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China Built a Vast New Infrastructure to Imprison Uighurs

• TheUndead96 6y ago
  To those that believe that they would not have turned a blind eye during WWII to the systematic extermination of Jews, the current generation has been given a similar challenge. Where is your cancel-culture now? How will our children think of us?
  • suprfsat 6y ago
    [takes a deep breath] China is cancelled!
  • PoissonVache 6y ago
    Yeah, I'm realizing that it's all about geopolitics and power, not about cultural ideas.
    • hoseja 6y ago
      And it only gets worse from here.
      • tomrod 6y ago
        It doesn't have to.
  • smhost 6y ago
    Americans killed a million muslims and destroyed their homeland. China imprisoned a million muslims and put them in factories. Stop being so dramatic.
    • dutch3000 6y ago
      a million? really?
      • sveme 6y ago
        Probably correct estimate considering all the American wars in the middle east. Still annoying comparison and whataboutism.
      • TheUndead96 6y ago
        Just to address the comment above (it has been flagged and I can no longer reply directly). This is not a debate of America vs China. This is a debate of morality. We should not reserve judgement only for "bad guys". The reason China gets a free pass on this is because they are economically valuable to other countries. Chaining up pregnant women is bad, by all nations at all times.
        • Nginx487 6y ago
          I spot this demagogic argument from pro-Chinese position all the time: "they committed some crimes, so we have a right to do the same". Following that logic, they easily can justify their genocide with providing Holocaust as an example: "we just imprison and torture people, we do not burn them".
          • hiq 6y ago
            I think it's useful to directly use the word which describes this strategy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism This makes it faster for you to refute their point, especially in front of other people who might be convinced by this argument at first.
        • greatpatton 6y ago
          I think that regarding free pass the US get it all the time. Look at the Iraq war, I think that only western country that had to suffer consequences was France with the Freedom Fry silliness. Moreover in the US almost everybody is proud to have fight this war... We in Europe should be more vocal about what US and China think they can do to the rest of the world without consequences. China is an awful country, we just have to look at what they did in Tibet, for the last 40 years... there is nothing new. European country are currently doing nothing and this is despicable, my country being the worst, we just discovered that Chinese police officer are invited here to identify potential Chinese to send back to China... the moral standpoint is very weak, and only facts matter.
    • christophilus 6y ago
      It’s almost like more than one country can do horrible things. Who’d have thought? It doesn’t make the situation in China any better to point out that other countries have also done bad things.
      • ahmedalsudani 6y ago
        I believe the point is that people on this website are selective in their outrage.
        • fsflover 6y ago
          No, it's just that we are discussing here just one country, see the topic title.
          • ahmedalsudani 6y ago
            https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=iraq&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Where is the equivalent outcry? Why is the country we’re discussing here always China? That’s the selective outrage.
      • xupybd 6y ago
        Yes but America did that to foreign people during war. Its something else when a government does this to its own people.
        • SCHiM 6y ago
          Ehh, don't you think that actually makes it worse? I don't know about you, but even if the government does not have a legitimate democratic mandate, it still has a larger say than a foreign country. Especially if you consider that the USA isn't exactly a shining example of a functioning democracy.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
    • read_if_gay_ 6y ago
      Whataboutism
    • hhjinks 6y ago
      China's actions are targeted genocide. They're a completely different level of evil.
      • rieter 6y ago
        How many Muslims did China actually kill? I mean, what's happening in Xinjiang is obviously very concerning, however I don't think anyone has ever produced any evidence that a literal genocide is happening. Mass incarceration? Perhaps. Brainwashing? Maybe. Genocide? Highly dubious.
        • dragonwriter 6y ago
          > How many Muslims did China actually kill? [...] I don't think anyone has ever produced any evidence that a literal genocide is happening. Mass incarceration? Perhaps. Brainwashing? Maybe. Genocide? Highly dubious. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article II: “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” “Mass incarceration” with children forcibly transferred to boarding schools run by people outside of the group and “brainwashing”, together, seem to qualify for (b), (c), (d), (e), even if (a) is missing.
          • hhjinks 6y ago
            Thanks. There's no getting around it. This is genocide.
    • misja111 6y ago
      First of all you seem to assume that everybody here is American. Let me tell you, they are not. Second, if the USA killed a million muslims, does that make it right that China does it as well? I don't think it does.
      • berdario 6y ago
        First of all, China didn't kill a million muslims. Second, discrimination or racism is never right, but the arguments related to Xinjiang prisons are being used to drum up popular support for a [cold] war against China. We have a duty to speak out against our leaders, so that we can prevent tragic mistakes being made.
    • throwaway189262 6y ago
      Whatabout the time Nazis killed millions of Jews? Imprisoning your minorities is practically doing them a favor!
    • Aunche 6y ago
      Even the "million people" detained statistic is incredibly misleading. When you look at the original actual paper that conducted the investigation, it's about the total people who were ever detained, most of which are released after their mandatory reeducation is complete. However, western journalists intentionally make it sound like 1 million people are currently being detained. Whenever BuzzFeed or any news company talks about ICE detention or US prisons, they make it very obvious when they talk about current people being detained and the total population that had been detained.
  • pixxel 6y ago
    Tackling atrocities requires effort. Farming likes on twitter for being mildly offended is much easier.
  • senectus1 6y ago
    The more value there is in the world the cheaper life seems to be
  • Darmody 6y ago
    Some of us don't have much power. I denounced it online several times, that's all I can do. People like Lebron James, who thinks of himself like a freedom fighter, when he criticized China he ended up saying he was misinformed and he wasn't educated about the issue. He loves the money coming from China more than anything else. I want him to be reminded by this. He put his millions before human lives, just like some nazi collaborators did.
    • grugagag 6y ago
      We all have power though very little but we do. Unfortunately it is scattered. The more people care about the issue the more visible it will become
      • Darmody 6y ago
        That's why I don't shut up.
        • maskedinvader 6y ago
          Absolutely , I cannot agree more about using the little power we have to bring about change. I cannot be in the wrong side of history on this.
        • qiqing 6y ago
          Hypothetically, let's say you're a regular Chinese citizen concerned about human rights abuses and police brutality in the US. Can you roughly estimate the impact of your forum posts, boycotts, and all that on US government policy?
