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It's important to understand the context for such actions. Right or wrong, heavy handed or not, there is always a context. On HN and other social media, users a

It's important to understand the context for such actions. Right or wrong, heavy handed or not, there is always a context. On HN and other social media, users always seem to think there is some kind of inherent malice and genocidal intent in every Chinese action, which is utterly absurd. In this particular situation, the context was 200 Han Chinese being ethnically cleansed in Xinjiang, dragged out of buses and cars and executed on the street while coming home from work, with 2000 more injured. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2009_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2009_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_rio... There are videos of this readily available. It'd be like if hundreds of white people were butchered by thousands of anonymous black people for the sole reason of being white in Detroit. What would be the appropriate government response to such an event? Mass incarceration? I mean, in such a context, can "re-education" camps not be viewed as a relatively mild response? This is not to say that it's an ideal response, but certainly it's not the worst an authoritative government could have done. In response to your point about surveillance, the Urumqi riots began because a false rumour about the rape of two Uighur women in a Han Chinese factory spread on WeChat, fuelling hate, outrage and unrest. Because this is how things work in an uneducated population. Just look up the number of lynchings, burnings and stonings in rural Indian villages based off of false rumours spread on social media. This is not the same country as your country, these are not the same people as your people. China is a developing nation with an uneducated but heavily interconnected population, a combination heavily conducive to destabilization from both internal and external actors. For this reason, their government will not hesitate to stamp out, censor, surveil whatever it is they need to in order to preserve stability. You can't judge China by the same standards as modern, highly educated western democracies - any attempt to do so is simply naive and misguided.

learc83 7y ago
Please stop defending concentration camps. There is no defense. There's always context. No one commits genocide without a reason. Hitler, Stalin, Andrew Jackson--they all had what they believed were extraordinary situations that justified their atrocities. You have also presented a completely one sided version of the events that led up the current situation.
- tepidandroid 7y ago
  Please stop invoking the term concentration camp. We all know the imagery that term conjures (perhaps that is the intent of users such as yourself). What the CCP is doing is in no way comparable to Auschwitz. Ask yourself what is more likely: 1. The government of China is rounding up millions upon millions of Uighurs in hard labor camps, harvesting their organs and working them to death. or 2. The government of China is trying to contain further unrest after what happened during the Urumqi riots by subjecting thousands of people to re-education, where they sit for hours each day reading and listening to government propaganda. Do you really think any member of the CCP would find scenario #1 would be in China's best interest, especially given China's increasing exposure on the world stage? Any great defender of freedom and democracy in the world would salivate at the thought of scenario #1 as it would give them every excuse they could possibly need to "liberate" such an oppressed peoples.
  - learc83 7y ago
    >Please stop invoking the term concentration camp. We all know the imagery that term conjures (perhaps that is the intent of users such as yourself). If you don't want people to say you're putting people in concentration camps, perhaps you shouldn't remove millions of people of a specific ethnicity from their homes in order to lock them up in a camp for an indefinite amount of time. Uighurs have been clashing with the Chinese government for over a century. The government is just attempting to cement their grip on Xinjiang by wiping out Uighur identity to remove a rebellious element. Concentration camps rarely start out as death camps. When governments realize that the only real way to remove an ethnicity is to kill them, that's when they turn into extermination camps. The only real hope we have to prevent this, is to convince the Chinese government that the bad press isn't worth it. >#1 as it would give them every excuse they could possibly need to "liberate" such an oppressed peoples. There is no realistic scenario that leads to military intervention within the borders of a country with nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them.
- dang 7y ago
  "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
throwaway798 7y ago
You said: [...] the Urumqi riots began because a false rumour about the rape of two Uighur women in a Han Chinese factory spread on WeChat [...] First, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaoguan_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaoguan_incident), the Shaoguan incident [...] was sparked by allegations of sexual assault on Han women by Uyghurs and [...] and rumours of an incident in which two female Han workers were sexually assaulted by six Uyghur co-workers [...] Second, basic research makes me believe WeChat was released only in january 2011 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat). How could it be used in 2009 ? I made this account just to reply to you, because as of now, I sincerely think you are either uninformed or lying.
- tepidandroid 7y ago
  > I made this account just to reply to you, because as of now, I sincerely think you are either uninformed or lying. Gee, you sure got me there. Ok, so let's say you mercifully bestow upon me the benefit of the doubt that I did not remember the exact details of the incident. How does that change the thrust of the argument? The argument was the reason for mass surveillance and communication controls in the region is that social media was deliberately used to exaggerate facts and foment outrage, leading to the butchering of 200 innocent Han Chinese in the street and the injury of thousands more. How does your first point contradict that argument? To your second point, once again. That detail is literally inconsequential. Substitute WeChat for [whatever social media platform they were using at the time to circulate videos]. I ask again, what exactly does that change? Very interested in reading your response.
  - throwaway798 7y ago
    [...] what exactly does that change? Well, nothing. But you should really add that the Han population is seen as some sort of colonisation.
- dang 7y ago
  Crossing into personal attack is not ok here. Please do not post like this to HN, or create accounts to do it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

