> China has simultaneously pursued a dual systematic strategy of forcibly sterilizing Uyghur women of childbearing age and interning Uyghur men of child-bearing years,
> According to Government statistics and directives, including to “carry out family planning sterilization,” “lower fertility levels,” and ”leave no blind spots,”
> China began building a vast network of massive State- run, highly securitized boarding schools and orphanages to confine Uyghur children, including infants, full time.
> local authorities have eliminated Uyghur education, destroyed Uyghur architecture and household features, and damaged, altered, or completely demolished the vast majority of mosques and sacred sites in the region,
I had not heard of any of this before today. The news only talked about internment, surveillance, and forced labour.
Edit: Why the flood of downvotes? Are the quotes offending people? They are directly from the executive summary of the report
To answer your "Why the downvotes?" question, two possibilities occur to me:
1) They may be folk concerned with the justice of the situation invested enough in this issue that they're reacting to your question with something like "Are you living under a rock?".
2) There may be folk invested enough in the mainland Chinese government's position that they take issue simply with the existence of these statements, and rather than engage with the substance of them, simply try to make them go away.
Whether either of these are a fair reaction is a different discussion.
I have read a ton of articles about the subject and the information I mentioned never came up. I think it’s not widely known. I checked with my wife and a friend just now, who both has followed the story over time, and they didn’t know those details either. I’m not blaming the media, I’m trying to highlight something I suspect isn’t widely known
You're correct that the US MSM has poor coverage on China because of pressure from the CCP, ad placements from the CCP, and journo-leftist solidarity.
To learn more, you can watch the NTD media Youtube channels, especially China Uncensored and Crossroads. NTD is affiliated with Falun Gong, so they don't pull any punches - their reporters are based in the US, but still get death threats from the CCP.
Also, there's a few vlog channels like serpentza/ADVChina that provide more background from people who lived in China long-term. Note these vloggers have all been forced to leave China in the past 2 years by the CCP, or face imprisonment.
China has had a strict population control policy for decades. Minorities, including Uyghurs, have in fact been allowed to have more children than the majority Han people, and I believe that for a long time Uyghurs 'got away' with having even more children than allowed in law.
Do you think that the Chinese government would boast about committing genocide?
If they did tweet what you say they did it is because that's part of their national policy and they don't see anything negative about encouraging people to have less children.
Point being this is propaganda against propaganda and neither you nor I know for a fact what is going on in Xinjiang.
I also find it odd that people accept for fact what they read on the website quoted here, which I'm sure no-one knows and, if you search a bit, may not be so reliable. I mean it could be true, but at face value it could equally not be true for all I know.
Now, to show how civil discussion on HN is, and to show that this is cancel culture in full swing, people are now going through my comments history to downvote them all.
(You can't break the site guidelines like this. Please review them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - all the way to the end, please, because one of the guidelines you broke is the second-last.)
Comments on this topic get tons of downvotes and flags because it's a flamewar topic and they're usually flamewar comments. That null hypothesis is more than adequate to explain what you're observing. If you want to claim organized abuse, there needs to be evidence beyond garden-variety internet identity war.
People are biased about this because they overestimate the offenses of the enemy comments by (let's be conservative and say) 10x and underestimate the offenses of their own by 10x. That creates a 100x distortion. Everyone does that, so everyone sees the argument as overwhelmed by bad behavior from the other side—always from the other side, never from mine. Indeed the other side behaves so badly that (this is the 100x logic speaking) the only thing that could possibly explain how badly the other side behaves is sinister manipulation, astroturfing, brigading, and (word du jour!) disinformation, most likely by spies, foreign agents, and provocateurs. If that 100x were a mere 2x or 5x, it might dawn on people how cartoonish this thinking is, but 10000x is a hell of a dose.
Nobody looks at how they themselves (and their team) are breaking the rules and adding to the problem. After all, the other team is spies and foreign agents and racists, so what could be more natural than me feeling justly, righteously indignant about their abuses? I/we are innocent, you/they are guilty: that is the entire story.
Another thing nobody looks at is how this mechanism works exactly the same way in every thread and recreates the same flamewar every time. We're all fighting wars in our own head, or rather the same war over and over again, projecting the same demons in every case. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
We all have this insanity, and internet comments are a perfect device for bringing it out, because we have so little information about each other and our insane imaginations eagerly fill in all the gaps, without us ever considering we're doing that. The only saving grace is that these online wars are mostly confined to a teapot.
I hope it's clear that I'm not picking on you personally. Everyone in these flamewars is doing it—your comment just happened to be a place to hang a reply. Unfortunately, no matter how often we plead with users to take the site guidelines seriously and develop awareness of how they (and their team) are also breaking them, these threads are getting worse.
There's no way to measure how much sufficiently smart-and-sinister manipulation may be happening because by definition, if it's sinister enough, then it can't be detected—but that way of thinking is madness. The simple fact is that the human mind is its own sinister manipulator, and is more than enough to explain the dynamics that break out in these threads. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
The mods do care. Every time I've emailed hn@ycombinator.com (usually about violations of the "original source" policy) I've gotten a response from dang. Not always quickly and not always the response I'd hoped for but always a response that showed they care.
If you're upset about bulk downvotes, it might help to consider this: if someone downvotes a comment of yours and your karma drops by one point, that's one person disagreeing with you. If someone goes through your history and downvotes every comment and your karma drops by a dozen points, that's still just one person disagreeing with you.
for sure and i have absolutely no proof. even if CCP posts are brigaded or manipulated i doubt it could be proved.
like you said people have different opinions. and here the world-views here are shockingly 180 from each other. but there is still a difference between opinion and nation state coordinated manipulation.
Actions speak louder than words. This happens as a direct result of HN's design, which has downvotes and which downvotes are designed to suppress comments. This has never changed as far as I know, hence they do not care about this pattern of behaviour. And yes, I am aware that we are not to discuss the voting of comments. It may have been OK before when the community was smaller and more mature, but now it's a real turn off and so I think it's fair to bring it up.
In his reply above dang also refers to "flamewars" and "flamewar commments", which is a disappointing generalisation, not far from victim blaming because all and any comments and users are targeted simply for putting forward a different point of view.
Every time this post got to +1, it got hammered to -2 within seconds until a few minutes ago. This happened every few minutes for the last hour until the story left the front page, and now it’s +9 and there are no downvotes to be seen. I know we’re not supposed to talk about downvotes, but I think I maybe just got suppressed. It was really, really weird watching it. Is it possible to report it for investigation? I don’t care about my karma or even being told the results of the investigation, but I’d love it if a mod looked into this
I guess they could look into it but it's going to be tricky to do much and China politics isn't really HNs specialist area. Maybe it's easier to put up with weird downvotes on such things?
I made comments critical of this institute's credibility and not only they were immediately downvoted but people then went through my comments history and downvoted all my previous comments they could.
Clearly your 50 cent party works both ways.
