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U.S. Accuses China of Detaining Up to 3M Muslims in 'Concentration Camps'

34 points by learc83 7y ago

draw_down 7y ago
Oh wow, it would be terrible for a government to unethically detain Muslims.
bayareanative 7y ago
Meanwhile, the US military is planning how to deal with so-called "terrorists," many of whom were peasants sold to warlords to collect bounties, to die of old-age in Gitmo. Also, ripping children from their parents in migrant and asylum-seekers concentration camps. Pot, meet kettle.
- tomohawk 7y ago
  China: let's lock up these people because of their race or beliefs US: we need to lock these people up because (gitmo) they're terrorists, or (border) they committed a felony. Yep - they're completely equivalent!
  - jvanderbot 7y ago
    They'll bury it from HN front-page just by making adversarial comments, and that's the goal.
    - tepidandroid 7y ago
      That's not how the voting system works.
- jvanderbot 7y ago
  Its a story needing coverage, regardless of relative severity.
- kennywinker 7y ago
  While I agree both of those things are repulsive - the scales do not match up. There are 3 million people in camps in china, vs about 1000 at the height of gitmo. The border camps come a little closer in raw numbers - somewhere around 0.5 millions people per year, but they are detained for short periods of time. Estimates vary but we’re talking a few days. Scale matters. Don’t try to downplay how completely fucked up these camps are.
  - freeflight 7y ago
    > There are 3 million people in camps in china That's what the US government claims, as such I'd take that number with a massive grain of salt because they have a vested interest in making China out as the "worse baddie" just like with surveillance, to make itself look like "the good guys" or at least "not as bad as China guys". > vs about 1000 at the height of gitmo That's quite a dishonest claim because Gitmo is only ONE out of many prisons like that, it ended up getting most of the spotlight due to geographical proximity to the US. But that doesn't mean that Gitmo was, or is, the only place like that, far from it [0]. And that doesn't even account for the thousands of drone victims, all just deemed "combatants" on the virtue of being "able-bodied" and too close to the "splash" [1]. With targets selected trough quite questionable methods [2]. In that context, China can't even compare to the US if China tried to. If you want to evade becoming a victim of these Chinese methods there's a very simple solution: Don't go to China. The same doesn't work if you end up on the crosshairs of the US, as the US is applying these methods on a global basis through the most sophisticated global surveillance network in human history. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_prison_abuse_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_prison_abuse_scandals [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-o... [2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-n...
  - tepidandroid 7y ago
    You're absolutely right: scale matters. The camps are not really comparable to gitmo. They are perhaps more akin to the U.S prison system were thousands upon thousands of blacks and latinos are held, sometimes in isolation, sometimes for years, without charge. Pretty fucked up.
quotz 7y ago
China should finally get reprimanded
tepidandroid 7y ago
I actually find the evolution of this blatant, shameless propaganda amusing. You could actually observe, in real-time, the ramping up of accusations and headline hysterics in sequence: 1. 50k muslims detained 2. 100k muslims detained and put into re-education camps 3. 500k muslims arrested and put into concentration camps! 4. One million muslims torn out of homes and put into concentration camps and getting their organs harvested! 5. Three million muslims torn out of homes and put into concentration camps, getting organs harvested and being brutally tortured! It's easy to see how Americans were so readily misled about Iraq.
- Noos 7y ago
  Is it true, though? You are arguing that its baseless propaganda without refuting anything. Just that the evolution of the claims has gotten more severe. The best argument if so is just the truth. Link sources and publish things showing there really aren't 3 million people detained or that it's not a camp-style thing. The problem with Iraq is that Saddam simply could have told the truth and let UN inspectors in, but he often stonewalled and acted in a way that made it hard to not worry what he was doing...and oh, the whole invading another country thing.
  - tepidandroid 7y ago
    The burden of proof is not on me to prove they aren't doing these things. The burden of proof is on those doing the accusing. As in the case of Huawei, there has not been one objective shred of proof. And no, I don't consider WaPo, NYT, and its ilk anywhere near objective journalism. If the lack of proof is because the CCP is denying journalists access to Xinjiang, then how can there be any conclusive evidence? Are they going to invade and bomb China to find the existence or non-existence of such evidence?
    - EGreg 7y ago
