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whimsicalism 5y ago
Calling disproportionate imprisonment (and racist imprisonment by ethnicity) "genocide" is genocide-trivialization, in my view. It wasn't a "genocide" when we imprisoned 1 in 3 black people in this country, even though it was pretty awful. The Holocaust was a genocide.
- tomp 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    I disagree if the sterilization is applied even-handedly as an application of their two-child law. I am skeptical that a lineage is being exterminated if, at minimum, they can have replacement level number of births. The Uyghur population is growing faster than the Han population is. But backing up a bit - really what I'm taking issue with is the word "genocide." We can call horrendous, human rights violating policies for what they are without having to fall back on calling something a "genocide." Not everyone who disagrees with you is PRC funded. I would encourage you to look over the HN guidelines as you seem to have forgotten some of them. [0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - lumost 5y ago
      > The Uyghur population is growing faster than the Han population is. This seems to be the crux of your argument justifying the PRCs sterilization policy. As others have noted forced sterilization is a crime against humanity regardless of reason. Justification of forced sterilization based on a believed “correct” ethnic ratio is abhorrent.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        [flagged]
        abduhl 5y ago
        You’re advocating for a position on China’s 2 child policy that, in America, would most certainly would be deemed unconstitutional under a disparate impact framework. I know we’re talking about China here, but most Western countries have recognized that you can target a subgroup without saying you’re targeting a subgroup. You’re basically arguing that the Holocaust would not be a genocide as long as Germany was universally applying its no [insert Jewish characteristic] policy. Just to underscore my point here, almost every aspect of your viewpoint on the genocide China is committing is abhorrent and untenable if you believe in human rights.
        whimsicalism 5y ago
        So you are saying that having lots of children is intrinsic to being Uyghur? It's a Uyghur "characteristic"? The US law around this issue is in flux, see for instance [0], where policies that were neutrally applied but impacted people a specific religion were ruled constitutional. This specific case was later rendered moot by congressional action. Regardless, is the claim that China is conducting a genocide, or that its actions would be in violation of the Civil Rights Act if it were a US state? Are we enforcing the Civil Rights Act globally now? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Division_v._Smith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Division_v._Smith
        abduhl 5y ago
        US common law like disparate impact is always in flux - it’s common law. The minutiae of disparate impact edge cases is irrelevant under your argument where the universal application of the 2 child policy somehow requires China to round up, sequester in internment camps, and ultimately sterilize a particular group. I won’t bother replying to the rest of your post about religious beliefs and children because it’s an attempt to derail the conversation by focusing on details that are relevant only to the particular framing you’re advancing.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwawayay02 5y ago
      Do you have anything against the Uyghur population growing faster and replacing the Han?
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        No, I think such concerns are stupid. I also don't think the Uyghurs are "replacing the Han." But I do find it interesting that China is apparently conducting the first genocide in history where the population being genocided is increasing rather than decreasing.
  - dang 5y ago
    > Are you a PRC-funded troll or misinformation spreader? You can't post like this to HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you have evidence of abuse, you should send it to us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it. If you don't, you should remember that the vast majority of these perceptions on the internet are completely imaginary. Either way, you should be editing such swipes out of your comments here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Plenty of past explanation at these links: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26652363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26652363 (<-- Mini-FAQ) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397695
    - tomp 5y ago
      Sorry. I said it partially tongue-in-cheek. What would be an appropriate response to someone who's posted several comments to the same top-level post, all of which are grossly misleading and/or complete strawmen? Obviously I don't have evidence of "abuse" (is this even abuse? obviously people can be trolls without being big-co/gov funded) but I'd like to point out the above fact to other commenters who might not have noticed it otherwise.
      - dang 5y ago
        In terms of posting to HN itself, an appropriate response would be to refute bad arguments with better arguments and/or incorrect information with correct information—or alternatively, to remember that to a first approximation, everyone is wrong on the internet, and just let it go. You don't need to do more than that for other commenters; they can take care of themselves. If an account is behaving badly, such as by repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, sending a heads-up to hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it is also an appropriate response.