          • grugagag 6y ago
            It depends on a lot of factors such as who and how many see your posts, how much you consume and how much you boycott etc. If you’re alone the impact is small but if others are starting to follow suit the number goes up fast and the voice becomes stronger. It is easy to think the impact is nill and that’s exactly how the opressor wants you to think, no wonder the divide and conquer is a strategy that works. But every movement starts off with a few who believe they make a difference and eventually it picks up a critical mass
  • thecleaner 6y ago
    Cancel culture never had any attention of pushing forward any reasonable change. It was mostly a tool for people to pretend that they somehow had an lasting positive impact on the world in the most convenient way. Boycotting goods made in China and substituting them with those made elsewhere is not as convenient. So cancel culture people and pretty much everyone else will pretend and argue such a measure will have no impact on the political situation. Maybe we should point out that apartheid in South Africa wasnt solved by good intentioned dialogue but through economic embargoes. But that argument will be ignored because its so inconvenient to not use goods made in China. You know its so easy to donate a paltry sum of money while looking at the photo of a poor African/Indian/Bangladeshi/Mexican kid and then feel great about ones magnanimity than to take the hard steps to curb an actual menace and human rights violation.
    • vertex-four 6y ago
      I mean, for most of us on here, it's either use goods made at least partially in China or switch career - you're never going to get a computer with no Chinese-made components, especially not at a price which I can afford. Good luck doing that without years of planning, and managing to continue to feed yourself. Fact of the matter is that China is in an extremely powerful position over the world due to its position in the manufacturing chain. The world would fall apart overnight if China stopped manufacturing things - parts of it did already when Covid-19 caused lockdowns. There isn't the manufacturing ability elsewhere to scale up to what China provides.
    • thecleaner 6y ago
      I really do not understand the downvoting here. The one reply on this comment says that we are not that powerful. Greta Thrunberg literally wrote a book saying this is not the case.
      • vertex-four 6y ago
        I must admit that I have not read Greta Thunberg's book, but if it has a solution to capitalism's demand that we make sacrifices to our personal morals or starve in the specific instance of the tooling we need to perform our work, I'd love to hear it. You don't get to say "I am not using computers any more as they contain components made in China" and keep your job as a software developer, and you'd be very unlikely to receive unemployment benefits. The only way we're getting there is actual organisation and uprising to overthrow the capitalism which requires that we make those sacrifices, and frankly... it's not going to happen any time soon. People broadly agreed to the National Guard being sent in to handle some people who were mostly demanding that the police stop killing them, can you imagine what would happen if those people were actually calling to overthrow the state?
  • Nginx487 6y ago
    There's limited set of countermeasures we can impose on China. I joined "Boycott Made in China" initiative, I promote it in my LinkedIn, and I literally check "Made in" tags in the mall during shopping, and I do not buy any Apple products, until I see them implementing their project on moving production from China to India and Vietnam. However, I understand how terribly it is "not enough". Countless politicians and businessmen without moral compass keep dealing with China. Harward President cancelled human rights conference to please Comrade Xi during their meeting. Greed and cowardice rule the world, and nothing drastically changed since pre-WWII times. What else we, the people, can do to confront the evil, in the world where life of a nation, reputation of the whole country and principles of people who supposed to maintain peace all have a price?
  • mola 6y ago
    Well, US greed gave China this power. Cancel culture have nothing to do with this. There were a lot of left leaning voices in the ninetees warning against the trajectory of globalism. The sell out of US manufacturing was done by people with money, not the people who dislike racism (and show it in a weird and harmful way).
    • microcolonel 6y ago
      > US greed gave China this power Maybe from the U.S. perspective, but at this point there are heaps of countries around the world who at least claim to be dependent on China. This is a matter of global moral cowardice; at least today, the U.S. is more ready to say no to it.
      • wayneftw 6y ago
        Actually, this is a matter of global espionage. The CCP didn’t just appear organically, it was put there by people who have been working for generations, to build a one world government. Communism in China was not started by the Chinese. Yale also spurred Mao’s emergence. If you search for that phrase you’ll see an old Yale newspaper article about it. Yale, the home of skull and bones, the elite university built from opium money. The world is a lot darker than most people realize.
      • coldtea 6y ago
        Or just another case of made-up US exceptionalism ("oh, how braver we are than those others for saying no to China now"), after the US corporations/market had profited from cheap Chinese manufacturing and sweat shop labor for years, and takes the high moral ground only now that "coincidentally" has an economic problem and wants to stop all the outsourcing. Meanwhile, all this talk of "global moral cowardice" was hardly there for hundreds of instances of the US doing all kinds of shit to third countries throughout the 20th and 21st century with bi-partisan agreement and the public hardly caring... China is shitted upon for those detention camps (and rightly so). Meanwhile, over a million muslim deaths have been directly and indirectly (e.g. pharmaceutical and food shortages) caused by the Iraq embargo/invasion alone [1] (one of several), and people talk about China as if their shit doesn't smell... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimates_of_deaths_due_to_sanctions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimat...
  • pjc50 6y ago
    I genuinely believe this is getting less publicity because it's impossible to cover in the traditional way: there are very few first person sources and it's impossible to go there and film. Whereas unlimited media from the US domestic conflict is available.
  • joelbluminator 6y ago
    What's happening there is despicable. But to the best of my knowledge there's no extermination. There aren't hundreds of thousands being shot or gassed. It looks more like a "cultural genocide", the kind we saw exercised against the Tibetans. I understand the emotions over this issue, and I don't think the holocaust is beyond comparison, but in this instance the comparison falls short.
    • brobdingnagians 6y ago
      From what I know most Germans weren't aware of what was happening in the camps until after the war. They would have known there were people being taken away. Most genocidal governments don't publicize it as that. There is almost always a cover story. When there is a systematic removal of people from there homes, we mus assume the worst. Because a government with such widespread and systematic oppression, unrestrained, rarely restrains themselves.
      • joelbluminator 6y ago
        I doubt it. Even in the 40s, with no internet or cell phone cameras, even back then most governments knew about the holocaust as early as 41-42. There were evidence from concentration camp prisoners who escaped, and probably other kinds of evidence...I mean it's kinda hard to hide exterminating millions of people even if you're super efficient and organised. The stories we hear from China are despicable, but again - they suggest cultural genocide, not actual genocide.
        • thu2111 6y ago
          Can you cite that? My understanding is that the concentration camps weren't known to exist until the Allies stumbled onto them whilst advancing across Europe. In many camps the Germans had attempted to destroy them just hours before allied troops arrived, in an attempt to conceal what had been happening, but were interrupted by the high speed of the advance after D-Day. If everyone knew they wouldn't have put these camps far into the wilderness and forests, they wouldn't have tried to destroy them as they fled, and the allies wouldn't have been surprised by what they found. As for Germans knowing, they were subject to Nazi censorship. Some of them had their suspicions for sure. I saw a quote once from a woman who said of course they knew about the camps. When asked how she knew, her reply was: because that's exactly the sort of thing Hitler would have done. So she didn't really know, just suspected based on past behaviour, which is different.
  • mc32 6y ago
    As mentioned elsewhere what’s happening here is not extermination like the Holocaust but it’s also worse than Japanese internment that everyone denounces as having been a very bad thing... Yet, companies continue doing business and in some cases abetting the policy. Some of these companies will be the IBMs and Fords as well as the Wolksvagens and Thiessens but it’s pernicious and people don’t notice. But in retrospect years hence it will be stark.