Now I think it's insulting to suggest that commenters who dissent are paid by someone as if there was an obvious correct opinion and any other was obviously faked, but there is also a general problem with allowing things like 'downvotes' because they are always weaponised and they kill discussion. Unfortunately the same goes with flagging as that can automatically suppress a comment.
I looked at your comment history and it’s true, your previous posts did get attacked with downvotes. That’s lousy, it isn’t the right way to challenge somebody
I think it might be partially due to the fact that while none of your quotes are inaccurate you didn't really add anything to the quotes. I didn't downvote your comment as it's a pretty reasonable statement that seems to have been made in good faith but comments should add to and build on the contents of the article and, while many people don't RTFA here the assumption is that folks should be doing so. So just reposting a snippet of the article without any commentary or analysis isn't really adding anything to the discussion.
The vast majority of people don’t actually read the articles that get posted. I would have appreciated having a few lines highlighted for myself because after reading dozens of articles about this, this information still came as surprising
I think that's quite a fair stance - I don't particularly appreciate snippeting without commentary so it's not something I'd upvote but also not something I'm going to downvote.
Nobody but you knows where you get your information from, but it would help if you showed some effort of why you think it has not been reported before (when it has).
To clarify the OP Just Asking Questions[1] is a slimey rhetorical tool that's meant to cast doubt on the statements it's like saying "The Nazis ran concentration camps? Oh I haven't heard anything about that from the papers I read." that statement is subtly (or not) implying uncertainty in the veracity of the existence of concentration camps by pointing out that they aren't being universally decried.
I think that reading your original comment as JAQ is a bit of a bad faith action, but this is also a topic that produces a lot of vitriol on both sides so I can see why the commenter read it in such a manner.
No, from my perspective this is why you get down-voted:
> I had not heard of any of this before today. The news only talked about internment, surveillance, and forced labour.
You seem to lay blame on the media for not telling you about this when it has previously been reported. For example BBC has consistently reported on this, so you apparently do not read BBC or check Wikipedia when a new subject arises where you find something you have not heard about before.
Serious question here. How could I attempt to answer your questions without at least attempting to be emphatic to where you are coming from? Does it not require a modicum of "walking in your shoes" and trying to see things from your perspective?
It just looks like you are taking an antagonistic stance by saying "Stop mind reading" to my attempts at contributing to answering your question here.
(by the way, I see my own points go down negative here, just like yours so I also wonder)
Threads like this aren't going to reach the top of HN very often (or in my experience, other social networking sites either), they get flagged and downvoted to oblivion. HN policy prohibits me from speculating why, but you can fill in the blanks.
There have been multiple media reports, but it's reasonable you might not have run into them outside of the context of "the PRC is vaguely doing something bad to Uyghurs". But yeah, the reality of what's going on is kind of horrifying, and I think the reaction from other nations (including the US) has been underwhelming.
I can also fill out the blanks without violating HN policy. Nobody wants political controversity on their site because it attracts a lot of related problems. It is obiviously part of the spiral of silence and therefore I don't like it much, but one can kind of understand why.
> China has simultaneously pursued a dual systematic strategy of forcibly sterilizing Uyghur women of childbearing age and interning Uyghur men of child-bearing years,
I hadn't heard about this. I wonder if these are people who have already had more than two kids and this is China taking actions in compliance with their two-child policy, or whether they are sterilizing people who have had two or fewer.
Regardless, I doubt the policy is being enforced equally as stringently among Han Chinese.
Both on the left and the right of US politics there has been fault found with China. I'm kinda surprised that no large brands have highlighted "No Chinese-made components" on their products. We embrace "blood-free" diamonds, why not Chinese-free merchandise for similar reasons?
> Both on the left and the right of US politics there has been fault found with China. I'm kinda surprised that no large brands have highlighted "No Chinese-made components" on their products. We embrace "blood-free" diamonds, why not Chinese-free merchandise for similar reasons?
My guess is US corporations are too entangled with China, and it is too powerful and willing to retaliate. I wouldn't be surprised if a brand that did what you suggest would immediately be accused of "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people," and have its supply chains and markets disrupted.
Because diamonds are an exclusively luxury item that people can easily forego, and China is a whole country with a massive industrial base that makes a wide variety of products for cheap.
If you have $10, you're more likely to buy a $2 item than a $5 one because 20% of your budget is easier to justify than 50%.
I know it's difficult to buy a compute that doesn't have Chinese-made parts these days but not all parts of a computer are made in China. CPUs and memory chips are made in Taiwan and Korea; are there not makers of PCBs, power supplies, and the other parts of a computer such that you can get a computer to less than 10% Chinese parts? I didn't do a good job of expressing that raising awareness of the percentage of Chinese components as a differentiator would be a great marketing tool (similar to how cars sold in the US show what percentage of the parts in the car are US made versus imported).
What does it mean to be made in the US? Did the components of the components come from China; if so, is that motherboard made in the US because they put the Chinese-made electronics together in the US?
And that applies to other areas. China does tons of industrial manufacturing for materials that are subsequent inputs to other products - the chemistry to create your medicines might happen in the US, but it's nearly certain that a big fraction of the reagents used came from someplace in China.
In the US, "Made in USA" (or the implication) means that "all or virtually all" of the "significant parts and processing that go into the product must be of U.S. origin".
Taiwan and Korea both trade extensively with China. Ok so you buy their products instead of China. They grow richer and use that money to trade more with China.
Until you can stop trade between Taiwan/Korea with China, there is no point in buying those parts instead of Chinese parts.
That money will eventually be recycled towards China.
It’s very concerning that the responses on this issue are so timid. I think for individual corporations to reroute takes a bit of effort but that it would be possible for groups of corporations to do this with guidance from the government. Not doing this is funding the atrocities.
I'm working from the model “companies don't care”. You're working from the model “companies are groups of people”. Yours is more accurate, unless the people in the company are using my model.
Decision theory says that the best outcome comes from me adopting the “companies are groups of people” model. I'll try to remember that, and do so.
The issue is raw material. China controls fuck tons of raw material in Africa and within itself, while the West ignored most of the "poor" countries. Not that China has been a positive force, but at least China hasn't invaded any countries in the name of bringing democracy to them.
Fun stuff, Afghanistan has some of the largest deposits in the world for lithium, rare earths, gemstones and uranium, but good luck convincing them now of mining that. Also, yep, China has started both mining operations in Afghanistan, and an open declaration from the Taliban stating they won't touch their facilities.
I didn't say China doesn't invade places. I said they don't invade places in the name of bringing democracy. In Tibet's case, it was about "restoring" China's borders (as it is with almost all Chinese incursions today).
A large part China's justification for their expansion into Tibet was about "liberating" the locals from a pretty harsh caste-based monarchy system.
Not exactly bringing democracy, but not far off it.
They replaced a dictatorship with a dictatorship, I would say that's not a good thing and not even close to democratization. Not that it has worked out well for western powers either.
The US replaces dictatorships with dictatorships in the name of democracy all the time. It has also replaced democracies with dictatorships in the name of democracy.