      Look, I don’t know if you are arguing in good faith or you’re a person who shills for the Chinese government but I’ll assume the former. The burden of proof, you say, is on those doing the accusing. Well, let’s see: We have entire Uyghur villages with markets that are now no longer active. Many of the people are mysteriously gone. We have tons of Uyghur families with relatives gone missing or reported arrested. We have actual buildings that are being used as prisons for these Uyghurs. We have testimony from people who were held in these camps. They say they saw many of those they knew. We have video from inside these camps, and it’s pretty clear people are held there against their will. NOW HERE IS THE KICKER: It’s not US propaganda. The Chinese government has already been accused by the following groups: Falun Dafa practitioners Tibetan Buddhists Christian Missionaries and has “defended” itself for years with an army of disinfo agents, in some cases the “defenses” are extremely limited and lame. For example Tibetan buddhists are accused of being slaveholders. Falun Dafa is public enemy #1 because they “say being gay is bad” and “lead people to do self immolation”. In reality, Falun Dafa is a peaceful religion that has long been persecuted, since 1999 when Jiang Xemin personally oversaw its destruction, including many of the same tactics, such as extrajudicial kidnappings and reeducation centers. The numbers were justas staggering. So there are already multiple groups for 19 years that are being targeted by the CCP and we are supposed to think they are all making this up and the CCP isn’t targeting them? It’s always the same story. Some small subgroup does some violence, or in the case of China, just merely shows some organization or protest (as Falun Dafa peacefully did against cartoons). That is enough for EVERY member of that group to now be targeted for indefinite detention, and worse. Jews didn’t believe in the existence of Nazi concentration camps and no one could imagine a civilized country like Germany would do such a thing. Denying journalists access looks really bad. Now to be fair, we are talking about internment and re-education camps, not concentration camps for Uyghurs. Probably something worse than what FDR did to the Japanese. Why should the world stand by and be silent?
14 7y ago
I keep seeing this and I ask at what point do we start shaming Chinese nationalists? I mean I would not walk down the street with a Nazi supporter at what point do we as humans say this is not right, the Chinese way is not right and I will not associate with any business or person who is Chinese. Are my thoughts misguided here? What else can an individual do to help this situation?
- elliekelly 7y ago
  > I will not associate with any business or person who is Chinese. I agree it's not right and everyone outside of China from governments all the way down to consumers ought to be doing more but I think we need to be careful with statements like the one above. The Chinese government is committing atrocities. Some Chinese citizens and companies are surely complicit but I don't think it's fair to judge an entire nationality based on the actions of those in power. I'm certain there are quite a lot of Chinese who disagree with what's happening but understandably cannot voice their opinion on the matter.
  - 14 7y ago
    I wanted to clear up that I don’t actually think we should not associate with the Chinese I just more am thinking at some point it fell out of favour to be a nazi. You would not want to be associated with that. At what point will this happen wiTh the Chinese. And I fully understand that most people have very little control of how China is run. The same for Nazi Germany but eventually the world got the upper hand and all of Germany was forced to change. Some Nazi’s persist today but they are not strong because people will literally attack you.
- tepidandroid 7y ago
  You have the right to walk or not walk with whoever you want and associate with or not associate with whichever race you choose. What makes you feel the need to have your thoughts publicly vindicated? > I keep seeing this and I ask at what point do we start shaming Chinese nationalists > the Chinese way is not right and I will not associate with any business or person who is Chinese From this statement it seems as though you're trying to generate some kind of grass-roots support for that line of thinking? If that's the case, there are already well established communities for that, such as stormfront.
zachguo 7y ago
Another scaremongering article from this author again. This author's company directly competes with surveillance and security companies from China. Official number is 13k [1], but people think those jaw dropping estimations from religious groups are more believable. [1] https://www.apnews.com/0e3b005d281345278ed470823096ec9b https://www.apnews.com/0e3b005d281345278ed470823096ec9b
- learc83 7y ago
  If you don't like the author. Ignore him. Here's a quote from the US Secretary of State: "We watch the massive human rights violations in Xinjiang where over a million people are being held in a humanitarian crisis that is the scale of what took place in the 1930s. And we see American businesses and their technology being used to help facilitate that activity from the Chinese government. It’s something worthy of thinking about."
  - tepidandroid 7y ago
    The U.S Secretary of state, just like the entire current U.S administration, suffer from the same issue. A complete and utter lack of credibility.
    - learc83 7y ago
      So we agree it's not the writer making this up for personal gain then.
- originldirgibl 7y ago
  I don't know this guy specifically, but it's been reported by other sources. This is a real thing that's happening. I find the general Chinese apologism on this site strange. Even if it were 13k why would it not be an issue that China is placing people in concentration camps? Not even to get into the argument about the reliability of the 13k number because that's just laughable given literally every source that isn't China's government disagrees with that. [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1KV1SU https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/... [2] https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1S925K https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1S925K [3] https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2019/03/290713.htm https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2019/03/290713.htm

34 points by learc83 7y ago

Oh wow, it would be terrible for a government to unethically detain Muslims.