    • magicsmoke 6y ago
      "Japanese internment that everyone denounces as having been a very bad thing" If WW3 starts and Chinese internment camps start popping up you'll find out that what people say in peacetime and what they actually think are two very different things.
  • cortesoft 6y ago
    I don’t understand what the ‘cancel culture’ comment is supposed to mean. There are a million tweets condemning China’s behavior... way more than the number of tweets targeting people who are ‘cancelled’ The difference is that tweets can effect a regular person’s life, and they are ‘cancelled’. China doesn’t care. A company will act to fire a single person who behaves badly because of consumer pressure; it doesn’t cost them much and is good PR. Stopping doing business with China is a lot costlier, so they don’t give in to the same consumer pressure that they would for an individual employee. The different outcome doesn’t mean there is some hypocrisy amongst the people tweeting their support for ‘cancelling’ someone. It just means that tweets aren’t that powerful for real change.
    • misja111 6y ago
      Cancel culture means boycotting public figures or companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. You are talking only about tweets but those have little to do with it. Boycotting China is definitely possible, simply stop buying their goods. Vote with your wallet! If enough people do this then it will definitely have an impact, possibly even enough to bring about some real change.
      • blisterpeanuts 6y ago
        I thought cancel culture referred to the practice of reporting someone's postings and getting them taken down or even banned by the platform. It also includes doxxing people and trying to get them fired from their jobs because of their online postings.
        • CodeGlitch 6y ago
          Not sure why you are being downvoted. Cancel culture can hit non-famous/significant people as you describe. To me it's all about shutting down debate, and reducing free-speech.
      • elliekelly 6y ago
        > Boycotting China is definitely possible, simply stop buying their goods. Is it possible though? I’m really not so sure.
  • Miner49er 6y ago
    We're doing similar in the United States. Shouldn't we focus on stopping it at home first?
  • drieddust 6y ago
    As evident from my other comments I don't like CCP one bit. But while we criticize oppression, Muslim extremism which triggered this oopression shouldn't be pushed aside either. Tibet is equally oppressed under CCP's boots for many decades now but nobody seems to be bothered. I don't like this selective outrage of west.
    • derwiki 6y ago
      My most cynical viewpoint is that it’s virtue signaling by Americans. We’re ashamed of our atrocities and it’s easy to point to this atrocity. Maybe it’s inadvertently selective?
      • drieddust 6y ago
        I don't think that is the case. Media is biased but I am not sure why Media wants to exaggarate atrocities on Muslims but convinently skips atrocities on other ethnic group mostly by the Muslim extremists. I understand all Muslims are not involved but what stops Media from highlighting the atrocities of Muslim extemist group. Plenty of these groups exists but barely reported. I am not sure if this is because of White guilt or Media houses are scared of Charlie Hebdo like scenario.
  • supergirl 6y ago
    I would be more concerned about challenges like these in my local area, i.e. the west (millions refugees living in tents as a result of western wars, for profit prisons, children refugees in border camps, etc). if we can't solve it in our own countries, what chance is there to solve it in china through twitter.
  • throwaway4good 6y ago
    But what if it wasn't actually true? Just like most of the reporting leading up to the major wars of the past many decades.
    • actuator 6y ago
      Good thing then, that there are solutions other than war.
  • enriquto 6y ago
    > To those that believe that they would not have turned a blind eye during WWII to the systematic extermination of Jews, the current generation has been given a similar challenge. Where is your cancel-culture now? How will our children think of us? I agree 100% with what you say. But if you are from the USA, you may better not say it. It is just impossible for a person from the USA not to sound ridiculously hypocritical when criticizing China. You are the greatest war-mongering country in the last few generations! If you are from the U.S.A., it is more realistic and effective to work on stopping your country killing people abroad. Not that anything that you say or suggest about China is wrong. But this century will not be remembered only by the Chinese genocide of the Uighurs, but also by the north-american aggressive and murderous imperialism.
  • blindspot557 6y ago
    How is that comparable to Jews? jews were tortured killed and their personal properties were robbed. Do you see anyone in this article got the same result? Where does you sense of self righteous coming from?
  • pmachinery 6y ago
    Yes, if there's one thing the Uighur people desperately need right now is people outside China cynically exploiting their suffering for petty axe grinding about young people ("current generation") and "cancel culture".
  • erik_landerholm 6y ago
    I’d take it further. If you do business in/with China right now you would of done business with nazi Germany.
    • asimovfan 6y ago
      What about the United States?
  • accurrent 6y ago
    I am of Indian origin but grew up in China. If you want to know how its got to this state I can tell you my point of view. Back in ~2007 I saw the first brush of Uighur Han tensions. My family and I were stuck in a traffic jam in a very crowded market place. We were in car with a driver. At some point my mom, who used to be a journalist, spotted a pickpocket. This pickpocket was armed with a knife and was going about pick pocketing people. There was a police patrol around, however it was clear that he was trying to steer clear of trouble with the pickpocket. When my mom saw this her inner indian-journalist/activist was immediately re-awakened. She was about to open the door and take on the negligent police and pickpocket. At this point our driver immediately locked the door and told her to stop. He explained that the man was an Uighur and the police just did not want to run in to his gang. Later on we learnt that many Uighurs would leave their home towns for second and first tier cities in China in the hope of finding work. However due to linguistic and cultural barriers they would inevitably be unable to find work and hence fall to other ways to make money. Unfortunately when you are a minority if one person of you're kind does something wrong, your entire minority comes under scrutiny. There was a point in time when news of mass stabbings by Uighurs was becoming a weekly phenomenon. The one sited on Wikipedia is a stabbing at train stations, but I remember some which even involved children in kindergartens and pre-schools. Naturally, the local population will expect something. China may not be a democracy but their government has a social contract with the han majority to make sure they deliver. All of this was happening around the time that Xi was slowly taking the reigns from the then president Hu Jin Tao. Xi's rise was not particularly clean and his establishment of "anti-corruption" bureaus was most certainly a good way of him to get rid of opposing politicians. To prove his metal he needed to act. One of the things that was evident was the Uighurs needed "education" so they could work. For all purposes, the average Chinese would back this (heck even I would think that it'd be a good thing to help disadvantaged people come out of poverty). The only problem with "education" in China is that its not always what the rest of the world would consider humane. As a child, I had a piano teacher would beat me if I played the wrong notes. When my parents found out they of course flipped shit and immediately fired her, but I'm pretty sure other children were subjected to similar treatment and their parents would support such treatment. It is only very recently that the average Chinese parent actually started to consider child abuse by teachers as wrong. Hence it was not difficult for the CCP to recruit a group of people who sincerely believe they are doing social work to design, build and run these camps. To add to the fire you of course had western media which would report terrorism acts that were predominantly muslim (seems like american media thinks white shooters are not terrorists but anyone muslim is, and yes, Chinese do read western media its not North Korea). Hence the local Chinese also would be lead to believe that stamping out Islam is what the rest of the world supports. Towards the end of the stay there were a few times that the police stopped myself and my dad because we looked Uighur, but once we told them we were foreigners they became very jovial and let us carry on with our work. I don't know how cancel culture will solve this. In fact I don't how the world will solve this without causing more divides and hurt to an already very polarized world. But I do know one thing, it is important that we remain kind to one another irregardless of race, language or religion.