The modern equivalent is them trying to take over the South China sea so that they control all shipping through there as well. They just a bit too late to join in the colonization frenzy, but they would just have surely done it as any western country if they would have been in a position to do so. Humans are humans and by and large act the same way.
There is already a movement going on in India to boycott Chinese made goods. Issue or not an issue, it is imperative that manufacturing has redundancies like Apple making phones both in China and India.
We don't really need diamonds, and the freedom loving people of the great united states of america do not produce most of things they use on a daily basis. They can all talk, but when a milk tea in San Francisco costs more than an earphone shipped from China, what's the choice gonna be?
I do agree, but I would say it's an infrastructure problem than choice. Most components and "stuff", well, comes from China. Going elsewhere is not marginally more expensive, its significantly more. This means your political stance, though righteous, will bleed dry compared to those who would actually go for the "blood diamonds" for the lower cost. It takes the consumer to also make the choice.
The big arguement in the early 2000s on the fear of too much China reliance is exactly this. Can we stand a moral ground against a country whose teet we depend on? Too many companies are disgusting unwilling to. I dont watch anything hollywood (which has been silly easy oddly) over the whole self censorship to appease the chinese market. Any company that kowtows to chinese pressure for any little thing is on my shit list. But I'm just one dude. Most people dont care or are unwilling. At that, I know my computer, phone and a number of other things came from China. Anytime I can get anywhere but China, I go for it. It's real difficult. Unloading our manufacturing wasn't smart and we are reaping what we sowed.
Because boycotts don't work on this scale. This is nation state level stuff. Only the US government can apply any pressure here on a scale that makes a difference. The best thing you can do is vote for politicians that aren't afraid of China. If you want to buy American then do it because you want to buy American and help the economy and your fellow Americans not because you want to punish China.
Exactly, and competitors could easily prove such claims as lies, by pointing out second level suppliers being affiliated with China; guilty by association. We're effectively trapped in one cage with China, with no easy way out.
I think that's likely because the quality of electronic components coming out of China has improved considerably while still being less expensive than manufacturing locally.
Earlier last year when people were joking about Apple not showing iPhones getting broken in their shows on Apple TV, the less talked about but much more alarming bit was their comment about China.
"Today’s report also claims that Eddy Cue has told Apple TV+ leadership that “the two things we will never do are hard-core nudity and China,” referring to potentially angering China with any of its original TV shows or movies."
Does this mean no news on Apple TV? That soft-censorship for corporate economic interest reasons will allow the CCP to do terrible things because companies are incentivized to ignore it/suppress speech around it?
Apple also capitulates to the CCP, allowing them to host iCloud on CCP servers in country. They also remove the Taiwanese flag from Chinese iPhones, and remove podcast apps/content from China.
On one side you could argue this inter-economic dependence lowers the likelihood of war. It is not without an ethical cost though. Is genocide an acceptable cost for stability and compromising your principles? Is access to the Chinese market worth that?
"In response to the episode's criticism of the Chinese government, South Park has been entirely banned in China, including on its streaming services and social media platforms.
In October 2019, insiders told Bloomberg that Apple, which has a significant portion of its users and manufacturers in China, was reportedly unlikely to bid for the streaming rights of the series due to the China ban."
The idea of boycotting goods from manufacturers whose enterprises are supported by state perpetrators of genocide might appeal to lots of people who are humanists.
In practice, that would mean not buying anything that has a connection to a list of countries that includes China, Indonesia, Belgium, and several countries which I'm not going to list because the conversation would become unmanageable, just as the Uyghur conversation would become unmanageable within China.
If China were the only guilty state in the world, a boycott would be a different proposition to what it is. Even then, it's not guaranteed to be effective because the way things work psychologically, commercially, and geopolitically.
Even though 99% of people consider themselves humanists, they are able to compartmentalise their feelings in surprising ways when it comes to the acquisition of consumer goods, energy, copper, gold, diamonds, and real estate.
I don't think we'll see individual brands take action unless there is significantly more consumer pressure in the west. For many manufacturers it could take years for them to create the manufacturing capacity somewhere else. This is a tricky situation, any military action has the potential to cause more death and suffering. Economic sanctions seem like the only reasonable path forward, but because of the entanglement of China with virtually everyone's economies it is likely to hurt the US and Europe as well. Is the west willing to suffer a severe recession to help the Uyghurs?
It’s a little incendiary and perhaps would look a little racist to label things “Chinese free” or “Not made in China”.
Objects should simply continue to label their country of origin.
If the population really is interested in generally removing themselves from commerce with China, there will be a tendency to avoid products with the “Made in China” label. How great this tendency is will depend on how much the population values a commercial separation. Of course, it is ridiculous to assume that any individual would be completely aware of the degree to which their lives are ultimately influenced by commerce with China via their consumption of goods, let the alone the entire population. However, we can still expect the change in commerce with China to reflect the degree to which the rest of society values not doing business with those business entities that prosper in the spirit of mutual benefit with a regime that practices perverse and backwards acts against humanity entirely unbefitting of any modern world power.
Anyone man of commerce with a conscience must ultimately conclude to some degree that cooperating with entities under such a regime is not ideal, if simply for the sake of attempting to do good rather than evil. However, any man or woman of reason must realize that the leaders in international commerce that make these decisions must ultimately weigh this fact against a multitude of other factors. Their service most likely is foremost to the continuing survival of the business they represent, which in turn is dependent on consumption of the goods they sell. In the case of business with China, we can assume this to be goods sold elsewhere in society. These members of society have multilayered responsibilities in their responsibilities to society. Yes, to a degree they are responsible for the strife in China— however, they are also responsible to all the members of their supply chain, fellow colleagues and employees, business partners, and then also their consumers, not to mention their dependents and other contracts such as debt obligations and taxes. These are realities for society members working in the integrated world economy. To quit business altogether means disrupting these chains. However, if society values not cooperating with that particular system that sins against mankind enough, it would by degrees remove its consumption of the goods that arrive from that system, and furthermore by degrees shame and diminish the reputations of any partner to that specific system — the greater we as a society value liberty and justice for all, in both the arenas of physical personhood and in business, the more we will pressure the partners of the system and then ultimately the system itself to cease the contraptions diminishing to our natures. The degree to which society truly values these noble aims will be shown by the collective decisions and actions of that society.
In other words, in a free society, by which the actions of men and women are freely chosen, the degree to which that society as a collective values freedom will influence the degrees to which those who practice barbarism can continue doing so.
False. The right claims "Beijing Biden" is a sleeper agent for the CCP who is selling America out to China. Just check the comment section of ben shapiro youtube videos or the /r/conservative subreddit.
In the minds of the right, only Republicans are truly anti-China. They think the left is giving in to China.
Maybe a lack of signal? I would certainly buy a more expensive product that's certified not to be made in genocidal or slave-labor countries. I've seen lists of 'blood-free' chocolate brands online before and they certainly had an effect.
