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Belgian parliament halts China Uyghur 'genocide' debate after DDoS

17 points by myrandomcomment 5y ago

dryst 5y ago
Why is genocide in quotes?
ashneo76 5y ago
This is an Uighur genocide. It shouldn't be in quotes.
- wahern 5y ago
  Nowhere have I seen evidence that Uighurs are actually being systematically put to death. Rather, they're being incarcerated and their cultural and social structures systematically dismembered. But the use of the term genocide as inclusive of cultural annihilation is a recent development. This is proven by the fact that Raphael Lemkin, who invented the term and diligently worked after WWII to construct international legal frameworks prohibiting genocide, always lamented that the international community deliberately rejected his argument that genocide should encompass cultural destruction. That was a bridge too far for Western powers and morality. Now, maybe times are changing and some nations and groups are adopting the broader definition. But that is nonetheless a significant change arguably worthy of air quotes. It's certainly not a definition China ever signed onto; not even perfunctorily. However disingenuous, one can understand China bristling against such accusations and taking offense at people equivocating their domestic policies with, e.g, the butchering of Rwandan Tutsi. If the liberal anti-colonialism/anti-imperialism crowd weren't so incoherent and hypocritical they'd see the double standard for what it is. Not everything has to be adorned with the label genocide, fascist, or some label du jour to be wrong and criticized. Attempts to label Mao's and Stalin's purges as genocide have always fallen flat and yet in the West few question the physical and moral enormity of those tragedies.
  - esarbe 5y ago
    Maybe you could have a look at this independent report that looks at China's actions and evaluates them in the context of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. [0] https://newlinesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/Chinas-Breaches-of-the-GC3.pdf https://newlinesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/Chinas-Brea...
    - wahern 5y ago
      There's a reason that 1948 convention uses the phrase "physical destruction" in some parts. That phrase was deliberately intended to distinguish the intent from physical, bodily destruction of the group members from the intent for cultural destruction. See, e.g., Elisa Novic, "physical-biological or socio-cultural 'destruction' in genocide? Unravelling the legal underpinnings of conflicting interpretations", https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2015.991208 https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2015.991208 (available on sci-hub.se). Using the West's modern ethical vocabulary one can easily interpret the 1948 convention otherwise. But that's ahistorical. Their interpretive slight of hand is made clear here: > The terms of the definition of genocide must be read in light of the Convention’s primary purpose: the prevention and safeguarding of the existence of a group before, and distinct from, its possible physical destruction. To conclude otherwise would deprive the express terms of any meaning and yield a result that could only be contrary to the object and purpose of the treaty. That claim is patently wrong and we know that because we know all about the debates held by the original authors and signatories of the 1948 convention. We also know about many subsequent attempts, including by many of those same authors and signatories, to promulgate treaties that extended the meaning of genocide in precisely the way the Newlines Institute paper claims the 1948 convention already achieved.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > There's a reason that 1948 convention uses the phrase "physical destruction". That phrase was deliberately intended to distinguish the intent from physical, bodily destruction of the group members from the intent for cultural destruction. There is also a reason that the Convention uses that phrase only as defining the additional required aim in the definition of one out of five separate acts that, when ”committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", constitute genocide, and not in the description of the overall aim which makes any of the five acts consistute genocide. In fact, the stark contrast between the language of general rule of intent in Article II and the specific rule for the individual act defined in Article II(c) underlines that the intent qualifying the other four acts as genocide is intended to be much broader than the physical destruction called out in II(c). > Using the West's modern ethical vocabulary one can easily interpret the 1948 convention otherwise. But that's ahistorical. No, what is ahistorical (and defying the basic structure of the document) is trying to promote the definition of the specific offense in II(c) as applying to and negating the broader language of the common portion of Article II when interpreting the offenses described in II(a), II(b), II(d), and II(e).

dryst 5y ago

Why is genocide in quotes?

ashneo76 5y ago

This is an Uighur genocide. It shouldn't be in quotes.

wahern 5y ago
Nowhere have I seen evidence that Uighurs are actually being systematically put to death. Rather, they're being incarcerated and their cultural and social structures systematically dismembered. But the use of the term genocide as inclusive of cultural annihilation is a recent development. This is proven by the fact that Raphael Lemkin, who invented the term and diligently worked after WWII to construct international legal frameworks prohibiting genocide, always lamented that the international community deliberately rejected his argument that genocide should encompass cultural destruction. That was a bridge too far for Western powers and morality. Now, maybe times are changing and some nations and groups are adopting the broader definition. But that is nonetheless a significant change arguably worthy of air quotes. It's certainly not a definition China ever signed onto; not even perfunctorily. However disingenuous, one can understand China bristling against such accusations and taking offense at people equivocating their domestic policies with, e.g, the butchering of Rwandan Tutsi. If the liberal anti-colonialism/anti-imperialism crowd weren't so incoherent and hypocritical they'd see the double standard for what it is. Not everything has to be adorned with the label genocide, fascist, or some label du jour to be wrong and criticized. Attempts to label Mao's and Stalin's purges as genocide have always fallen flat and yet in the West few question the physical and moral enormity of those tragedies.
- esarbe 5y ago
  Maybe you could have a look at this independent report that looks at China's actions and evaluates them in the context of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. [0] https://newlinesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/Chinas-Breaches-of-the-GC3.pdf https://newlinesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/Chinas-Brea...
  - wahern 5y ago
    There's a reason that 1948 convention uses the phrase "physical destruction" in some parts. That phrase was deliberately intended to distinguish the intent from physical, bodily destruction of the group members from the intent for cultural destruction. See, e.g., Elisa Novic, "physical-biological or socio-cultural 'destruction' in genocide? Unravelling the legal underpinnings of conflicting interpretations", https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2015.991208 https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2015.991208 (available on sci-hub.se). Using the West's modern ethical vocabulary one can easily interpret the 1948 convention otherwise. But that's ahistorical. Their interpretive slight of hand is made clear here: > The terms of the definition of genocide must be read in light of the Convention’s primary purpose: the prevention and safeguarding of the existence of a group before, and distinct from, its possible physical destruction. To conclude otherwise would deprive the express terms of any meaning and yield a result that could only be contrary to the object and purpose of the treaty. That claim is patently wrong and we know that because we know all about the debates held by the original authors and signatories of the 1948 convention. We also know about many subsequent attempts, including by many of those same authors and signatories, to promulgate treaties that extended the meaning of genocide in precisely the way the Newlines Institute paper claims the 1948 convention already achieved.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > There's a reason that 1948 convention uses the phrase "physical destruction". That phrase was deliberately intended to distinguish the intent from physical, bodily destruction of the group members from the intent for cultural destruction. There is also a reason that the Convention uses that phrase only as defining the additional required aim in the definition of one out of five separate acts that, when ”committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such", constitute genocide, and not in the description of the overall aim which makes any of the five acts consistute genocide. In fact, the stark contrast between the language of general rule of intent in Article II and the specific rule for the individual act defined in Article II(c) underlines that the intent qualifying the other four acts as genocide is intended to be much broader than the physical destruction called out in II(c). > Using the West's modern ethical vocabulary one can easily interpret the 1948 convention otherwise. But that's ahistorical. No, what is ahistorical (and defying the basic structure of the document) is trying to promote the definition of the specific offense in II(c) as applying to and negating the broader language of the common portion of Article II when interpreting the offenses described in II(a), II(b), II(d), and II(e).