  • Aunche 6y ago
    We invaded Nazi Germany in response to their own invasion. Nobody is willing spend their effort to stop genocide unless they have another motive. For example, I only hear about the Rohingya genocide when people use it as an argument to break up Facebook.
  • eric_b 6y ago
    Why is this flagged? This is a powerful opinion and deserves to be seen.
• caffed 6y ago
  Definitely bad and needs international attention. China’s soft power will ensure that most countries won’t go beyond the usual virtue signaling. Also keep in mind that the USA still has the most imprisoned people in the world by a large margin: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarce... https://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/world_prison_population_list_11th_edition_0.pdf https://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/resources/...
  • ikerdanzel 6y ago
    Do USA imprisonment do organ harvesting? Perhaps the current imprisonment really is just a front to solve organs shortage.
    • rfoo 6y ago
      Do China imprisonment do organ harvesting?
      • TheUndead96 6y ago
        There is some evidence for this: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-harvesting-organs-of-uighur-muslims-china-tribunal-tells-un-2019-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-harvesting-organs-of-u...
        • cocoggu 6y ago
          Although anything is possible, this is no evidence, and I hardly believe it. People lives are worthing much more than their organs when they are used for labor so I don't see any reasonable benefit from doing that. Plus, Falun Gong has a long history of fighting this, still without any evidences brought to the table, so I have some doubts about their assumptions. The issue in Xinjiang is already serious enough, no need to add some unconfirmed facts which may just make us lose credibility if they're proved fake.
• krm01 6y ago
  I can't believe this isn't something people are rallying for. Nor can I believe the mainstream media is hardly talking about it. The lessons from WWII aren't stories that we should memorise as fun trivia facts.
  • aww_dang 6y ago
    It hasn't been widely covered outside of the anti-CCP sources. It seems to be gaining a bit of traction lately. If you are interested, Epoch times, BitterWinter and others have been covering this for a long time. Establishment media partisans aren't shy about using Nazi comparisons. Over the past year you would have been more likely to hear criticisms of US immigration policies painted in this light.
    • rfoo 6y ago
      > Epoch times Friendly reminder that The Epoch Times is not a reliable news source, it promotes far-right politics in Germany, usually publishes conspiracy theories including QAnon, and was deprecated as a source by Wikipedia in 2019 [1], which means all edits containing links to The Epoch Times will be automatically reverted. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deprecated_sources#Currently_deprecated_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deprecated_sources#C...
      • logicchains 6y ago
        Just because something publishes conspiracy theories, doesn't mean it's always wrong. The US spying on its citizens was considered a conspiracy theory until Edward Snowden. A paedophile ring among the global elite was considered a conspiracy theory until Jeffrey Epstein. Most people in China would consider concentration camps in Xinjiang to be a conspiracy theory.
        • rfoo 6y ago
          > Just because something publishes conspiracy theories, doesn't mean it's always wrong. Of course. So I also mentioned the decision of Wikipedia community, at least they find the signal-to-noise ratio of The Epoch Times is low enough to be banned on their platform. > Most people in China would consider concentration camps in Xinjiang to be a conspiracy theory. Maybe. But as someone who fits your "people in China" criteria, I can add a data point: I myself and most of my friends actually don't consider the existence of these camps (or even forced labor) a conspiracy theory. We believe it. However we consider claims like "organ harvesting" a conspiracy theory. I'm unable to provide further insight on why we would think so though, so I guess you can claim I'm brainwashed, but I can say it would be much more complicated than that :-)
• dade_ 6y ago
  Karl Marx on religion “Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.“ A popular song: Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion, too The CCP is simply following a core tenant of communism. From the perspective of the ideology, they are freeing people from religion. A much more important quote, a warning about accepting new ideas that too few heed today as always: “Let us keep our minds open, by all means, as long as that means keeping our sense of perspective and seeking an understanding of the forces which mould the world. But don’t keep your minds so open that your brains fall out! There are still things in this world which are true and things which are false; acts which are right and acts which are wrong, even if there are statesmen who hide their designs under the cloak of high-sounding phrases.”. — Walter Kotschnig November 8, 1939
  • OneGuy123 6y ago
    Well an atheist scientists perspective that "the big bang came out of nothing" makes as much sense as any religious text to be honest.
    • TheUndead96 6y ago
      Very true. Big bang was actually first formulated by a Belgian Catholic priest: https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosmic-horizons-book/georges-lemaitre-big-bang https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosm...
      • ghthor 6y ago
        It's also likely wrong, see dr robitaille's work, sky scholar on YouTube.
    • me_me_me 6y ago
      Stop with this bable. We have evidence supporting theory of big bang. This theory best conforms with what we can observe. The moment there is better theory, or new evidence that is contradictory we throw it out of the window. > "the big bang came out of nothing" makes as much sense as any religious text to be honest. Statements like this are so improportionally biased, it makes my head hurt. Religions have solutions/answers so you don't need facts, science is the opposite and never absolute. That said i don't give a flying f* in what other believe as long as they don't try to push it on me. What china is doing is beyond despicable. And the comparisons to the holocaust are starting to be more and more apt. Though it seems that they are more like reeducation (read brainwashing) camps with forced labor. Correct me if I am wrong please, are there evidence of systematic ethnic cleansing? I though that the hun chinese are imported from mainland and being used to displace the locals and treating them like 2nd class citizens.
• submeta 6y ago
  My heart bleeds hearing about Uighurs suffering. And I welcome these kinds of posts. At the same time I am wondering why news about Palestinians are flagged and filtered away on HN. I read Haaretz on a daily basis, and what I read about this corner of the world makes me lose my faith in humanity.
  • pinkfoot 6y ago
    Indeed, once can only imagine the deafening silence when HN is asked to boycott products that use Intel's Ice Lake 10nm core, which was developed in Israel. That's not fair: you'll hear one word before the silence: 'whataboutism' :)
    • submeta 6y ago
      I am not talking about boycotting. I have relatives in IL. There are good people in IL who don‘t like the way the PL issue is dealth with. I was just talking about the silence when it comes to the Palestinians and their suffering on this platform. I am against every form of discrimination: Uighurs, Jews, people of color, women. There‘s too much suffering in the world. Didn‘t want to hijack this thread either.