I just bought a new down pillow, and there was a bunch of advertising about ethical down, and that the geese were treated well and the such. And if I buy a down pillow from a place that wasn't certified, I was a monster. Which is important! But I don't see any such admonishments against buying face masks or laptop parts made by Uighur slaves/prisoners.
Edit: I should note, I am saying it is disgusting that we turn a blind eye to human suffering in the name of cheaper products and higher profit margins.
One need-not single out a nation-state in "-free" designations.
If WTO membership and global free-trade were predicated on certain civil-rights ground rules like: a free press, demonstrable rule of law, democratically elected governance, due process, and a complete absence of concentration camps, the world would be a better place.
Not only would it address the plight of the Uyghur people and the travesty that is occurring in Hong Kong, but it might grant the inmates at Guantanamo fair and open hearings.
Bring on the "oppression-free" consumer certifications. I am certain that there is a market.
Because it's hard and there aren't yet enough legal consequences for the use of this concentration camp prisoner labor.
While I agree we must get much stronger incentives/laws on our side we can't get distracted and pass all the moral consequences/imperative for action onto our side. It's less than half the equation.
We need to tackle the other side of this problem because CCP is directly responsible.
Bottom line Xi is perpetrating this genocide. That's the main fault & we can't 'offshore' 100% of the blame onto our corporations.
Even if we did get perfect decoupling I don't think that would be enough incentive to change China's behavior?
Morally, I don't think that alone is a strong enough reaction to these horrors and threats to Democracy.
And the state will only have the motivation to address the problem if they are facing a popular uprising -- either in fact or it's feared likely -- that could threaten the CCP as a the ruling order in China. There is a very long history in China of popular uprisings forcing political change which is why the reaction in Tienanmen Square in 1989 was so harsh and so swift (it's also why the unrest in Hong Kong is being put down the way it is). If any unrest doesn't end quickly and stay localized the CCP fears it will become nationwide before countermeasures are taken.
And if we, as consumers, make it clear that we will be buying Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, Indian -- ANYTHING that isn't Chinese -- it will cause a reaction in the CCP (I just hope that reaction isn't a military first-strike).
> (I just hope that reaction isn't a military first-strike)
Whenever I read statements like this I wonder who people think China might attack militarily. The only one I can think of that wouldn't either cost them more than they'd gain (and even then it still probably would) or turn into a suicidal act would be Taiwan. Any other neighboring nation offers them little value with respect to the cost of war, and nations like the US and Russia could create such an expansive war that China would lose all the political and economic ground it's gained this century, and probably more.
If an economic boycott of China were successful enough to cause a nationwide popular uprising in China that threatened to remove the CCP, do you think the CCP would go quietly?
Western strategy needs to pivot to pushing for CCP democratization a la reformism from monarchy to democracy in the UK, rather than "removing the CCP."
IMO, anyone who has spent extensive time in China can see what a pipe dream overthrowing the 100 million strong CCP is. Think about the likelihood of overthrowing the United States government.
The chinese people that build products are not the ones with the concentration camps. Pressure has to be on the top of the political spectrum, not on the regular chinese citizen.
> The chinese people that build products are not the ones with the concentration camps. Pressure has to be on the top of the political spectrum, not on the regular chinese citizen.
That sounds nice, but your suggestion reduces the available options practically to zero (pretty much left with assassination and pointless sanctions against people with no foreign assets and diplomatic immunity when traveling).
The people at the top of the political spectrum derive a large part of their power from the factories where those regular people work.
This reminds me to one of the rules in Hammurabi's Code. "If someone breaks the leg on one of your slaves, you now have the right to break a leg on one of his slaves".
China has 1.4 billion people: do you think it's a good plan or even morally defensible to attempt to hurt all of them to get to affect a fraction of a fraction of wealth of maybe 200 politicians?
By the same you could say the same cops that are murdering black lives are funded in part by the taxes of Silicon Valley companies. You could say Guantanamo Bay was funded in part by your taxes. You could say all the ruckus in Nicaragua was funded by your taxes as well.
I personally firmly stand by not punishing civilians and private/mostly-private/mostly-civilian-held companies for the actions of their governments.
Also, governments are not monolithic. Would you punish the National Park Service for the actions of the NSA?
Just to add to this, the US has long held an antagonistic relationship with the International Criminal Court (ICC), and has shielded and acquitted war criminals as recently as last year. Are we going to blame American civilians for this behavior?
Regarding the relationship the US has with the ICC, see the American Service-Members' Protection Act.
> ASPA authorizes the President of the United States to use "all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court". This authorization has led the act to be nicknamed the "Hague Invasion Act".
> The act prohibits federal, state and local governments and agencies (including courts and law enforcement agencies) from assisting the court. For example, it prohibits the extradition of any person from the U.S. to the Court; it prohibits the transfer of classified national security information and law enforcement information to the court.
> The act also prohibits U.S. military aid to countries that are party to the court. However, exceptions are allowed for aid to NATO members, major non-NATO allies, Taiwan, and countries that have entered into "Article 98 agreements", agreeing not to hand over U.S. nationals to the court.
> By the same you could say the same cops that are murdering black lives are funded in part by the taxes of Silicon Valley companies.
That's nonsensical, and completely ignores the idea of power/control. The Chinese government has direct control over Chinese manufacturers, and derives power from them. Derek Chauvin or the MPD (for example) do not control or derive power from a Bay Area tech company Google, and have only a very tenuous relationship with it (if any).
> You could say Guantanamo Bay was funded in part by your taxes. You could say all the ruckus in Nicaragua was funded by your taxes as well.
And if you want to boycott American goods over that, be my guest.
> The Chinese government has direct control over Chinese manufacturers
So does the US government. There entities in the US government that have direct control over US companies, and derive power from US companies.
> Derek Chauvin or the MPD (for example) do not control or derive power from a Bay Area tech company Google
You're emphasizing my point here. The US government is not a monolithic entity and neither is China's.
Just like you mentioned Derek Chauvin, you should rightfully be critical of the Derek Chauvins of China instead of the "Chinese government". Those Derek Chauvins have very little to do with Chinese manufacturers of high-tech goods (other than being tax-funded, which is the same with the Derek Chauvins of USA).
> And if you want to boycott American goods over that, be my guest.
I boycott neither American nor Chinese goods over government issues.
> You're emphasizing my point here. The US government is not a monolithic entity and neither is China's.
China's government is actually far more of a monolithic entity than the US's. It doesn't have sovereign subdivisions or separation of powers, and is organization around centralized hierarchical control. The center makes policy, and the periphery implements it.
> Just like you mentioned Derek Chauvin, you should rightfully be critical of the Derek Chauvins of China instead of the "Chinese government". Those Derek Chauvins have very little to do with Chinese manufacturers of high-tech goods (other than being tax-funded, which is the same with the Derek Chauvins of USA).
The Chinese government is basically a government of Derek Chauvins, and the the point of boycotting is to weaken it or at least slow its growth.
