uses. The population factor is even worse than you'd guessed based on raw population count because they have such a high ratio of men to women, particularly among military-age age cohorts.
- m-p-3 8y agoPinned to IPFS in case the website goes down or is overloaded, and to provide another mean of accessing the story https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmWB7zV9o8if2FTptyt2B7PpuMhnSXiFEiPEdXp7k9KGUC/ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmWB7zV9o8if2FTptyt2B7PpuMhnSXiFEiPEdXp...
- siruncledrew 8y agoThe Xinjiang situation doesn't have a lot of pragmatic options aside from going down a path akin to Crimea or Bosnia. From what I can tell: - Xinjiang is 90% uninhabited grassland and desert; so we're talking about a big region with a lot of emptiness. - China's value is the New Silk Road railroad from Asia -> Europe travels through Urumqi in Xinjiang, and the region is part of China's Western Development Strategy to enhance its economy. - Geopolitically: surrounded by Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan. Basically even if "annexed" by any surrounding nations, Xinjiang would still be governed by a pseudo-"termless president" unitary state. - Demographically: There's going to be an inflection point between the "native" population and the Han Chinese population. Having a bunch of new people into the neighborhood and receive favoritism isn't bound to win over locals. That could also push the "native" population to emigrate to neighboring countries with language and cultural similarities. - If Xinjiang declared independence, which would likely start elevated conflict with China, then I could see Russia (+ the '-stans') supporting Xinjiang (covertly or overtly) if that means gaining a new "puppet state" in East Turkestan, and having greater control over the Eurasian Land Bridge railroads. - Growing Islamic radicalization or "imported terrorism" in Xinjiang from fellow Sunni Islam countries (e.g. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia) would be a death sentence for any hope of negotiation, as China would only double-down on their grasp and it would turn the region into another Syria. - There is no compelling reason for the U.S. or Western Europe to send any military forces to Xinjiang because there is nothing to gain aside from karma. It's high-risk political suicide to enter into such a war post-Middle East when there is low demand for coal and enough domestic resources for oil/natural gas. - Since the most major cities in Xinjiang are also the highest percentage areas of Han Chinese (like Urumqi), losing them in an independence initiative for East Turkestan would mean most Uyghurs would lose access to those economic sources and probably have to re-rely on agriculture. If China decided to blockade Turkestan (like U.S. to Cuba), then Russia (and ex-USSR) would be the new economic lifeline for the region.