      • pinkfoot 6y ago
        > I am not talking about boycotting. I have relatives in IL. There are good people in IL who don‘t like the way the PL issue is dealth with. I am not talking about boycotting. I have relatives in China. There are good people in China who don‘t like the way the Uighur issue is dealth with. See what I did there?
        • dang 6y ago
          We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • joelbluminator 6y ago
• dharmach 6y ago
  Everywhere else communism and Islam are friends so why in China they are enemies?
  • komradeKow 6y ago
    They are not..western commies are useful idiots for more malicious people. There is no Islamic country thats commie
  • hh3k0 6y ago
    Your statement is wrong in two ways. 1) Communism and Islam can by no means be considered "friends", reason being the antireligious policies that are inherent in Communism. You should read less Breitbart. 2) China can hardly be considered a communist country, it has been turning rapidly more capitalist ever since the official introduction of the 中国特色社会主义 theory in 1987.
    • derwiki 6y ago
      Google translates that as: > Socialism with Chinese Characteristics What does that mean? I had guessed you were referring to special economic zones, but that predates 1987. Thanks in advance.
      • hh3k0 6y ago
        Basically, it is the theory China used in order to justify the switch to State Capitalism. Here's more on the theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_with_Chinese_characteristics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_with_Chinese_charact...
• jaggirs 6y ago
  BuzzFeed News identified 268 newly built compounds by cross-referencing blanked-out areas on Baidu Maps with images from external satellite data providers Pretty cool. Trying to hide the facilities made them easier to find.
  • whoevercares 6y ago
    CCP always does such bad propaganda thing. Ironically Everything it tried to hide was always exposed fairly quickly, things it doesn’t hide turns out to be less known
    • treeman79 6y ago
      You don’t need good propaganda when no one is allowed to argue against it. There is one view point in China, free reeducation for anyone that disagrees. Locally we now have “fact” checking to helpfully ensure everyone only hears the one “truth”
    • icebraining 6y ago
      Internal vs external audiences. People inside the great firewall have limited access to "external satellite data providers."
    • at_a_remove 6y ago
      The point of bad propaganda is your submission to it. Once they can get you to accept and then repeat the obvious, ridiculous lies, they have a foothold in your mind.
  • jon_barrett 6y ago
    Very interesting. I've always wanted to tinker with satellite data for various research projects. Though one issue I generally have is that I've always found that the applications I imagine require data with more frequency than the free services like Google Maps provide. Does anyone know of any good satellite data providers with more frequent (somewhere between bi-weekly and daily) data? I understand much of this is dependent on the nature of the project to determine what kind of satellite imagery you would need, different spectrometers at different UV ranges, different swathes, etc. but for now we'll just say something similar to the images in the article here.
• bitxbit 6y ago
  It’s disgusting that nothing will be done because everyone is addicted to cheap goods from China. If we cannot break free from current economic arrangements even after the pandemic, we will never be able to do so.
  • microcolonel 6y ago
    > It’s disgusting that nothing will be done because everyone is addicted to cheap goods from China I think it's better to shift from that, directly to not letting people (particularly those with means) to make excuses for using PRC goods when it would be almost as convenient to use goods from anywhere else. It's a start, compared to just letting people say “oh well, guess I'll just give in completely”.
  • amelius 6y ago
    Any trade agreement should have basic human rights mentioned in the first paragraph. This is something we can actually fight for.
    • MichaelApproved 6y ago
      Even if it’s in there, it won’t be enforced. Manufacturing is entrenched in China. Before you can threaten China, you need to have a backup plan. Otherwise, it’ll call your bluff, like it’s doing already.
      • fsflover 6y ago
        > Even if it’s in there, it won’t be enforced. Please stop spreading learned helplessness. Problems are solved in baby steps. You start with legislation. Without it, nothing will proceed.
        • franga2000 6y ago
          I don't see their comment as hopeless, but more as a necessary shift of target. We can demand all we want, but as long as we can't survive without them, we have no leverage. Punish businesses for violations in their supply chain and make them move production back home. Only then can you start demanding. Orange Man tried to skip the first step and you see how well that worked...
• jialutu 6y ago
  Do you guys remember when a Chinese soldier beat up someone who was holding the Koran? Well, except, it didn't happen: https://factcheck.afp.com/no-not-video-chinese-soldier-beating-uighur-muslim-having-copy-koran https://factcheck.afp.com/no-not-video-chinese-soldier-beati... Also, when are people going to stop using satellite imaging as a proof of evidence? I mean, let's not forget the whole casus belli for the last Iraq war, where there was clear evidence of WMDs from all those satellite images right? I mean, what's so different from the satellite image there and also a random business park in the UK (besides the labels and tags of course, and I used to be imprisoned in one of those blocks for most of my day that some people would like to call an 'office'): https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6220549,-1.2900712,1099m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6220549,-1.2900712,1099m/dat... There's quite a few good answers here on Quora which I reckon are worth a read about the situation: https://www.quora.com/What-are-Uyghurs-doing-to-fight-back-against-the-mistreatment-they-receive-from-China https://www.quora.com/What-are-Uyghurs-doing-to-fight-back-a...
  • sol_invictus 6y ago
    Your entire comment history is pro-China comments. Are you just sitting by and waiting for a China-related article to pop up all day?
    • elmo2you 6y ago
      That could be true. But please, do know that there are many individuals outside the USA, who regularly roll their eyes and feel triggered when yet another article accuses China or Russia of yet another "anything". Don't get me wrong, some of the accusations sure are very valid ones. But the political bias and (more often than not) cultural blindness/hypocrisy is usually rather obvious. At least for many, like me, from outside the USA. Personally, I would say that the most shocking part might be that not more Americans can see that about themselves. I guess that must be the power of systemic propaganda. As long as Americans (or at least many) keep using exceptionalism (of any kind) as some sort of blanked excuse, to justify a heap of nastiness they pull around the globe, one might wonder what right Americans have to point at anyone but themselves. This of course does in no way excuse whatever it is that countries like China and Russia do wrong. But finding any US-based non-political and/or otherwise unbiased assessment of anything happening in China, Russia or any other country that isn't "aligned" with the US, has become close to impossible these days. So, having people push back and posting counter stories might be nothing more than a natural process, by ordinary people who just get irritated by all this. Of course you're free to suspect bias in that, or even a Chinese agent if you'd like. But the real cause for these responses might just be ordinary people who simply get sick of all the biased and politicized "awareness" articles floating around these day .. especially here at HN, which should not be a forum for international politics (outside tech topic) in the first place. Sincerely, the obvious information warfare might be at least equally as bad as the things these kind of articles are supposed to inform us about. That not a larger part of the HN crowd appears to be aware of this aspect, is pretty darn shameful and awkward in its own right.