Think of it this way: you have a mob boss who owns a legitimate restaurant staffed by honest people, and he uses the profits from it to pay for criminal acts (say hits against his enemies). If you patronize the restaurant because you're concerned that the staff shouldn't have their income reduced on account of their boss's assassination hobby, you also provide the boss with money to enable or increase his assassination activity. Maybe the result of this is the boss grows powerful enough to take over the whole local government, because he could assassinate everyone in his way.
On the one hand, you have some people who could make less money or have to find different work. On the other hand, you have murder and a breakdown of honest government.
It's a moral dilemma, and you have to weigh the pros and cons. It feels like you're taking a hard stand on relatively minor moral issue in a way that compromises more important ones.
> The Chinese government is basically a government of Derek Chauvins
No. Just no. Stop right there. You might be thinking of North Korea, but that is not China. The western media wants you to believe this, but if you even take a little time to experience China first-hand you'll realize that -- and this may come as a surprise to you, understandably from the brainwashing that western media does -- China's government is doing mostly good things.
Literacy in China is at 96%, well above the United States, and 99.8% for the 16-24 age group, 95% have access to a safe water source, access to electricity went from 93% in 1990 to >99.9% in 2018, famine is almost absent, they regularly haul people out of earthquakes and other disasters to safety, street assaults are seldom (females regularly freely take walks at night downtown!), 350 km/h trains shuttle people between cities safely several times an hour (compare to the mostly non-existent and <120 km/h passenger trains in the US), violent street crime is almost zero, there are fast, clean, safe electric transportation systems in most cities, there is healthcare for all citizens, and there are massive clean energy efforts underway.
Do you really believe it is a government full of Derek Chauvins that accomplished all that? Have you ever lived there? You'll be surprised.
And yes, there are atrocities and censorship as I should duly note. But by far, no, it's not a government full of Derek Chauvins. It's rather a few Derek Chauvins in a vast system of mostly good people that the western media largely doesn't want to talk about because they enjoy the ad revenue they get from fear-mongering and jumping on the anti-China bandwagon.
And yes, I advocate for being critical and holding accountable the people responsible for atrocities. However, I still stand against boycotting and punishing average civilians for any of those things. Those civilians are just living their lives and doing hard work to feed themselves or their families just like you and me, and have absolutely nothing to do with atrocities committed by a few Derek Chauvins.
> Literacy in China is at 96%, well above the United States, and 99.8% for the 16-24 age group...
You forgot to add that they just "eliminated poverty."
> Do you really believe it is a government full of Derek Chauvins?
You've twisted my wording. I didn't say it was a government full of Derek Chauvins, but a government of Derek Chauvins. And in any case, it was a cartoonish riff on your previous comment, so it shouldn't be taken too literally.
> Have you ever lived there? You'll be surprised.
I think you'd be surprised.
> It's rather a few Derek Chauvins in a vast system of mostly good people
That "rather a few" are the ones setting and enforcing policy. That's the important fact. You don't rise up in the Communist Party by being a good person.
I know people are downvoting you, but you are correct. The only ones who can really apply power to China are state level actors. Nothing will come of boycotting Chinese products. If you want to buy "Made in the _________" then do it because you want to help the western (other?) economies rather than China, not because it will do anything to convince the Chinese government not to genocide a culture.
There are many ways to pressure the political spectrum, one of them is to take a stance on refusing import from the country - that will trickle up to the top of the spectrum.
It's not particularly impactful for a company to do on it's own due to the size of the chinese economy (we'd need a coordinated national effort) but if the Uyghur Genocide is something you feel strongly about as a business owner you can probably relocate to other suppliers without that much of a raise in cost.
That would be nice, but as I recall it some companies got caught with their fingers in the cookie jar, including Apple [0]. The screen on your iPhone might be made with Muslim slave labor.
Newlines is funded by FairfaxU of Virginia, a private school with ~150 students and ~60 staff (read: there's external funding). Newlines Institute is also rebrand Center for Global Policy (CGP), tradename for International Institute of Islamic Thought... linked to the Muslim Brotherhood [0]. And owned by Mar-Jac, a front for SAAR Foundation, a massive source of funding of extreme terrorism whose US proxies were heavily investigated post 911, including IIIT with a couple prosecutions. Hence the rebranding. Most of their US proxies are located in Virginia, a recent of Mar-Jac investments in private schools was linked to Turkish Gulenist, which Gulf council countries has designated as terrorists... including Saudi. So the most interesting extrapolation for me is that some wealthy Saudi group(s) is interested in pushing genocide narrative via US proxies despite Saudi support for China at UN and MbS purging major funders of terrorist groups. Western MSM is whitewashing this as "Independent DC think tank". Real question is if this is Muslim extremist groups pursing their own interests through obfuscation or if they're coordinating with US intelligence, it's Virginia after all. US was willing to delist Uyghur terrorist groups, they're willing to work with OG Al Qaeda funders to destabilize.
MSM is currently using "Independent DC think tank" label for front funded by the same groups that was responsible for Al Qaeda. Desperate times for propaganda.
Nayirah testimony, WMDs in Iraq, the Libyan rape allegations, Syrian chemical attacks -- eventually you would think people would catch on to this playbook. I don't doubt there are serious human rights violations taking place in Xinjiang, but the term "genocide" is ridiculous, an allegation being deployed in support of the aims of U.S. empire.
There are so many many sources but here is a good summary from NyTimes: http://archive.is/93x6g
Quotes from article under each line item definition. Again so many more sources but that would be exhausting to compile.
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
"Those who have been held in camps describe a rigorous prison environment filled with monotonous political indoctrination and, for many, terrorizing bouts of violence and physical abuse by guards."
-Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
"Officials have held one million or more people in internment camps in Xinjiang, the country’s most sweeping mass detention program since the Mao era. A wide range of behavior can lead to detention, including acts of religious devotion, travel to certain countries, violations of birth restrictions or installing cellphone apps that allow encrypted messaging."
"And the authorities have carried out the widespread destruction of mosques and shrines while turning others into tourist sites."
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
"has used repressive methods such as forced sterilizations."
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
"Large numbers of children in Xinjiang have been placed in boarding schools designed to assimilate and indoctrinate them, according to the government’s published plans."
- Killing members of the group
Article doesn't have a quote and there isn't a lot of evidence here so it is likely not happening on a large scale. Though there are many deaths from poor treatment in concentration camps and forced labor camps.
Free fifth estate manufacture consent more effectively than state propaganda. Access to information ≠ ability to discern or be critical. Everyone taught to check veracity of sources, but no one even reads past the headline in the first place. Even most educated audiences demonstrate QANON levels of eating bad information especially when it comes to foreign policy or other subjects that they have tangential interest but strong tribal investments in. I grew up with strong state media, and at least people are suspicious of media by default. Free media brainwashing is too strong.
There aren't really any obvious reasons why the 'U.S. empire' would want to fake this one. It's not like they really want to get into a war with the country that makes most of their stuff.
