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The warning at the top of this article did not prepare me for the images, so I'll offer an additional one: the images are more disturbing than you think. Consid

The warning at the top of this article did not prepare me for the images, so I'll offer an additional one: the images are more disturbing than you think. Consider turning images off to read the content.

jonny383 6y ago
"Content warning: extremely graphic distressing images of people being shot in the head by PRC security forces" Not sure how this could be any clearer.
- mettamage 6y ago
  The phrase sometimes gets a bit overused. I wasn't fully prepared for some images either.
- lasfter 6y ago
  Distressing can be pretty subjective, and I was definitely not expecting to be THAT distressed. Figured other people might also be caught off guard.
- oulu2006 6y ago
  I found this warning clear enough. I think it's a good thing to include these images, we've become too used to content moderation that we're desensitized to a lot of the atrocities that are still happening daily around the world.
- tartrate 6y ago
  The images are worse than that. A picture taken at a distance of someone being shot in the head is easier to see or scroll by than a closeup of a head blown in half.
  - ern 6y ago
    The photo of the woman whose head was blown in half by the rifle is many years (decades?) old. It’s profoundly disturbing, but it’s been widely available for a long time. That doesn’t make it any less brutal or disturbing, but it serves as a reminder of how often we are willing to turn a blind eye to atrocities when it’s economically or politically expedient.
- frereubu 6y ago
  I see where you’re coming from, but perhaps something like “close-ups of mutilated bodies after execution by large-calibre weapons to the head” would give more of an indication. I didn’t expect the gore, just a wide shot of someone with a gun to their head, a bit like the famous one of the add-hoc execution in the street in Vietnam by Eddie Adams.
chroem- 6y ago
Quite frankly, I suggest the opposite. Most people in the west, and especially in the US, don't appreciate just how evil the CCP is. Our corporate media has given the CCP a free pass on mass murder because many of our wealthiest people have made their fortunes through trade with China. We should all look long and hard at these images so that we don't forget them.
- lasfter 6y ago
  That's a fair take. I've seen plenty of this where I'm from, so I don't really have the stomach for more.
- oulu2006 6y ago
  I think you've made a good point.
- barnacled 6y ago
  It is fun to see criticisms of China get insta-downvoted to hell. Mine is fully referenced and went to -1 instantly... there is definitely some real denial about what the CCP actually do.
  - oulu2006 6y ago
    Yeah, I noticed, CCP agents are around in force. I upvoted, but I can only do so much.
    - barnacled 6y ago
      I honestly wonder whether it's that or just standard HNers who are in some sort of woke-led state of denial. A totalitarian genocidal regime who has demonstrably lied consistently about everything of any importance but if you question whether, perhaps, they might have possibly done a little more about wet markets/traditional Chinese medicine given the 2003 SARS outbreak which clearly indicated this major risk area - and you get hammered for it. Go further and suggest maybe covering up the outbreak to give the virus enough time to spread everywhere was maybe not a great thing and the next virus might have a higher case fatality rate than 0.4% and that's it you're done. This is without even getting into the 'walked out of a lab' theory which would presumably get me banned off HN... It seems criticising the US, UK etc. for the slightest thing is fine but criticising totalitarian genocidal sabre-rattling pandemic-unleashing states is beyond the pale.
dkdk8283 6y ago
The warning should be absent. This is the reality of the CCP and could be the direction that pro-censorship and pro-communist nations laud. It’s all fun and and games when popular opinion vilifies the likes of terrorists or pedophiles but it’s a slippery slope. Next thing you know the executions start for DMCA violations and so called hate speech that will radically change in 40y. As george carlin famously said we are all circulating the drain.
- sascha_sl 6y ago
  Some people, and stay with me here, have different reactions to graphic violence than you. Shocker, I know.
  - cryptica 6y ago
    Well these people in particular need to toughen up and face reality so that they know what it means if the government executes someone, that it's not just a data point on a chart. They need to feel it and toughen up. If we become a nation of cowards, then those in power are going to start doing this and nobody will have the courage to stand up to it.
    - sascha_sl 6y ago
      Trauma is a real thing people experience, and having associated triggers is not particularly rare, believe it or not. I'm sorry if some particular political leaning convinced you that's only a thing on tumblr. And I don't see how "standing up" in the US would ever do you any good, with the sheer force of militarized police and actual military. I hope this is not leading into a tired "if only Germany would've had guns" point.
      - cryptica 6y ago
        I don't understand how 'being triggered' is a bad thing... People who 'get triggered' are too sensitive. They have to train themselves. We are on planet earth, we live then we die. This is a fact. Emotions are tools to allow us to navigate our lives as members of society. They are useful, not something we should be shielded from. We need negative emotions just like we need hunger to know we need to eat, thirst to know we need to drink, pain to know we need to avoid physical harm, etc... IMO, those who can't face reality shouldn't be involved in shaping it.
Scapeghost 6y ago
> Consider turning images off to read the content. I'm sorry, I can try to understand the well-meant intent behind this, but what, and pretend the world is all roses and rainbows? No. Leave the images on. You first world city folk need to SEE the horror that goes on beyond your ivory towers, some of it enabled by the very work that you do.
- lasfter 6y ago
  I wasn't always first world city folk, I've seen the horror and my family has been touched by it. I'd rather never see it again, though unfortunately news from my former home often makes it unavoidable. If you need to see brutality to empathize with the brutalized, then go ahead and look at the gore. But I think most people are emotionally capable enough to realize that executions aren't pleasant experiences without photo evidence.