• mola 6y ago
  Just buy less. Western consumerism gave China it's power. Have a leader who the world believe he acts in good faith regarding ideals, and not busy subverting ideals for game and profit. But no, you'll choose power and war.
  • waihtis 6y ago
    Just der Wille zur Macht at work. After reading and accepting that thesis, the world has become a much more obvious place for me personally.
    • dougmwne 6y ago
      I am not agreeing or disagreeing. I do think if you explained your idea further, you'd get your point across better. Not everyone has read Nietzsche in the original German.
  • aberseti 6y ago
    Smart conclusion, but if you take it a bit further you'd realise that it's way easier to make businesses stop buying from china through the power of one small group of people (the government) rather than trying and failing to get 300 million people to stop buying things.
  • thecleaner 6y ago
    This is rather obvious. We can all just choose to be a little more resourceful. Its amazing how far little changes like these can take us when deployed at large scales.
  • breezest 6y ago
    This is similar to the presumption of innocence. You can believe someone acts in good faith initially. Yet, if they don't, you should turn against them immediately to protect yourself.
• OnlyOneComment 6y ago
  Islam is problem everywhere, even India will have China like situation later. Further muslims prosecute others at society levels so look at any muslim country, there are no non muslims.
• nedsma 6y ago
  John Oliver recently made a episode on the subject (China & Uighurs: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17oCQakzIl8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17oCQakzIl8 The Communist Party of China (CPC) are running sinicization and antireligious campaigns of ethnic and religious minorities. The totalitarian and authoritarian countries don't make good neighbors. China will be making inroads into Taiwan soon if the world does not act.
  • aberseti 6y ago
    China is already more powerful than most of the world. The uphill battle that lies ahead will be way harder than dealing with nazis.
• pototo666 6y ago
  I am a Chinese. I don't think anyone outside Xin Jiang knows any details about these. My wife is from Xin Jiang. She is not Uighurs. I have been to Xin Jiang. I don't think non-Uighurs in Xin Jiang knows the details about these. They are like secrets. You know something is happening. But you don't know what exactly is happening.
  • hajile 6y ago
    It's almost like their second part to this story interviewed people who had been there and been in those camps...
• nedsma 6y ago
  Boycotting "Made in China" labelled products is not effective enough. How would you motivate large population groups to engage globally? Politicians and democratic countries should force China to stop torturing their own citizens based on religious or ethnic affiliation.
  • arvigeus 6y ago
    Even if you do so, they will just put different label. Hello, "Made in Vietnam"!
    • Nginx487 6y ago
      Luckily, customs officers do not believe product labels, they have more reliable sources of information like port of departure. I guess, this documentation also could be faked, just hope it's not that easy. Vietnam is a competitor and adversary of China, they would try preventing "hijacking" of their products
  • thecleaner 6y ago
    Force it how ? Countries cannot go at an all trade war. Us consumers need to reshape thw market. And most of us happend to be very pro human rights but we are just convinced into believing that nothing we as individuals do matter.
    • nedsma 6y ago
      By sanctioning responsible government officials and businesses related to the concentration camps. Currently, the US secretary of state is lobbying in Europe against Huawei and their 5G networks. The same thing should happen whenever there are massive human rights violations.
      • luckylion 6y ago
        Going down that route would backfire hard, unless you want to go openly for different laws for different people. I.e. how would you convince European citizens that it's right to sanction Chinese businesses that profit from prison labor, but wrong to sanction US businesses that profit from prison labor? Or ignore those Europeans ... how do you convince US citizens of it? Sounds like they're quite angry about the domestic problem right now.
• poisonarena 6y ago
  Buzzfeednews article on hackernews. slowly turning into reddit
  • borg_ 6y ago
    I'm amazed how this link even made it to the HN front page. What's the relevance does this article have for hacker news?
    • big_youth 6y ago
      You've been a member for long enough to know that the guidelines for posts are: "Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups"
  • chance_state 6y ago
    BuzzFeed News is a legitimate news organization. They are not like BuzzFeed itself.
  • yomly 6y ago
    If you say so - BuzzFeed have done some really great pieces like the Tennis match rigging scandal. Having these kinds of prejudices are your own loss.
• mcji 6y ago
  It all started with the "July 2009 Ürümqi riots" and then escalated after the "2014 Kunming attack".
  • logicchains 6y ago
    >"July 2009 Ürümqi riots" Those were just peaceful protests.
    • mcji 6y ago
      well, it didn't look very peaceful. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3A%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_riots_video.ogv https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3A%C3%9...
    • EForEndeavour 6y ago
      You're referring to the peaceful protests that deteriorated into days of violence which killed 197+ people and injured thousands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2009_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2009_%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi_rio...
      • AbrahamParangi 6y ago
        For what it’s worth, following the thread in the Wikipedia article it looks like the major facts trace back to Chinese state media.
      • sigotirandolas 6y ago
        I think OP was not contesting those acts on China were riots, but rather ironically implying that the acts by BLM/Antifa are riots - despite certain media mostly referring to them as 'peaceful protests'.
  • actuator 6y ago
    Can't really collectively punish a community for crimes of few, that's no justice.
• mrfusion 6y ago
  What’s the background here? Why does China need to do this?
  • Draw_Daw 6y ago
    Yeah, let's try to understand the oppresser point of view to help us sensitive people deal with this issue so we can better sleep at night. While we are at it, Why not do the same with Nazi Germany and try to understand why Hitler was burning jews. Maybe he was right? /s
    • briefcomment 6y ago
      No one thinks of themselves as pointlessly evil. Any information on motivations is useful.
  • ufmace 6y ago
    Short version as I understand it - there was a little bit of Islamic terrorism a decade or so ago. China decided to address it by basically wiping the entire religion and culture out of existence. Thus why they call them "deradicalization" and "re-education" camps. Their PR story is that they're trying to take "suspected Islamic radicals" and reeducate them to "integrate into mainstream Chinese society". In practice, this seems to mean that if you're the wrong religion and so much as breathe funny, off you go to the camps, where you will be basically tortured and brainwashed into adopting Han Chinese culture.