- scottLobster 5y ago
  Forced sterilization and religious conversion (not to mention the occasional organ harvesting) isn't genocide?
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Let's recenter the definition of genocide. From google: > the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group Now to your points: > religious conversion 1. No, forced religious conversion is not genocide in my book. > Forced sterilization 2. Look, I'm not a fan of this law either, but sterilization in-lieu-of fine is one of the remedies in China for breaking the two (previously one)-child law and is also applied to Han Chinese. The Uyghur population is still growing at a faster rate than Han Chinese. > the occasional organ harvesting 3. Awful and at large scale, absolutely a genocide. My understanding was that this had been done against Falun Gong in the early 2000s - do you have evidence on this practice continuing against Uyghurs circa now?
    - pmyteh 5y ago
      Google's definition is not authoritative. > ... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, 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. > — Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2 The strongest case is for paragraph (d).
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        Is there a special law targeting Uyghurs? Or are Uyghurs (due to their religion) more likely to have higher birth rates that are in contravention of Chinese two-child law? Another question - does a genocide necessarily require an actual reduction in the population of people being genocided? I do agree that the strongest case is for (d) (or maybe c, actually), especially if Uyghur women are being sterilized with fewer than 2-3 births.
- neom 5y ago
  Cultural Genocide is certainly a thing: The concept of cultural genocide : an international law perspective https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/43864 https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/43864 https://www.getty.edu/publications/occasional-papers-2/2/ https://www.getty.edu/publications/occasional-papers-2/2/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_genocide
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Okay, then I would claim referring to "cultural genocide" as "genocide" is genocide trivialization. In the Holocaust, they killed 11 million people. I wouldn't compare that to an attempt to end child marriage in India, for instance. Some cultural practices should be ended. By contrast, people from a certain culture should not have their lives ended simply for being from that culture. Equating the two is nonsense.
    - neom 5y ago
      I'd encourage you to study up more on the literature and definitions around cultural genocide. You're conflating nuances in subjects. Anyone discussing the subject seriously is typically focusing on one group, usually non-native to an area forcing cultural change on another group for the purposes of, compliance, curbing, minimizing or destroying, the group. See events such as Uyghurs in China, Natives in Canada, Darfur etc. You may value the destruction of a culture such to kill a peoples as lesser than say, the holocaust, and I doubt anyone would slight you on that value judgement, never the less, these are distinct things and need to be discussed equally, even if you're unhappy with the context around phrasing.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        > need to be discussed equally, No, they absolutely should not be discussed equally. Darfur was an actual genocide, ie. a killing fields genocide. Native Americans were also killed at high rates, the "cultural genocide" came later. Equating the killing of millions of people from a certain ethnic group with prohibiting certain practices (like France prohibiting the burqa or public expression of religion, like attempts to outlaw child marriage, etc.) is wrong. You're seeking to launder the distaste people have for mass killings of an ethnic group into prohibitions of certain cultural practices which are not viewed nearly as negatively. There is no other reason to simply call it "genocide" without the (very important) "cultural" modifier.
- dontcare007 5y ago
  The number of posts in this thread with the same general verbiage point to your account being a troll.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  You seem to love to trot out the "1 in 3" statistic, and have done it several times in this thread. Maybe time to look behind this catchy headline: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/06/16/the-stale-statistic-that-one-in-three-black-males-has-a-chance-of-ending-up-in-jail/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/06/...
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    1. I don't see how "slightly more than 1 in 4" is all that better. 2. I used the past tense intentionally. It is true that it is no longer 1 in 3 today, but the rates were much higher in the 80s and 90s. 3. In 1997, "one in three young African-American men are incarcerated, or on probation or parole" In my hometown (Washington, DC), this number was closer to 50%.