learc83 7y ago

Please stop defending concentration camps. There is no defense. There's always context. No one commits genocide without a reason. Hitler, Stalin, Andrew Jackson--they all had what they believed were extraordinary situations that justified their atrocities. You have also presented a completely one sided version of the events that led up the current situation.

tepidandroid 7y ago
Please stop invoking the term concentration camp. We all know the imagery that term conjures (perhaps that is the intent of users such as yourself). What the CCP is doing is in no way comparable to Auschwitz. Ask yourself what is more likely: 1. The government of China is rounding up millions upon millions of Uighurs in hard labor camps, harvesting their organs and working them to death. or 2. The government of China is trying to contain further unrest after what happened during the Urumqi riots by subjecting thousands of people to re-education, where they sit for hours each day reading and listening to government propaganda. Do you really think any member of the CCP would find scenario #1 would be in China's best interest, especially given China's increasing exposure on the world stage? Any great defender of freedom and democracy in the world would salivate at the thought of scenario #1 as it would give them every excuse they could possibly need to "liberate" such an oppressed peoples.
- learc83 7y ago
  >Please stop invoking the term concentration camp. We all know the imagery that term conjures (perhaps that is the intent of users such as yourself). If you don't want people to say you're putting people in concentration camps, perhaps you shouldn't remove millions of people of a specific ethnicity from their homes in order to lock them up in a camp for an indefinite amount of time. Uighurs have been clashing with the Chinese government for over a century. The government is just attempting to cement their grip on Xinjiang by wiping out Uighur identity to remove a rebellious element. Concentration camps rarely start out as death camps. When governments realize that the only real way to remove an ethnicity is to kill them, that's when they turn into extermination camps. The only real hope we have to prevent this, is to convince the Chinese government that the bad press isn't worth it. >#1 as it would give them every excuse they could possibly need to "liberate" such an oppressed peoples. There is no realistic scenario that leads to military intervention within the borders of a country with nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them.
dang 7y ago
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

throwaway798 7y ago

You said: [...] the Urumqi riots began because a false rumour about the rape of two Uighur women in a Han Chinese factory spread on WeChat [...] First, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaoguan_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaoguan_incident), the Shaoguan incident [...] was sparked by allegations of sexual assault on Han women by Uyghurs and [...] and rumours of an incident in which two female Han workers were sexually assaulted by six Uyghur co-workers [...] Second, basic research makes me believe WeChat was released only in january 2011 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat). How could it be used in 2009 ? I made this account just to reply to you, because as of now, I sincerely think you are either uninformed or lying.

tepidandroid 7y ago
> I made this account just to reply to you, because as of now, I sincerely think you are either uninformed or lying. Gee, you sure got me there. Ok, so let's say you mercifully bestow upon me the benefit of the doubt that I did not remember the exact details of the incident. How does that change the thrust of the argument? The argument was the reason for mass surveillance and communication controls in the region is that social media was deliberately used to exaggerate facts and foment outrage, leading to the butchering of 200 innocent Han Chinese in the street and the injury of thousands more. How does your first point contradict that argument? To your second point, once again. That detail is literally inconsequential. Substitute WeChat for [whatever social media platform they were using at the time to circulate videos]. I ask again, what exactly does that change? Very interested in reading your response.
- throwaway798 7y ago
  [...] what exactly does that change? Well, nothing. But you should really add that the Han population is seen as some sort of colonisation.
dang 7y ago
Crossing into personal attack is not ok here. Please do not post like this to HN, or create accounts to do it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html