• euix 6y ago
  When I was traveling around Xinjiang about two years back it was obvious something was going on. In Korla everyone getting off the train had to submit to a retinal scan, presumably so authorities know all the ingress and egress into town, going to a park involved going through a checkpoint. To get into any train station at all involved 3 levels of checkpoints, the first checkpoint started before you got to the plaza before the train station, so checking in took about 3 hours. In Kashgar the old city had checkpoints at every corner. The entire province only had 3G, the moment you cross over from neighboring Gansu your China Telecom signal dropped from 4G, so sending videos or even pictures is very difficult even on weChat, if you try to do it through a VPN the experience is even slower. Some checkpoints were vigilant, but in my experience most were just bored. One checkpoint basically forgot to check my ID because I was seated all the at the back of a van. Young Uighur men or woman sometimes with a Han standing around or sitting at a chair with a desk in the middle of the street, writing down the names of everyone who crosses his "stand". What surprised me the most was that most of the guards manning the checkpoints in towns, highways, at gas stations (which involved a full car search in order to pull into) were Uighurs themselves. I get the impression you basically went to jail or joined the security apparatus, a modern variation on a old Chinese strategem of using barbarian to fight barbarian I guess. The whole experience changed my perspective on human beings in general. At the end of the day, when I got back home the only conclusion I could come to wasn't even about China or Chinese, if we look at the long span of human history the only thing I can arrive at is human beings in aggregate have a high tendency to do shitty things. Goodness exists in individuals but as soon as we have to appeal to the common denominator of a group or groups more often then not being a piece of shit is the easiest and most expedient.
  • jkhdigital 6y ago
    Amen to that last statement.
• canada2020 6y ago
  Reposting the top comment on the article, was wondering what HN thought about this: ------------------------------------------------------ Godfree Roberts: We created terrorists in Xinjiang, just as we did in Afghanistan. They murdered thousands of Chinese and, now that China has them under control, we make up stories about them. US Ambassador Chas. H. Freeman, Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981: "The CIA programs in Tibet, which were very effective in destabilizing it, did not succeed in Xinjiang. There were similar efforts made with the Uyghurs during the Cold War that never really got off the ground. In both cases you had religion waved as a banner in support of a desire for independence or autonomy which is, of course, is anathema to any state. I do believe that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones applies here. I am part American Indian and those people are not here (in the US) in the numbers they once were because of severe genocidal policies on the part of the European majority”. 8/31/19
  • canada2020 6y ago
    For those of you who are downvoting this comment, it would be much more productive if you just reply and speak your mind here.
    • hajile 6y ago
      > We created terrorists in Xinjiang, just as we did in Afghanistan. They murdered thousands of Chinese and, now that China has them under control, we make up stories about them. This argument is made in bad faith given the author's statements below. In any case, the Xinjiang had attempted to get out from under China's thumb for centuries. Does that "murdered thousands" suddenly give moral permission to imprison, torture, and sell the organs of millions -- especially millions who's only "crime" in this argument is having the wrong ethnicity. Finally, the red revolution in China killed millions and then famine killed millions more. > I do believe that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones applies here. I am part American Indian and those people are not here (in the US) in the numbers they once were because of severe genocidal policies on the part of the European majority Nobody alive today is rounding up American Indians (instead SCOTUS is giving back half of Oklahoma). Can someone's children be held accountable for their parent's actions? That said, if the Chinese gave the Xinjiang and Tibet the same level of autonomy that the US gives reservations today, I doubt anyone anywhere would be complaining about anything. Once again, this is a bad faith argument. > US Ambassador Chas. H. Freeman, Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981: "The CIA programs in Tibet, which were very effective in destabilizing it, did not succeed in Xinjiang. There were similar efforts made with the Uyghurs during the Cold War that never really got off the ground. In both cases you had religion waved as a banner in support of a desire for independence or autonomy which is, of course, is anathema to any state. The whole point of a banner is to serve as a rallying point for like-minded people. If some random person on the street starts waving a nazi flag, does that suddenly mean everyone turns into nazis? A banner can only rally people who think they hold the position that banner represents. The US could wave a religious banner, but unless the people already agreed, it wouldn't build up support (it's not possible to parse whether Xinjiang didn't rally because they didn't want to join or the rallying cry was not heard). If anything, the fact that the US tried to empower people to fight for their independence from a despotic, racist regime who hated them should at least be neutral if not morally just.
• throwaway4good 6y ago
  This was discussed here just yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24292962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24292962
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Imagine how much positive impact Bezos could have on this if Amazon led the way on identifying China’s reliance on western money to continue funding cultural genocide. He could spend have of his money on this and still have $100,000,000,000 to play with.
  • bhaskara2 6y ago
    Bezos must do what is right and delist China products or atleast enforce country of origin on Amazon products
  • corey_moncure 6y ago
    The CEO of Amazon doesn't have a bank account with $200B sitting in it. His net worth is his ownership of Amazon. And Amazon, minus the human rights arbitrage scheme that delivers us megatons of goods manufactured by disadvantaged people, is worth not very much.
• nafizh 6y ago
  I know and understand as single persons we don't have much power to do anything. But if you live in a western democratic nation, time to use that machinery. Call your Senator, MPs whoever your representative is. Let them know inaction in the face of this atrocity is unacceptable. Keep calling all Senators or members of parliaments. It might seem to have no effect, but significant changes come when many people demand something. It has to start somewhere. Here is a site for resources and actions you can take [0]. 0. https://www.saveuighur.org/act-now/ https://www.saveuighur.org/act-now/
• jkhdigital 6y ago
  Unrelated to the article content: is there any way to “escape” from full screen maps embedded in a webpage? I scrolled down to the map of detention facilities and found that I could no longer return to reading the article because every interaction with my screen just manipulated the map.
• blindspot557 6y ago
  This is another distraction for the current BLM movement and thousands of death per day due to covid. I see a lot of hypocrite comments and I just want to laugh. Meanwhile on the streets of Detroit or Baltimore ghettos, kids/teenagers are under the influence of criminal culture and facing generation after generation of poverty they may never come out of. And I see no one even trying to figure out a solution.
  • bavent 6y ago
    And what does this have to do with the article? Every time there is a post about the Chinese state committing some evil act, there is a post like this - whataboutism at it’s finest. Usually written by a new account, usually written in a way that makes it seem like English isn’t the primary language of the poster.
    • blindspot557 6y ago
      Of course it does. They are all problems human beings facing when we trying to put different cultures together and live in harmony and create prosperity. If you can't even figure out what's happening near you, how can you assume you will even have a total understanding about something happening on the other side of the earth??
      • bavent 6y ago
        Because it's off-topic? It deflects from the discussion of how a totalitarian state is essentially committing genocide and tries to compare that to social problems in the U.S., which are not nearly on that scale.
    • blindspot557 6y ago
      why does a new account and non english speaking background matter? You see what's underlying your comment? you try to disqualify people's opinions/comments based on their background. Is that someone from a free speech country supposed to do? Shouldn't we open our arms to different opinions? Isn't that the "diversity" we've been talking about for decades?
• T3RMINATED 6y ago
  To those that believe that they would not have turned a blind eye during WWII to the systematic extermination of Jews, the current generation has been given a similar challenge. Where is your cancel-culture now? How will our children think of us?
