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If they were actual camps, can someone explain why they were all empty? No cars, no trucks, no detainees, no guards at all? To supply and run a crowded camp, y

by fqye 6y ago

If they were actual camps, can someone explain why they were all empty? No cars, no trucks, no detainees, no guards at all? To supply and run a crowded camp, you need guards and logistics. Nothing there. Nowadays, researchers could easily obtain satellites images showing actual activities with all those clues. Just by looking at the images, it not possible to draw conclusion they were concentration camps. They could be barracks under construction and that would also explain why blanket at Baidu map. The report didn't explain its logic to conclude they were concentration camps. And they didn't even consider other possibilities at all. It is not serious research. Remember the satellite image analysis of Wuhan's hospitals' parking lots that was supposed to reveal the true scale of covid19 outbreak in Wuhan? High resolution images with all the details. Still lots of flaws and no one takes it seriously now. New York Times obtained some leaked confidential documents of China's Xinjiang policies. Nothing even close to concentration camp was revealed. It actually did CCP some favor.

free_rms 6y ago
It's a tough issue because it's hard to give the Chinese government credit for lack of evidence when they're not letting journalists in in the first place. I looked into it a year ago and the strongest evidence I found at that point was two dudes drove around and took pictures of a bunch of facilities that looked like re-education camps. They guesstimated 100k-1M, one news article wrote "a million", then the rest of them started writing "millions", and hacker news commenters write "genocide".
- panpanna 6y ago
  Does it matter if it was 100k or 1M??
  - free_rms 6y ago
    It matters it it's mandatory job and language training vs ethnic cleansing or genocide. There's evidence for the former, none for the latter. And a paternalistic "we'll end this unrest by educating them" attitude would be pretty on-brand for the Chinese Government. Also, yes, quantity matters. How many do we have in jail on bullshit charges? It would be nice to be less, right?
762236 6y ago
Governments have long known how to hide their sensitive activities from satellites, and to even provide misleading information.
coliveira 6y ago
Exactly, every image they say are from concentration camps only shows construction sites and factories, like thousand others all around China. There is no credibility in a claim when you just point to random images and say unsubstantiated things about them.
James_Henry 6y ago
The BuzzFeed articles don't show hardly any current pictures of the camps. And it doesn't seem that hard to believe that the detainees would most of the time remain indoors being de-radicalized and re-educated. The guards would be in the towers, or in the buildings, or looking at the camera feeds. I'm sure that people with better images than the few we saw here are working to figure out exactly what's going on in these camps and as best as possible following all the logistics. At least I'd hope so as China is being very secretive about them. The authors and their teams clearly took into consideration that these could be military bases and they talk about it to some extant. I'm sure it could still be the case that some of these are barracks and the Chinese make their barracks look like detention centers. Some of the locations they found have been verified by other sources though. We also have that drone footage of detainees being transported, right? Also, the leaked document from the NYTimes talked an awful lot about security, not letting people escape, and not letting images or information of the camps be leaked for a normal vocational school. The Wuhan hospital parking lot study was pretty bad, but worse things have come out of Harvard Medical School in recent months.

by fqye 6y ago

free_rms 6y ago

It's a tough issue because it's hard to give the Chinese government credit for lack of evidence when they're not letting journalists in in the first place. I looked into it a year ago and the strongest evidence I found at that point was two dudes drove around and took pictures of a bunch of facilities that looked like re-education camps. They guesstimated 100k-1M, one news article wrote "a million", then the rest of them started writing "millions", and hacker news commenters write "genocide".

panpanna 6y ago
Does it matter if it was 100k or 1M??
- free_rms 6y ago
  It matters it it's mandatory job and language training vs ethnic cleansing or genocide. There's evidence for the former, none for the latter. And a paternalistic "we'll end this unrest by educating them" attitude would be pretty on-brand for the Chinese Government. Also, yes, quantity matters. How many do we have in jail on bullshit charges? It would be nice to be less, right?

762236 6y ago

Governments have long known how to hide their sensitive activities from satellites, and to even provide misleading information.

coliveira 6y ago

Exactly, every image they say are from concentration camps only shows construction sites and factories, like thousand others all around China. There is no credibility in a claim when you just point to random images and say unsubstantiated things about them.

James_Henry 6y ago

The BuzzFeed articles don't show hardly any current pictures of the camps. And it doesn't seem that hard to believe that the detainees would most of the time remain indoors being de-radicalized and re-educated. The guards would be in the towers, or in the buildings, or looking at the camera feeds. I'm sure that people with better images than the few we saw here are working to figure out exactly what's going on in these camps and as best as possible following all the logistics. At least I'd hope so as China is being very secretive about them. The authors and their teams clearly took into consideration that these could be military bases and they talk about it to some extant. I'm sure it could still be the case that some of these are barracks and the Chinese make their barracks look like detention centers. Some of the locations they found have been verified by other sources though. We also have that drone footage of detainees being transported, right? Also, the leaked document from the NYTimes talked an awful lot about security, not letting people escape, and not letting images or information of the camps be leaked for a normal vocational school. The Wuhan hospital parking lot study was pretty bad, but worse things have come out of Harvard Medical School in recent months.