- justnotworthit 6y ago
  Who are you yelling at? They're not here.
tartrate 6y ago
Let me put it bluntly. There is a closeup of a woman with only half a head. It comes as a surprise as the first images are not as bad, and the article's content draws you in. I had to stop there even though I wanted to continue reading.
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  After that image there's only a closing paragraph anyway, so you didn't miss much.
- elmo2you 6y ago
  Personally, the images themselves do not particularly upset me. Maybe regretfully, but I have seen enough of the actual results of armed conflicts. Personally, I think the images of mass murders with piles of death (often naked) people from WW2 far more disturbing. However, you do correctly point out how this article appears to draw people in and then goes for maximum shock effect. I'm sure that whoever created this article did that on purpose. Even if the cited numbers happen to be accurate, this kind of tactic is rather typical for propaganda. The same can be said about producing "facts" that are either hard or impossible to verify. To be clear: I am not saying that this is propaganda, but it does at least raise a few red flags about potentially being just that. Further research needed. EDIT: to be even more clear: I have no doubt that the CCP have committed horrible crimes. But that will not make me just believe whatever somebody might write about it.
runawaybottle 6y ago
Did not expect to see an image of someone with their head half blown off. Trying to find my thoughts on this. The Einsatzgruppen pretty much started the Holocaust via mass shootings (before all other methods). They switched to gas vans (according to this article, China uses this too? What in the fuck) for some vile cognitive gymnastics where they convinced themselves it was too demoralizing for the goons to have to shoot that many people without being drunk all the time (to carry out the deed). They sought a more efficient, less taxing method, and that’s where the gas vans came in. The Nazis did this to anyone that they could lump into ‘a national threat’ bucket, so Jews that were also communist Russians were instant kill (as opposed to German Jews who initially got put in labor camps). If the CCP ever decides routine shootings is taxing or inefficient (like the Nazis), things wouldn’t be so far off to having an “efficient” death camp to just handle it en masse. I tend to always over-fit the Nazi parallels, especially with China, but China’s prime issue is scale. Whatever they do, they must always consider scale. Crackdowns will happen at scale (Hong Kong), censorship will happen at scale (speech/internet), imprisonment will happen at scale (Uighurs), and mass executions (if we were to ever get the numbers) will happen at scale. As hard it is to not turn away from that picture in the article, I would sincerely like to know what that woman’s crime was.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > imprisonment will happen at scale (Uighurs), Not just imprisonment, mass raping of Uighurs women as well: https://www.insider.com/uighur-activists-mass-rape-chinese-men-xinjiang-2019-12 https://www.insider.com/uighur-activists-mass-rape-chinese-m...
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  I think the point of the article is that the choice to involve ordinary police officers in the killings is to give them a stake in the current regime (or at least to make them fear the consequences of any other future regime.) I don’t think more organised death camps fit with that motive, but it could be wrong.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    The Einsatzgruppen were actually like ordinary police. They were never actually told to create death camps initially, it was just more ... efficient, so Nazi sub leadership switched to that somewhat independently. This book makes an interesting point about the bottom-up theory of what really started the Holocaust (this is an unforgettable read, I feel like author literally accounted for every death batch (and yes ‘batch’ has to be used due to the scale): https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471 https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stal... Basically, it was simple broad directives that got interpreted by these disparate elements of the Nazis in the Eastern front. What does it mean if someone is not only a Jew, but also a communist Russian? Pretty much an instant threat, and forward deployed units liberally interpreted it into mass-killing vs forced labor camps. Once that genie was out of the bottle, you would look unproductive in the regime if you weren’t upping the ante. What is the CCP creating here? You want units with blood on their hands ratcheting up new and interesting ways of currying favor with the regime? Hey bosses, I found a great new way to promote CCP Authority, forget Uighur camps, get a load of this. Suddenly you have a macabre competition within a peculiar institution that can only become darker if left to find it’s own logical purpose (be the very best ccp you can be, whatever that means, and oh John the guy you started with recently rose the ranks doing this, not saying you should too, but take some initiative). No master plan, just a dark organic evolution.
cryptica 6y ago
It's important to see the photos to properly absorb the content and message of the article. This reflex to shield one's self from reality is extremely harmful for society and it's cowardly. The fact that the images are a 'shock' to some people shows just how disconnected they are from reality. They are powerful images but they should not be shocking... The term 'killing' should already embody these emotions without the images. The emotions that people feel when looking at these images, that's exactly what 'killing a person' means.
technicolorwhat 6y ago
Maybe the thing is that we are so conditioned by having half assed censored media pictures and quotes like its graphic, that when someone finally delivers on it, we just get shocked. This is how it looks like when someone head gets blown off.
sto_hristo 6y ago
Turning those images off won't make them disappear from existence nor resurrect the victims. Stop being willfully ignorant - that alone enables any monster out there to do as they wish unaccounted for.

