9 ms·

As Beijing Olympics begin, exiled Uyghurs fight for families oppressed in China

50 points by tehnub 5y ago

VictorPath 5y ago
Thanks for posting this, it's been an entire hour since a post about Uyghurs got above 15 points (and no, that is not an exaggeration at all). Incidentally, in the past five years five posts with a phrase like Standing Rock or Dakota Pipeline got over 15 points - Americans like to be sanctimonious about the indigenous in China, not the indigenous in the US who they sic dogs on and pepper spray when they try to stop a pipeline going through their lands that will burn up the atmosphere.
- xyzal 5y ago
  One might argue genocide is worse than peppering.
  - VictorPath 5y ago
    Where did all the natives between New England and California go?
    - xyzal 5y ago
      You can influence things happening now, not those that already happened.
      - throwaway4good 5y ago
        You can also remove the beam in your own eye before ...
        Epa095 5y ago
        How convenient for China if no one can critize them before everything is perfect at home... (PS I am not American, but by looking at my previous comments you can maybe figure out where I am from, and find some issue in my country which should stop also my critisism of China.)
- bigger_inside 5y ago
  Exactly. Obvious new cold war strategy. News, of course, sets agendas by what it reports on and what it doesn't, and what space is attributed to it. And if the audience is barraged enough, they eat it up, as evidenced by the downvotes and salty comments. Where are the posts about the US-Saudi genocide in Yemen (you know, the kind that actually kills an entire population and reduces their country to dust - Xinjiang has nice, undestroyed cities without a drone bomber anywhere)? Where are the posts about the US killing Syrians again, including entire families? Where are the posts about Colombian police violence perpetrated with the help of paramilitaries, and the US? For that matter, where are the posts about the US having the Uyghurs on their terror list (and make no mistake: if the US has someone on their terror list, that makes me wonder what the US might be trying to pull here), and taking them off when it was convenient to use them as a geostrategic pawn to try to destabilize China from within (you know, just the CIA's standard MO for decades)? No. China bad. Article over.
throwaway4good 5y ago
So what has changed since 2008 when multiple US presidents attended the Chinese olympics? Were the Uyghurs and Tibetans not oppressed 14 years ago? As I see it the big thing that has changed is that the American establishment has decided that a rising China is a threat to American global dominance and must be stopped at all cost. This campaign against the Chinese olympics is just one of many efforts to pursue that goal.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  If anything the oppression of the Uyghurs probably peaked around 2008 with multiple riots, terror attacks and counter-terror attacks occuring at that time. However back then the Chinese effort was alligned with US efforts in Afghanistan and thus did not get much play in western media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Uyghur_unrest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Uyghur_unrest
  - tehnub 5y ago
    Here's a quote from the first full paragraph of the article >The boy was only 2 in 2016, when he left Turkey with his mother and grandmother to visit their homeland in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Mass arrests began while the child was there. More than a million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other mostly Muslim minorities were forced into indoctrination camps. Looks like things escalated since 2008.
    - throwaway4good 5y ago
      In terms of attacks it definately peeked around then. Of course the claim is that reason the attacks stopped is that China put all the young Uyghur men in internment camps.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  In 2008, China was in a liberalization phase and things, while not great, seemed to be getting better. The backsliding afterwards has popped any optimism about a more open/human rights aware China. China was also ascending in 2008, but looked much more compatible with the west and other countries than it does today. While Hu was surely a weak leader, Xi’s “second coming of Mao aspirations” have largely turned the western world off. It will be interesting to see who will succeed him (except, as if this moment, he is basically president for life).
helloworld11 5y ago
The parallels between these Olympics and the 1936 Games are rather remarkable. Yes, the world has improved in many ways during the decades between, but some things, such as preening and willful ignorance for the sake of PR spectacle sponsored by authoritarian regimes seem to remain perfectly acceptable. Underlying that, the fact that there's still no escaping the existence of well-established repressive regimes in major world powers.