• newen 6y ago
  > This project was supported by the Open Technology Fund, the Pulitzer Center, and the Eyebeam Center for the Future of Journalism. Hmmm > The Open Technology Fund was created in 2012 as a pilot program within Radio Free Asia. Okay > Based on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia was established in the 1990s with the stated aim of promoting democratic values and human rights, and diminishing the Communist Party of China. > Radio Free Asia was founded and funded in the 1950s by an organization called "Committee for Free Asia" as an anti-communist propaganda operation, broadcasting from RCA facilities in Manila, Philippines. So an article funded by a clearly biased anti-China propaganda organization that uses flimsy satellite imagery evidence to accuse a country of massive human rights abuses in order to rile up their population for another cold war that will feed their military industrial complex for many more decades. Great.
• canada2020 6y ago
  Yes, this is bad. I think we can all agree on that. But does anyone have sources on _how_ China got into this situation? They wouldn't be detaining Uighurs at this scale for no reason. So what's the history behind this? I left a separate comment here of someone else who commented on the article with a potential background reason (terrorism?). Although I'm not sure if can rely on just that one comment, and would love to hear what HN thought. A part of a civil discussion requires that we understand and seek out the argument from all parties. As a society, we need to evolve from one-sided arguments.
  • yorwba 6y ago
    Much has been written in the Chinese academic literature about the need for new policing strategies in Xinjiang. Here's a reading list with English summaries: https://xinjiang.sppga.ubc.ca/policy-documents/chinese-academic-discourse/ https://xinjiang.sppga.ubc.ca/policy-documents/chinese-acade... Of course the original articles are all in Chinese.
    • canada2020 6y ago
      Thanks! This is great. It appears that China's argument for Xinjiang are: 1. Anti-terrorism / Religious Extremist Activities 2. Poverty alleviation We have certainly seen similar situations play out in the past (e.g. US & Middle East), with different approaches. China's approach is to eliminate "ethnic separatism" through these "re-education camps". Not ideal, for sure. But what would be a better solution? If we had terrorism in the US -- in fact, an entire state of people subscribed to that mindset -- what's the best way to deal with that? (This is, ofc, assuming China's terrorism claims are real)
      • hajile 6y ago
        The Chinese government itself admits that these people aren't formally charged with any crime and that criminals go to different prisons. As they aren't actually terrorists, this entire line of logic doesn't apply. The Black population in the US is disproportionately impoverished. Should we round them up into re-education camps? It's policy based entirely in ethno-nationalism (racism). The US had a Civil War over separation and slavery, but we didn't establish re-education camps for all the people who were on the losing side. You didn't see Germans forced into re-education camps after WW1 or WW2 (at least on the non-USSR side). I don't know of ANY instances of this kind of re-education thinking in first-world countries. Even third-world countries don't usually consider this moral. It's basically limited to second-world (communist) despotic countries. In recent times, I've heard people talk about re-education camps in the US, but (big surprise), they're always alt-left (communists, antifa, whatever).
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• carierx1 6y ago
  It seems like China has taken note of the destruction muslims have brought to the Western world and have decided to protect its citizens from such a thing happening on its soil.
• bhaskara2 6y ago
  It’s a modern day nazi. If we don’t boycott and pressurize China now, we have no moral ground to criticize Nazis. China is going to be an expansionist power and it must be stopped. We have to boycott China
• pradn 6y ago
  It's important to realize that Xinjiang is a colony of China. China took over Xinjiang in the past few hundred years; historically, kingdoms there were independent. Sometimes they had tributary relationships, other times they were allies of the Chinese kingdoms. Colonialism takes many forms and Europeans don't have a monopoly on it. The Uyghurs have rebelled many times and even formed short-lived states, the last before the Mao era. What was a territorial annexation has taken on ideological (the Chinese state demanded ideological adherence in art and politics just like in the rest of China ), economic (Xinjiang is rich in mineral resources), and settler-colonial (Han Chinese have been moving into Xinjiang in large numbers) aspects.
  • magicsmoke 6y ago
    In "the past few hundred years" the US took over the American continent and cleaned up exceptionally well. In a world of global competition singling out Xinjiang as a colony while ignoring how China's biggest military threat is literally built on top of colonial conquests isn't a fair comparison. Where is the line that makes Xinjiang a "colony" while New York isn't? Is the US going to magically move its navy back to its side of the Pacific and stop waving it menacingly around China's oil shipping routes if China carves out Xinjiang and Tibet?
    • pradn 6y ago
      I'm explicitly trying to draw a parallel between other colonial states and China. This isn't absolving other colonial states in any way. The colony-empire relationship is a just a node along the gradient of territory and domination. The relevant thing here is the continued persecution of the Uyghur minority and the annexation of territory, and continued resistance. It's similar to Kashmir under India, Palestine under Israel, and East Timor under Indonesia.
    • TT3351 6y ago
      I think it's more than a little disingenuous to insinuate New York is a colony without representation in government.
    • ufmace 6y ago
• publicola1990 6y ago
  The thing is, there is a definite anti China sentiment within the present US government and many western media sources, in the sense that they seem to have a definite desire to villify China in recent times. So the claims presented by them are suspect in intent, since it seems so evidently to suit their own world view. While Chinese propaganda is suspect as is any propaganda, much western reporting is also politically informed and therefore suspect. Most reports on this topic going around are not from people on ground, whereas western media including Reuters and BBC surely have people on ground in China, what have we heard from them in actuality? Recently BBC had people sent to such a camp and even filmed it. Surely there is some political indoctrination going on, but nothing like the 'Concentration Camps' as is being claimed in this article. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-48667221 https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-48667221
  • pierrebai 6y ago
    These article have been decried as being staged by the chinese government. Here are other articles, from the BCC, about Uighurs: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-53657604 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszl3q https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w172x2ys9gxqv4g https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08lf6zk https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-50166713
• fakeslimshady 6y ago
  I'm gonna to be down voted but vast majority Uighur propaganda has been debunked. Its all US fabricated propaganda. Grayzone is good source. Like believing in WMD it will be obvious in retrospec considering who is running the show Trump, Pompeo, Steve Miller. CIA is able plant media in any source. The 2 main studies of Uighur are based on (1) Survey of a total 8 villagers. Paid by US NGO (2) The Adrian Zenz study based FOOD subsidies. Zenz associated with right wing think tank and has history of far out views. To give you example of nonsense. Early on in Corvid, propagandist wanted to question how China recovered from Corvid by extrapolated Cell Phone Cancellations. They saw millions of cancellations must equal millions deaths ignoring the obvious that people were just cancelling to save money. Its pretty damn obvious that the entire asia handled it well
• newen 6y ago
  They are apartment complexes. https://twitter.com/_tchiek/status/1299386623390617601?s=20 https://twitter.com/_tchiek/status/1299386623390617601?s=20 Sorry for not getting caught in this anti-China craziness that has gotten Americans into a frenzy very very recently.