jonny383 6y ago

"Content warning: extremely graphic distressing images of people being shot in the head by PRC security forces" Not sure how this could be any clearer.

mettamage 6y ago
The phrase sometimes gets a bit overused. I wasn't fully prepared for some images either.
lasfter 6y ago
Distressing can be pretty subjective, and I was definitely not expecting to be THAT distressed. Figured other people might also be caught off guard.
oulu2006 6y ago
I found this warning clear enough. I think it's a good thing to include these images, we've become too used to content moderation that we're desensitized to a lot of the atrocities that are still happening daily around the world.
tartrate 6y ago
The images are worse than that. A picture taken at a distance of someone being shot in the head is easier to see or scroll by than a closeup of a head blown in half.
- ern 6y ago
  The photo of the woman whose head was blown in half by the rifle is many years (decades?) old. It’s profoundly disturbing, but it’s been widely available for a long time. That doesn’t make it any less brutal or disturbing, but it serves as a reminder of how often we are willing to turn a blind eye to atrocities when it’s economically or politically expedient.
frereubu 6y ago
I see where you’re coming from, but perhaps something like “close-ups of mutilated bodies after execution by large-calibre weapons to the head” would give more of an indication. I didn’t expect the gore, just a wide shot of someone with a gun to their head, a bit like the famous one of the add-hoc execution in the street in Vietnam by Eddie Adams.

chroem- 6y ago

Quite frankly, I suggest the opposite. Most people in the west, and especially in the US, don't appreciate just how evil the CCP is. Our corporate media has given the CCP a free pass on mass murder because many of our wealthiest people have made their fortunes through trade with China. We should all look long and hard at these images so that we don't forget them.