Meanwhile, the US military is planning how to deal with so-called "terrorists," many of whom were peasants sold to warlords to collect bounties, to die of old-age in Gitmo. Also, ripping children from their parents in migrant and asylum-seekers concentration camps. Pot, meet kettle.

tomohawk 7y ago
China: let's lock up these people because of their race or beliefs US: we need to lock these people up because (gitmo) they're terrorists, or (border) they committed a felony. Yep - they're completely equivalent!
- jvanderbot 7y ago
  They'll bury it from HN front-page just by making adversarial comments, and that's the goal.
  - tepidandroid 7y ago
    That's not how the voting system works.
jvanderbot 7y ago
Its a story needing coverage, regardless of relative severity.
kennywinker 7y ago
While I agree both of those things are repulsive - the scales do not match up. There are 3 million people in camps in china, vs about 1000 at the height of gitmo. The border camps come a little closer in raw numbers - somewhere around 0.5 millions people per year, but they are detained for short periods of time. Estimates vary but we’re talking a few days. Scale matters. Don’t try to downplay how completely fucked up these camps are.
- freeflight 7y ago
  > There are 3 million people in camps in china That's what the US government claims, as such I'd take that number with a massive grain of salt because they have a vested interest in making China out as the "worse baddie" just like with surveillance, to make itself look like "the good guys" or at least "not as bad as China guys". > vs about 1000 at the height of gitmo That's quite a dishonest claim because Gitmo is only ONE out of many prisons like that, it ended up getting most of the spotlight due to geographical proximity to the US. But that doesn't mean that Gitmo was, or is, the only place like that, far from it [0]. And that doesn't even account for the thousands of drone victims, all just deemed "combatants" on the virtue of being "able-bodied" and too close to the "splash" [1]. With targets selected trough quite questionable methods [2]. In that context, China can't even compare to the US if China tried to. If you want to evade becoming a victim of these Chinese methods there's a very simple solution: Don't go to China. The same doesn't work if you end up on the crosshairs of the US, as the US is applying these methods on a global basis through the most sophisticated global surveillance network in human history. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_prison_abuse_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_prison_abuse_scandals [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-o... [2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-n...
- tepidandroid 7y ago
  You're absolutely right: scale matters. The camps are not really comparable to gitmo. They are perhaps more akin to the U.S prison system were thousands upon thousands of blacks and latinos are held, sometimes in isolation, sometimes for years, without charge. Pretty fucked up.

quotz 7y ago

China should finally get reprimanded

tepidandroid 7y ago

I actually find the evolution of this blatant, shameless propaganda amusing. You could actually observe, in real-time, the ramping up of accusations and headline hysterics in sequence: 1. 50k muslims detained 2. 100k muslims detained and put into re-education camps 3. 500k muslims arrested and put into concentration camps! 4. One million muslims torn out of homes and put into concentration camps and getting their organs harvested! 5. Three million muslims torn out of homes and put into concentration camps, getting organs harvested and being brutally tortured! It's easy to see how Americans were so readily misled about Iraq.