[flagged]

Calling disproportionate imprisonment (and racist imprisonment by ethnicity) "genocide" is genocide-trivialization, in my view. It wasn't a "genocide" when we imprisoned 1 in 3 black people in this country, even though it was pretty awful. The Holocaust was a genocide.

tomp 5y ago
[flagged]
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  I disagree if the sterilization is applied even-handedly as an application of their two-child law. I am skeptical that a lineage is being exterminated if, at minimum, they can have replacement level number of births. The Uyghur population is growing faster than the Han population is. But backing up a bit - really what I'm taking issue with is the word "genocide." We can call horrendous, human rights violating policies for what they are without having to fall back on calling something a "genocide." Not everyone who disagrees with you is PRC funded. I would encourage you to look over the HN guidelines as you seem to have forgotten some of them. [0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - lumost 5y ago
    > The Uyghur population is growing faster than the Han population is. This seems to be the crux of your argument justifying the PRCs sterilization policy. As others have noted forced sterilization is a crime against humanity regardless of reason. Justification of forced sterilization based on a believed “correct” ethnic ratio is abhorrent.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      [flagged]
      - abduhl 5y ago
        You’re advocating for a position on China’s 2 child policy that, in America, would most certainly would be deemed unconstitutional under a disparate impact framework. I know we’re talking about China here, but most Western countries have recognized that you can target a subgroup without saying you’re targeting a subgroup. You’re basically arguing that the Holocaust would not be a genocide as long as Germany was universally applying its no [insert Jewish characteristic] policy. Just to underscore my point here, almost every aspect of your viewpoint on the genocide China is committing is abhorrent and untenable if you believe in human rights.
        whimsicalism 5y ago
        So you are saying that having lots of children is intrinsic to being Uyghur? It's a Uyghur "characteristic"? The US law around this issue is in flux, see for instance [0], where policies that were neutrally applied but impacted people a specific religion were ruled constitutional. This specific case was later rendered moot by congressional action. Regardless, is the claim that China is conducting a genocide, or that its actions would be in violation of the Civil Rights Act if it were a US state? Are we enforcing the Civil Rights Act globally now? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Division_v._Smith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Division_v._Smith
        abduhl 5y ago
        US common law like disparate impact is always in flux - it’s common law. The minutiae of disparate impact edge cases is irrelevant under your argument where the universal application of the 2 child policy somehow requires China to round up, sequester in internment camps, and ultimately sterilize a particular group. I won’t bother replying to the rest of your post about religious beliefs and children because it’s an attempt to derail the conversation by focusing on details that are relevant only to the particular framing you’re advancing.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwawayay02 5y ago
    Do you have anything against the Uyghur population growing faster and replacing the Han?
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      No, I think such concerns are stupid. I also don't think the Uyghurs are "replacing the Han." But I do find it interesting that China is apparently conducting the first genocide in history where the population being genocided is increasing rather than decreasing.
- dang 5y ago
  > Are you a PRC-funded troll or misinformation spreader? You can't post like this to HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you have evidence of abuse, you should send it to us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it. If you don't, you should remember that the vast majority of these perceptions on the internet are completely imaginary. Either way, you should be editing such swipes out of your comments here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Plenty of past explanation at these links: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26652363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26652363 (<-- Mini-FAQ) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397695
  - tomp 5y ago
    Sorry. I said it partially tongue-in-cheek. What would be an appropriate response to someone who's posted several comments to the same top-level post, all of which are grossly misleading and/or complete strawmen? Obviously I don't have evidence of "abuse" (is this even abuse? obviously people can be trolls without being big-co/gov funded) but I'd like to point out the above fact to other commenters who might not have noticed it otherwise.