lasfter 6y ago
That's a fair take. I've seen plenty of this where I'm from, so I don't really have the stomach for more.
oulu2006 6y ago
I think you've made a good point.
barnacled 6y ago
It is fun to see criticisms of China get insta-downvoted to hell. Mine is fully referenced and went to -1 instantly... there is definitely some real denial about what the CCP actually do.
- oulu2006 6y ago
  Yeah, I noticed, CCP agents are around in force. I upvoted, but I can only do so much.
  - barnacled 6y ago
    I honestly wonder whether it's that or just standard HNers who are in some sort of woke-led state of denial. A totalitarian genocidal regime who has demonstrably lied consistently about everything of any importance but if you question whether, perhaps, they might have possibly done a little more about wet markets/traditional Chinese medicine given the 2003 SARS outbreak which clearly indicated this major risk area - and you get hammered for it. Go further and suggest maybe covering up the outbreak to give the virus enough time to spread everywhere was maybe not a great thing and the next virus might have a higher case fatality rate than 0.4% and that's it you're done. This is without even getting into the 'walked out of a lab' theory which would presumably get me banned off HN... It seems criticising the US, UK etc. for the slightest thing is fine but criticising totalitarian genocidal sabre-rattling pandemic-unleashing states is beyond the pale.

dkdk8283 6y ago

The warning should be absent. This is the reality of the CCP and could be the direction that pro-censorship and pro-communist nations laud. It’s all fun and and games when popular opinion vilifies the likes of terrorists or pedophiles but it’s a slippery slope. Next thing you know the executions start for DMCA violations and so called hate speech that will radically change in 40y. As george carlin famously said we are all circulating the drain.

sascha_sl 6y ago
Some people, and stay with me here, have different reactions to graphic violence than you. Shocker, I know.
- cryptica 6y ago
  Well these people in particular need to toughen up and face reality so that they know what it means if the government executes someone, that it's not just a data point on a chart. They need to feel it and toughen up. If we become a nation of cowards, then those in power are going to start doing this and nobody will have the courage to stand up to it.
  - sascha_sl 6y ago
    Trauma is a real thing people experience, and having associated triggers is not particularly rare, believe it or not. I'm sorry if some particular political leaning convinced you that's only a thing on tumblr. And I don't see how "standing up" in the US would ever do you any good, with the sheer force of militarized police and actual military. I hope this is not leading into a tired "if only Germany would've had guns" point.
    - cryptica 6y ago
      I don't understand how 'being triggered' is a bad thing... People who 'get triggered' are too sensitive. They have to train themselves. We are on planet earth, we live then we die. This is a fact. Emotions are tools to allow us to navigate our lives as members of society. They are useful, not something we should be shielded from. We need negative emotions just like we need hunger to know we need to eat, thirst to know we need to drink, pain to know we need to avoid physical harm, etc... IMO, those who can't face reality shouldn't be involved in shaping it.

Scapeghost 6y ago

> Consider turning images off to read the content. I'm sorry, I can try to understand the well-meant intent behind this, but what, and pretend the world is all roses and rainbows? No. Leave the images on. You first world city folk need to SEE the horror that goes on beyond your ivory towers, some of it enabled by the very work that you do.

lasfter 6y ago
I wasn't always first world city folk, I've seen the horror and my family has been touched by it. I'd rather never see it again, though unfortunately news from my former home often makes it unavoidable. If you need to see brutality to empathize with the brutalized, then go ahead and look at the gore. But I think most people are emotionally capable enough to realize that executions aren't pleasant experiences without photo evidence.
justnotworthit 6y ago
Who are you yelling at? They're not here.

tartrate 6y ago

Let me put it bluntly. There is a closeup of a woman with only half a head. It comes as a surprise as the first images are not as bad, and the article's content draws you in. I had to stop there even though I wanted to continue reading.

read_if_gay_ 6y ago
After that image there's only a closing paragraph anyway, so you didn't miss much.
elmo2you 6y ago
Personally, the images themselves do not particularly upset me. Maybe regretfully, but I have seen enough of the actual results of armed conflicts. Personally, I think the images of mass murders with piles of death (often naked) people from WW2 far more disturbing. However, you do correctly point out how this article appears to draw people in and then goes for maximum shock effect. I'm sure that whoever created this article did that on purpose. Even if the cited numbers happen to be accurate, this kind of tactic is rather typical for propaganda. The same can be said about producing "facts" that are either hard or impossible to verify. To be clear: I am not saying that this is propaganda, but it does at least raise a few red flags about potentially being just that. Further research needed. EDIT: to be even more clear: I have no doubt that the CCP have committed horrible crimes. But that will not make me just believe whatever somebody might write about it.