>but the term "genocide" is ridiculous, an allegation being deployed in support of the aims of U.S. empire.
So why doesn't China allow independent investigations into what's really taking place? Maybe if they weren't hiding the truth people wouldn't be so quick to fill in the holes with their own stories.
> So why doesn't China allow independent investigations into what's really taking place? Maybe if they weren't hiding the truth people wouldn't be so quick to fill in the holes with their own stories.
Why they should? The burden of proof is on the accusers. "Independent" investigation guarantees nothing. Eg WMD in Iraq.
Gulf of Tonkin. If you look at Arafat's Wikipedia page it says he was not born in Palestine and died (of course) of venereal disease.
Insofar as how long it goes on, if you look at US WWI propaganda they were talking about German soldiers massacring babies in Belgium (the killing babies lie is a common one - from incubators to Assad gassing babies)
I've always wondered how complicit companies like Apple are in the surveillance of these marginalized communities. Apple has never really addressed how exactly they operate in these regions, and their transparency report says that they turn over more information in China than nearly any other country. Hacker News probably won't like me for asking this, but:
Of course, but it's too late now (in their mind). They made a faustian bargain like most western countries and companies, hoping that china would change, but unfortunately they were wrong...
Years ago (30 years already?) if you shopped at Walmart you would see red, white and blue stickers proudly proclaiming "100% American Made" on items that were just that. If you buy a new car in the US the dealer sticker lists what percentage of the parts in the car are US-made versus imported. Labels that show what percentage of parts come from China could be a powerful marketing tool.
I doubt you could for the majority of products. Modern supply chains are global and China has a massive economy and thus a massive role in those supply chains.
Instead of just blaming China and pointing fingers wouldn't it make sense to find new growth markets? I have read up on how China is investing in Africa. Wouldn't it be for the best to do the same and cut China as the middleman? After all, if African countries provide resources and even manufacture on site only to send the products to China why even bother with China?
I feel like I keep seeing headlines like this, but nothing really changes. No country has the power, authority or even the international political weight to stand up to China. In generations to come we're going to look back at this moment and marvel at how everyone knew it was happening (unlike Nazi Germany where the allies only found out towards the end of the war) and yet done nothing about it. The current US administration cares more about curbing China's international political and financial influence rather than perhaps the biggest humanitarian issue since the Rwandan Genocide
If we compare China to Nazi Germany, the first legislation acts against Jewish Germans began in 1933, 12 years before the end of the regime. The rest of world was already aware of the abuse of Jewish Germans because they began to flee the country at that early time. Unfortunately, it is one thing to denounce an act and another to end it.
I think any reasonable person can look at what's happening with the Uyghurs and only come to the conclusion that it's appalling. The only real defense here is that the reports of it happening are untrue or exaggerated and I think at this point we have ample evidence that's not the case.
So let's set that issue aside and look at the more general problem of polarization as that has wider implications. Fact is, most people in the US (as one example) don't give a shit about genocide halfway around the world beyond maybe some slacktivism in liking a social media post about it every now and again.
So I'm not Chinese but as an outsider looking in who is not an expert by any stretch of the imagination this is what I see: I see a culture that within living memory came out of a period of severe instability, hunger and turmoil. China now under pseudo-Communist rule has entered a period of stability and prosperity for a significant portion of the population.
Because that's so recent there seems to be (heavy IMHO here) a cultural fear of that going prosperity going away. I don't want to trivialize this by any means but you see something roughly analogous to this with people who grew up poor vs those who didn't, even if those people who grew up poor have money now. Just having that experience of growing up without food or housing security changes you. It changes your relationship to money.
So what I see is there's an awful lot of Chinese people who look at any issue relating to China through this lens: anything remotely critical of China is an attack on that prosperity. So anything critical of China on HN (comments or posts) will attract a certain level of automatic downvote on any hot button issue (eg Uyghurs, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the origins of Covid-19).
The lesson here I think is in how dangerous things become when a large group of people become fearful.
As an example, in the US today you have polarization because people fan the flames of fear. The Trump base is one who fears their way of life is under attack, exploited quite masterfully where any demonstrable proof that Trump himself is by any objective measure a horrible human being gets labelled as "fake news" and people eat it up because that's what they want to believe. And they want to believe that because they've bought into this culture of fear.
What you're witnessing is new generations of PRC citizens with both access and experience in east and west finally realizing what citizens from global south that's been fucked by western foreign policy and news reporting have long realized: west is not the the bastion of morality it purports to be. The rampant unconditional western worship in PRC of the 80s-90s has ended, there's mass disillusionment with western systems and fatigue of western models with each hypocritical selective application i.e. weaponizing human rights. There's tons of Chinese users, either millions who hopped the wall or millions of diaspora whose finally engaging not because they are afraid, but because they're shocked by how brainwashed the west is and they're clapping back.
> ample evidence that's not the case
We have western manufactured consent mechanism regurgitating "evidence" and narratives that exaggerates (in both numbers and atrocity) a very repressive system from what it is, cultural genocide that has no diplomatic consequences, to what it's not, genocide which does. It's generic western self-serving human rights geopolitics. XJ propaganda has to engineer genocide label, because if it was merely crimes against humanity then it's unprosecutable, by consensus and design, otherwise many western countries would have to pay for their own atrocities. Also queue comparisons to Nazi Germany when it's more comparable to US prison industrial complex for minorities repression/management with no greater global outrage. China loves to copy US after all. Not to mention how many people latch onto the genocide label even though it is by far the minority global position on the oppose vs support continuum. The plurality is "support", not support genocide, but support Chinese XJ counter-terrorism. Let that sink in, it takes particular blindness to assume the LEAST endorsed position (not even minority) as default, but here we are.
The typical term for your position is “butwhataboutism”, used to great effect in the Trump era.
So when someone points out something like the suppression of the Uyghurs and you point out “but what about atrocities committed by Western countries?” that’s a distraction where you’re trying to divert attention to an unrelated issue.
The USA committed atrocities against native Americans, engaged in centuries of slavery, interned Japanese citizens in WWII and dropped atomic bombs on civilians. All of that is true. But just because it’s true it doesn’t negate or excuse Chinese human rights abuses.
The typical term for your position is ignoratio elenchi or ignorance of confutation, used to great effect because you confuse my comment as negating human right abuses when it's comparing how human rights are weaponized hypocritically using XJ/US mass internment as examples. Comparable crimes against humanity are selectively interpreted for geopolitical posturing to forward the interest of one tribe over another. The competing tribe can see through the bullshit and calls it out accordingly.
> I think any reasonable person can look at what's happening with the Uyghurs and only come to the conclusion that it's appalling
Maybe, yeah
Detention for fear of terrorism is bad when the US did it with Japanese born citizens in Wwii and it is bad when it was done in Guantánamo, and it is bad now
That said, why are the supposed witnesses to these crimes changing their histories and narratives to make it seem like a B type horror movie rather than stick to their original telling of it?