50 points by tehnub 5y ago

Thanks for posting this, it's been an entire hour since a post about Uyghurs got above 15 points (and no, that is not an exaggeration at all). Incidentally, in the past five years five posts with a phrase like Standing Rock or Dakota Pipeline got over 15 points - Americans like to be sanctimonious about the indigenous in China, not the indigenous in the US who they sic dogs on and pepper spray when they try to stop a pipeline going through their lands that will burn up the atmosphere.

xyzal 5y ago
One might argue genocide is worse than peppering.
- VictorPath 5y ago
  Where did all the natives between New England and California go?
  - xyzal 5y ago
    You can influence things happening now, not those that already happened.
    - throwaway4good 5y ago
      You can also remove the beam in your own eye before ...
      - Epa095 5y ago
        How convenient for China if no one can critize them before everything is perfect at home... (PS I am not American, but by looking at my previous comments you can maybe figure out where I am from, and find some issue in my country which should stop also my critisism of China.)
bigger_inside 5y ago
Exactly. Obvious new cold war strategy. News, of course, sets agendas by what it reports on and what it doesn't, and what space is attributed to it. And if the audience is barraged enough, they eat it up, as evidenced by the downvotes and salty comments. Where are the posts about the US-Saudi genocide in Yemen (you know, the kind that actually kills an entire population and reduces their country to dust - Xinjiang has nice, undestroyed cities without a drone bomber anywhere)? Where are the posts about the US killing Syrians again, including entire families? Where are the posts about Colombian police violence perpetrated with the help of paramilitaries, and the US? For that matter, where are the posts about the US having the Uyghurs on their terror list (and make no mistake: if the US has someone on their terror list, that makes me wonder what the US might be trying to pull here), and taking them off when it was convenient to use them as a geostrategic pawn to try to destabilize China from within (you know, just the CIA's standard MO for decades)? No. China bad. Article over.

throwaway4good 5y ago

So what has changed since 2008 when multiple US presidents attended the Chinese olympics? Were the Uyghurs and Tibetans not oppressed 14 years ago? As I see it the big thing that has changed is that the American establishment has decided that a rising China is a threat to American global dominance and must be stopped at all cost. This campaign against the Chinese olympics is just one of many efforts to pursue that goal.

throwaway4good 5y ago
If anything the oppression of the Uyghurs probably peaked around 2008 with multiple riots, terror attacks and counter-terror attacks occuring at that time. However back then the Chinese effort was alligned with US efforts in Afghanistan and thus did not get much play in western media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Uyghur_unrest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Uyghur_unrest
- tehnub 5y ago
  Here's a quote from the first full paragraph of the article >The boy was only 2 in 2016, when he left Turkey with his mother and grandmother to visit their homeland in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Mass arrests began while the child was there. More than a million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other mostly Muslim minorities were forced into indoctrination camps. Looks like things escalated since 2008.
  - throwaway4good 5y ago
    In terms of attacks it definately peeked around then. Of course the claim is that reason the attacks stopped is that China put all the young Uyghur men in internment camps.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
In 2008, China was in a liberalization phase and things, while not great, seemed to be getting better. The backsliding afterwards has popped any optimism about a more open/human rights aware China. China was also ascending in 2008, but looked much more compatible with the west and other countries than it does today. While Hu was surely a weak leader, Xi’s “second coming of Mao aspirations” have largely turned the western world off. It will be interesting to see who will succeed him (except, as if this moment, he is basically president for life).

helloworld11 5y ago

The parallels between these Olympics and the 1936 Games are rather remarkable. Yes, the world has improved in many ways during the decades between, but some things, such as preening and willful ignorance for the sake of PR spectacle sponsored by authoritarian regimes seem to remain perfectly acceptable. Underlying that, the fact that there's still no escaping the existence of well-established repressive regimes in major world powers.