runawaybottle 6y ago

Did not expect to see an image of someone with their head half blown off. Trying to find my thoughts on this. The Einsatzgruppen pretty much started the Holocaust via mass shootings (before all other methods). They switched to gas vans (according to this article, China uses this too? What in the fuck) for some vile cognitive gymnastics where they convinced themselves it was too demoralizing for the goons to have to shoot that many people without being drunk all the time (to carry out the deed). They sought a more efficient, less taxing method, and that’s where the gas vans came in. The Nazis did this to anyone that they could lump into ‘a national threat’ bucket, so Jews that were also communist Russians were instant kill (as opposed to German Jews who initially got put in labor camps). If the CCP ever decides routine shootings is taxing or inefficient (like the Nazis), things wouldn’t be so far off to having an “efficient” death camp to just handle it en masse. I tend to always over-fit the Nazi parallels, especially with China, but China’s prime issue is scale. Whatever they do, they must always consider scale. Crackdowns will happen at scale (Hong Kong), censorship will happen at scale (speech/internet), imprisonment will happen at scale (Uighurs), and mass executions (if we were to ever get the numbers) will happen at scale. As hard it is to not turn away from that picture in the article, I would sincerely like to know what that woman’s crime was.

ekianjo 6y ago
> imprisonment will happen at scale (Uighurs), Not just imprisonment, mass raping of Uighurs women as well: https://www.insider.com/uighur-activists-mass-rape-chinese-men-xinjiang-2019-12 https://www.insider.com/uighur-activists-mass-rape-chinese-m...
dan-robertson 6y ago
I think the point of the article is that the choice to involve ordinary police officers in the killings is to give them a stake in the current regime (or at least to make them fear the consequences of any other future regime.) I don’t think more organised death camps fit with that motive, but it could be wrong.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  The Einsatzgruppen were actually like ordinary police. They were never actually told to create death camps initially, it was just more ... efficient, so Nazi sub leadership switched to that somewhat independently. This book makes an interesting point about the bottom-up theory of what really started the Holocaust (this is an unforgettable read, I feel like author literally accounted for every death batch (and yes ‘batch’ has to be used due to the scale): https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471 https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stal... Basically, it was simple broad directives that got interpreted by these disparate elements of the Nazis in the Eastern front. What does it mean if someone is not only a Jew, but also a communist Russian? Pretty much an instant threat, and forward deployed units liberally interpreted it into mass-killing vs forced labor camps. Once that genie was out of the bottle, you would look unproductive in the regime if you weren’t upping the ante. What is the CCP creating here? You want units with blood on their hands ratcheting up new and interesting ways of currying favor with the regime? Hey bosses, I found a great new way to promote CCP Authority, forget Uighur camps, get a load of this. Suddenly you have a macabre competition within a peculiar institution that can only become darker if left to find it’s own logical purpose (be the very best ccp you can be, whatever that means, and oh John the guy you started with recently rose the ranks doing this, not saying you should too, but take some initiative). No master plan, just a dark organic evolution.

cryptica 6y ago

It's important to see the photos to properly absorb the content and message of the article. This reflex to shield one's self from reality is extremely harmful for society and it's cowardly. The fact that the images are a 'shock' to some people shows just how disconnected they are from reality. They are powerful images but they should not be shocking... The term 'killing' should already embody these emotions without the images. The emotions that people feel when looking at these images, that's exactly what 'killing a person' means.

technicolorwhat 6y ago

Maybe the thing is that we are so conditioned by having half assed censored media pictures and quotes like its graphic, that when someone finally delivers on it, we just get shocked. This is how it looks like when someone head gets blown off.

sto_hristo 6y ago

Turning those images off won't make them disappear from existence nor resurrect the victims. Stop being willfully ignorant - that alone enables any monster out there to do as they wish unaccounted for.