I can't but remember the Nariyah Testimony in front of Congress
What's the history here exactly, how and when did the Uyghur people get tangled up with the Chinese? Dumb question but how come they can't just leave or tell other's about what's going on?
It's a bit complicated. Some say the Uyghurs arrived in that area 900 or so years ago, some say they have been there for over 6400 years. Most likely, modern Uyghurs are descended from a mix of peoples, including the original ancient Uyghurs, the Tiele people, and some other peoples.
China controlled the region about 2000 years ago during the Han Dynasty, but has since lost it and regained control several times throughout history.
The region is historically important as it is on the Silk Road, and has seen a huge amount of wars. So it is likely that the populations there have been displaced several times.
Apparently, modern Uyghurs are part of China because a plane crash killed many of the delegation of the Second East Turkestan Republic who were opposed to being part of China, leaving a surviving leader who joined the Chinese Communist Party.
The most interesting part of the Uyghur situation is that the world has had more or less the same reaction that they had to the Nazi persecution of the Jews in the 1930s. We know it is happening but we are not going to do anything. Arguably if not for Pearl Harbor the US wouldn't have interfered with Germany either.
I'm not sure that people were as much aware as we are/could be today tbh. I had a few relatives (now dead) who supported the nazi politics (I'm Swedish) and my understanding is that it was not at all clear until after the war. Perhaps there were rumors, but facts were much more difficult to come by at that time (even though it's sometimes confusing nowadays too).
I don't want to tread outside of HN policy, but in the spirit of a comment I saw Dang leave on a thread about wanting "surprising" comments on posts that tend to go in predictable directions, the sheer predictability of what happens on threads that even mention the Uyghur as a people makes me wonder if there's a good data visualization blog post somewhere here.
I would be interested in seeing someone explore what keywords seem to trigger the reaction, how fast it is, etc... HN has a pretty open API, so it feels like it wouldn't be too hard to make some interesting graphs on how the posts/comments evolve over time.
Heck, I'd be interested in seeing a visualization like that for HN posts in general, but PRC posts are the ones where it seems the most like there's an obvious, reproducible process happening that could be explored and experimented on.
I've done work in this area (example from 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8425385) and it wouldn't be too terrible to do a data viz on comment count trajectory on a thread given a certain keyword.
Granted, given the responses to my previous work, it would likely not be well-received and it might be too niche for the effort involved.
The Chinese people might, since the Organization of Islamic Cooperation [1] and Muslim majority countries in general [2] overwhelmingly support China in Xinjiang.
Because if the West takes a technological stance against products made in China it could have a huge impact on Tech. e.g. it might make sense to build a display making factory in the west, which hasn’t been done at scale in years.
Because it is splattered all over western news outlets, and because HN over the last couple years has been seeing an influx of reddit users whom are not used to HN standards
That would be extremely interesting, but it is an extremely serious accusation. Do you have a source?
Note that genocide means the (attempted) deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group[0], shooting civilians deliberately or accidentally is not genocide.
> Note that genocide means the (attempted) deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group[0], shooting civilians deliberately or accidentally is not genocide.
That's semantics. Endless wars without a purpose and thousands of death civilians, what's the difference?. Drone flattened a school? Though shit. It's war so you cant call it genocide.
One of the most horrific actions in this genocide was when the Chinese Air force bombed a wedding in Xinjiang, killing 37 people - many innocent women and children.
It's illustrative how Americans get up in arms about how the Chinese dealing with Muslim terrorists in their own country deal with human rights, while they have flown across the world to perform massacres in the country on Xinjiang's western border.
> It's illustrative how Americans get up in arms about how the Chinese dealing with Muslim terrorists in their own country deal with human rights, while they have flown across the world to perform massacres in the country on Xinjiang's western border.
The United States has a long, violent history that continues into the present day. I don't think anyone here is arguing that. It doesn't make the PRC's actions better, nor does it mean that we shouldn't condemn abuses of human rights where we see them.
You'd be better off not shilling for the ccp by attacking the validity of the video with petty remarks instead of specifying what exactly you are missing sources for. Most of the content was from well known research and is visible directly in the video itself.
I'd suggest you look at how documentaries like "What the Bleep Do We Know" and "The Principle" are created out of editing together unrelated emotionally impactful set pieces and out of context statements from authorities and otherwise valid sources.
This video is using all the same editing techniques as you would to push geocentricism and make it look like Michio Kaku is onboard with it.
That's why they include crap like a The Winter Soldier from Marvel being interrogated and random clips from Mulan, while giving quotes that can't use an entire sentence of before being forced to use a jump cut.
>I'd suggest you look at how documentaries like "What the Bleep Do We Know" and "The Principle" are created out of editing together unrelated emotionally impactful set pieces and out of context statements from authorities and otherwise valid sources.
That's a false equivalency and doesn't apply to this very well researched and excellently presented mini documentary. If that were the case it wouldn't have received over 62000 likes and over 1 million views, so don't insult people's intelligence with your pseudo intellectual 'critique' by making hand wavy allegations without pointing out anything specific to which it actually applies in the content.
>This video is using all the same editing techniques as you would to push geocentricism and make it look like Michio Kaku is onboard with it. That's why they include crap like a The Winter Soldier from Marvel being interrogated and random clips from Mulan, while giving quotes that can't use an entire sentence of before being forced to use a jump cut.
Wow you don't like the editing, could you be more shallow and desperate in your defence of the ccp's genocide? The video is excellent in its approach to deliver an important topic in an entertaining and engaging manner, that's why it has successfully reached a greater audience. Your 'criticism' is a joke.
> That's a false equivalency and doesn't apply to a very well researched and presented mini documentary. If that were the case it wouldn't have received over 62000 likes, so don't insult people's intelligence with your pseudo intellectual 'critique' by making hand wavy arguments without pointing out anything specific.
And "What The Bleep Do We Know" made tens of millions of dollars (which is worth way more then 62k likes, but instead millions of people paying to watch it). It's still a load of horse crap.
Andrew Wakefield's documentary on how vaccines cause autism also pulled in 10's of millions with a lot of people believing it, and used similar editing techniques.
62k likes on youtube is not some high barrier of truth to clutch your pearls about. Go look at the like count of flat earth videos for another example.
> Wow you don't like the editing, could you be more shallow and desperate in your defence of the ccp's genocide? The video is excellent in its approach to deliver an important topic in an entertaining and engaging manner, that's why it has successfully reached a greater audience. Your 'criticism' is a joke.
I'm pointing out that it's using well known techniques to make people seem like they're saying the opposite of what they're actually saying, while infusing the whole argument with emotional impact unrelated to what's being said.
As I said originally, the OP would be better off not using a documentary that doesn't use techniques known for telling lies via editing.
>And "What The Bleep Do We Know" made tens of millions of dollars (which is worth way more then 62k likes, but instead millions of people paying to watch it). It's still a load of horse crap.