Noos 7y ago
Is it true, though? You are arguing that its baseless propaganda without refuting anything. Just that the evolution of the claims has gotten more severe. The best argument if so is just the truth. Link sources and publish things showing there really aren't 3 million people detained or that it's not a camp-style thing. The problem with Iraq is that Saddam simply could have told the truth and let UN inspectors in, but he often stonewalled and acted in a way that made it hard to not worry what he was doing...and oh, the whole invading another country thing.
- tepidandroid 7y ago
  The burden of proof is not on me to prove they aren't doing these things. The burden of proof is on those doing the accusing. As in the case of Huawei, there has not been one objective shred of proof. And no, I don't consider WaPo, NYT, and its ilk anywhere near objective journalism. If the lack of proof is because the CCP is denying journalists access to Xinjiang, then how can there be any conclusive evidence? Are they going to invade and bomb China to find the existence or non-existence of such evidence?
  - EGreg 7y ago
    Look, I don’t know if you are arguing in good faith or you’re a person who shills for the Chinese government but I’ll assume the former. The burden of proof, you say, is on those doing the accusing. Well, let’s see: We have entire Uyghur villages with markets that are now no longer active. Many of the people are mysteriously gone. We have tons of Uyghur families with relatives gone missing or reported arrested. We have actual buildings that are being used as prisons for these Uyghurs. We have testimony from people who were held in these camps. They say they saw many of those they knew. We have video from inside these camps, and it’s pretty clear people are held there against their will. NOW HERE IS THE KICKER: It’s not US propaganda. The Chinese government has already been accused by the following groups: Falun Dafa practitioners Tibetan Buddhists Christian Missionaries and has “defended” itself for years with an army of disinfo agents, in some cases the “defenses” are extremely limited and lame. For example Tibetan buddhists are accused of being slaveholders. Falun Dafa is public enemy #1 because they “say being gay is bad” and “lead people to do self immolation”. In reality, Falun Dafa is a peaceful religion that has long been persecuted, since 1999 when Jiang Xemin personally oversaw its destruction, including many of the same tactics, such as extrajudicial kidnappings and reeducation centers. The numbers were justas staggering. So there are already multiple groups for 19 years that are being targeted by the CCP and we are supposed to think they are all making this up and the CCP isn’t targeting them? It’s always the same story. Some small subgroup does some violence, or in the case of China, just merely shows some organization or protest (as Falun Dafa peacefully did against cartoons). That is enough for EVERY member of that group to now be targeted for indefinite detention, and worse. Jews didn’t believe in the existence of Nazi concentration camps and no one could imagine a civilized country like Germany would do such a thing. Denying journalists access looks really bad. Now to be fair, we are talking about internment and re-education camps, not concentration camps for Uyghurs. Probably something worse than what FDR did to the Japanese. Why should the world stand by and be silent?

14 7y ago

I keep seeing this and I ask at what point do we start shaming Chinese nationalists? I mean I would not walk down the street with a Nazi supporter at what point do we as humans say this is not right, the Chinese way is not right and I will not associate with any business or person who is Chinese. Are my thoughts misguided here? What else can an individual do to help this situation?

elliekelly 7y ago
> I will not associate with any business or person who is Chinese. I agree it's not right and everyone outside of China from governments all the way down to consumers ought to be doing more but I think we need to be careful with statements like the one above. The Chinese government is committing atrocities. Some Chinese citizens and companies are surely complicit but I don't think it's fair to judge an entire nationality based on the actions of those in power. I'm certain there are quite a lot of Chinese who disagree with what's happening but understandably cannot voice their opinion on the matter.
- 14 7y ago
  I wanted to clear up that I don’t actually think we should not associate with the Chinese I just more am thinking at some point it fell out of favour to be a nazi. You would not want to be associated with that. At what point will this happen wiTh the Chinese. And I fully understand that most people have very little control of how China is run. The same for Nazi Germany but eventually the world got the upper hand and all of Germany was forced to change. Some Nazi’s persist today but they are not strong because people will literally attack you.
tepidandroid 7y ago
You have the right to walk or not walk with whoever you want and associate with or not associate with whichever race you choose. What makes you feel the need to have your thoughts publicly vindicated? > I keep seeing this and I ask at what point do we start shaming Chinese nationalists > the Chinese way is not right and I will not associate with any business or person who is Chinese From this statement it seems as though you're trying to generate some kind of grass-roots support for that line of thinking? If that's the case, there are already well established communities for that, such as stormfront.

zachguo 7y ago

Another scaremongering article from this author again. This author's company directly competes with surveillance and security companies from China. Official number is 13k [1], but people think those jaw dropping estimations from religious groups are more believable. [1] https://www.apnews.com/0e3b005d281345278ed470823096ec9b https://www.apnews.com/0e3b005d281345278ed470823096ec9b

learc83 7y ago
If you don't like the author. Ignore him. Here's a quote from the US Secretary of State: "We watch the massive human rights violations in Xinjiang where over a million people are being held in a humanitarian crisis that is the scale of what took place in the 1930s. And we see American businesses and their technology being used to help facilitate that activity from the Chinese government. It’s something worthy of thinking about."
- tepidandroid 7y ago
  The U.S Secretary of state, just like the entire current U.S administration, suffer from the same issue. A complete and utter lack of credibility.
  - learc83 7y ago
    So we agree it's not the writer making this up for personal gain then.
originldirgibl 7y ago
I don't know this guy specifically, but it's been reported by other sources. This is a real thing that's happening. I find the general Chinese apologism on this site strange. Even if it were 13k why would it not be an issue that China is placing people in concentration camps? Not even to get into the argument about the reliability of the 13k number because that's just laughable given literally every source that isn't China's government disagrees with that. [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1KV1SU https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/... [2] https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1S925K https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1S925K [3] https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2019/03/290713.htm https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2019/03/290713.htm