    - dang 5y ago
      In terms of posting to HN itself, an appropriate response would be to refute bad arguments with better arguments and/or incorrect information with correct information—or alternatively, to remember that to a first approximation, everyone is wrong on the internet, and just let it go. You don't need to do more than that for other commenters; they can take care of themselves. If an account is behaving badly, such as by repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, sending a heads-up to hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it is also an appropriate response.
scottLobster 5y ago
Forced sterilization and religious conversion (not to mention the occasional organ harvesting) isn't genocide?
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Let's recenter the definition of genocide. From google: > the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group Now to your points: > religious conversion 1. No, forced religious conversion is not genocide in my book. > Forced sterilization 2. Look, I'm not a fan of this law either, but sterilization in-lieu-of fine is one of the remedies in China for breaking the two (previously one)-child law and is also applied to Han Chinese. The Uyghur population is still growing at a faster rate than Han Chinese. > the occasional organ harvesting 3. Awful and at large scale, absolutely a genocide. My understanding was that this had been done against Falun Gong in the early 2000s - do you have evidence on this practice continuing against Uyghurs circa now?
  - pmyteh 5y ago
    Google's definition is not authoritative. > ... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, 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. > — Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2 The strongest case is for paragraph (d).
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      Is there a special law targeting Uyghurs? Or are Uyghurs (due to their religion) more likely to have higher birth rates that are in contravention of Chinese two-child law? Another question - does a genocide necessarily require an actual reduction in the population of people being genocided? I do agree that the strongest case is for (d) (or maybe c, actually), especially if Uyghur women are being sterilized with fewer than 2-3 births.
neom 5y ago
Cultural Genocide is certainly a thing: The concept of cultural genocide : an international law perspective https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/43864 https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/43864 https://www.getty.edu/publications/occasional-papers-2/2/ https://www.getty.edu/publications/occasional-papers-2/2/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_genocide
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Okay, then I would claim referring to "cultural genocide" as "genocide" is genocide trivialization. In the Holocaust, they killed 11 million people. I wouldn't compare that to an attempt to end child marriage in India, for instance. Some cultural practices should be ended. By contrast, people from a certain culture should not have their lives ended simply for being from that culture. Equating the two is nonsense.
  - neom 5y ago
    I'd encourage you to study up more on the literature and definitions around cultural genocide. You're conflating nuances in subjects. Anyone discussing the subject seriously is typically focusing on one group, usually non-native to an area forcing cultural change on another group for the purposes of, compliance, curbing, minimizing or destroying, the group. See events such as Uyghurs in China, Natives in Canada, Darfur etc. You may value the destruction of a culture such to kill a peoples as lesser than say, the holocaust, and I doubt anyone would slight you on that value judgement, never the less, these are distinct things and need to be discussed equally, even if you're unhappy with the context around phrasing.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      > need to be discussed equally, No, they absolutely should not be discussed equally. Darfur was an actual genocide, ie. a killing fields genocide. Native Americans were also killed at high rates, the "cultural genocide" came later. Equating the killing of millions of people from a certain ethnic group with prohibiting certain practices (like France prohibiting the burqa or public expression of religion, like attempts to outlaw child marriage, etc.) is wrong. You're seeking to launder the distaste people have for mass killings of an ethnic group into prohibitions of certain cultural practices which are not viewed nearly as negatively. There is no other reason to simply call it "genocide" without the (very important) "cultural" modifier.
dontcare007 5y ago
The number of posts in this thread with the same general verbiage point to your account being a troll.
skeeter2020 5y ago
You seem to love to trot out the "1 in 3" statistic, and have done it several times in this thread. Maybe time to look behind this catchy headline: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/06/16/the-stale-statistic-that-one-in-three-black-males-has-a-chance-of-ending-up-in-jail/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/06/...
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  1. I don't see how "slightly more than 1 in 4" is all that better. 2. I used the past tense intentionally. It is true that it is no longer 1 in 3 today, but the rates were much higher in the 80s and 90s. 3. In 1997, "one in three young African-American men are incarcerated, or on probation or parole" In my hometown (Washington, DC), this number was closer to 50%.