That's again a terrible comparison. How much something made is not the same as a video on a public platform open to criticism from anyone who is willing to offer criticism in an open comment section. Deniers like yourself can't provide any argument which would hold up to scrutiny that's why you here making hand wavy allegation without engaging anything in specific.
>62k likes on youtube is not some high barrier of truth to clutch your pearls about. Go look at the like count of flat earth videos for another example.
Compare the ratings on such videos and the comments, it's not even remotely on the same level. Your comparisons are dishonest and reek of desperation. You are not addressing the arguments in the video, because you can't, that's why you resort to deceptive rhetoric.
>I'm pointing out that it's using well known techniques to make people seem like they're saying the opposite of what they're actually saying, while infusing the whole argument with emotional impact unrelated to what's being said.
Nonsense. You are again making vague allegations without specifying anything in particular. Your deceptive rhetoric is ineffective.
>As I said originally, the OP would be better off not using a documentary that doesn't use techniques known for telling lies via editing.
As I said originally, you would be better of not trying to defend the ccp's genocide with deceptive vague, hand wavy rhetoric thinking that people are too stupid to see through your dishonest talking points.
>You're really going to double down on the idea that the youtube comment section is some bastion of intellectual greatness?
No, I have never described it as some "bastion of intellectual greatness", but as place where people can freely exchange ideas and formulate criticism. That's why you don't post your non arguments there, because they don't hold up to any scrutiny.
You on the other hand are doubling down on your deceptive rhetoric by concentrating on anything other than something specific in the content of the video. I hinted to it once and I will say it again, you are acting in bad faith and are clearly deceptive.
Some of us here aren't American and don't see America as the sort of inspirational bastion of freedom that seems to be internally reinforced by your media.
Both America & the PRC can be in the wrong simultaneously, but, that said, the PRC is clearly more in the wrong.
Yes, I don't think the United States does anything close to what the PRC is doing to its own citizens domestically, although I guess you can draw some comparisons with mass incarceration.
A more similar comparison with the West would be how Israel sterilized non-white jews through the 90s into the 00s.
Without considering US foreign policy. Even taking the most extreme Zenz estimates, a Uyghur in XJ has less lifetime chance of being incarcerated as a black American in US. And unlike US/western segregationist tendencies at cultural level, the XJ forced integration systems are designed to assimilate and not be a multi-generational minority repression trap. Compare development in Urumqi, Kashgar in XJ to western ghettos (i.e. French Banlieue) or indigenous preserves in Canada without basic amenities. Future BLM, indigenous and minority activists will be fighting long after next generations of Sinicized Uyghurs. Morality is complicated, especially evaluated on factors like time scope. The "long arc" moral universe is not necessarily better than "5 year" plan, and indeed the nature of compound interests / suffering suggest to me, that it's not.
Zenz insanity aside, I am just interested in why the "witnesses" strolled around western and specifically us affiliated mass media keep changing their stories and narratives
How did you arrive at this conclusion? The victim count would massively disagree with it and so would the amount of imprisoned minorities. It seems to me that your first and last sentences disagree with eachother.
Basically, the USA has strategic interests in Muslim countries. They therefore maintain a military presence there. There is a lot of fighting going on in those places, which means that sometimes the military is forced to respond, people get killed, sometimes. These accidents keep happening because the conflicts are ongoing.
By the way, can you show statistics to back up your claims?
Yes, but I also think it is harder when the accidents are foreseen. The United States doesn't take repeated military actions with the rational expectation that there won't be these accidental killings of civilians, so because they are foreseen, they are arguably intended.
Exactly, they are not ideologically bent on persecuting groups of people. Therefore, if people get killed, they can be attributed to errors of judgement.
The people in my high school graduating class in 2005 who joined the armed forces were very excited to be given the opportunity to "kill a bunch of sand ni**rs". They didn't get that mentality out of nowhere.
It's literally empirical, you just might not argue it's conclusive.
But ultimately I'm not going to be gaslit into this weird idea that you're pushing that the US armed forces don't have a racial component to the massive amounts of deaths they've created, when I've seen that with my own eyes.
They're talking about East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), it's the Uyghur jihadist organization that's conducted a number of terrorist attacks using bombs and knives.
Very interesting. I had heard about people being stabbed at a bus stop back in 2014 but I hadn’t heard of many of these incidents.
Thanks for posting!
It seems like concerns about radical Islam are mounting in both the east and west (see Swedish burka ban, new French laws about stopping radicalization).
I wonder what avenues of unilateral action can be taken by China, the EU and US.
It's a weak propagandist tactic to deflect, with false accusations of "terrorism", from the real geopolitical importance of xinjiang: https://youtu.be/ZxvYcByv2M8
You've been posting similar comments all over this thread and it's a bit tiring.
You don't have to like or support what China are doing to acknowledge that the terrorism was real. These are real groups and real documented events that you would be calling terrorism if they'd happened in any other country. Be careful when you start making friends with your enemy's enemy.
Well if people like you spread pro ccp talking points then I see absolutely no reason why he shouldn't repeatedly post the evidence dismantling your propaganda. The absurdity is that China's reign is a literal reign of terror and misinformation as we already saw in Hong Kong and throughout history, not only in Xinjiang, but in their own territories (Tiananmen Square for instance) or dystopian surveillance and oppression, so accusing them of "terrorism" is just the pot calling the kettle black.
>I linked an article on Wikipedia in response to someone’s question. It’s hardly Chinese propaganda. Really?
What kind of absurd bait and switch is that? I am talking about your propaganda right above. You are omitting years of oppression and terrorism against the uyghur people by the ccp + their genocide while dishonestly highlighting the resistance as the terrorism. That's like saying "yea but the jews tried to kill hitler with bombs, that's terrorism" while omitting the context of what was happening to the jews.
What kind of childish mind games are you playing, smh...
I remember after 9/11 there were paranoid fears that the US was going to do extreme things like round up all Muslims and put them in internment camps, etc. China's actually pursuing a policy not too different from those fears.
> Public-sector media (state-funded) is not to be confused with state media (state-controlled), which is "controlled financially and editorially by the state."[1]
This Institute was founded in 2019, is based in Washington D.C., was founded by someone who has ties to the US military, and is a division an relatively new private university that had their license almost revoked also in 2019...
What's really "cringey" is resorting to infantile insults to attack the validity of an informative video that dismantles your narrative instead of formulating actual arguments.
> According to Government statistics and directives, including to “carry out family planning sterilization,” “lower fertility levels,” and ”leave no blind spots,”
> China began building a vast network of massive State- run, highly securitized boarding schools and orphanages to confine Uyghur children, including infants, full time.
> local authorities have eliminated Uyghur education, destroyed Uyghur architecture and household features, and damaged, altered, or completely demolished the vast majority of mosques and sacred sites in the region,
I had not heard of any of this before today. The news only talked about internment, surveillance, and forced labour.
Edit: Why the flood of downvotes? Are the quotes offending people? They are directly from the executive summary of the report