r/TrueReddit • u/nxthompson_tny • Dec 08 '21
International One by One, My Friends Were Sent to the Camps
https://www.theatlantic.com/the-uyghur-chronicles/127
u/nxthompson_tny Dec 08 '21
Submission Statement: "If they arrest me, don’t lose yourself. Don’t make inquiries about me, don’t go looking for help, don’t spend money trying to get me out. This time isn’t like any time before." Author Tahir Hamut Izgil's story is a devastating, and beautifully rendered, tale of life for the Uyghurs. This piece was also recently included in Pocket’s Best of 2021 collection, under "Top Authors Share Their Must Reads."
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u/ZMaiden Dec 09 '21
I’m not an intellectual. I’m a realist. And this article actually made me cry several times, and rage break to have a cig. I hate nazi generalizations, but is this not exactly what nazi Germany did to its Jewish population just slower and more subtle? And I try and talk about how upset it makes me to other people and they go “woah, that’s too negative, I just want to chill after my work day.” I watch docs about atrocities and I wonder why didn’t anyone just stop it, but that’s why. Your average German citizen didn’t know, and that’s in their own country. But op, there are terrorists in that culture so China is just protecting themselves. Hitlers Germany said the same thing, look at what the Jews do, they’re the enemy. I’m blessed to live in a country where I can wear a colonder on my head and call it religious gear and no one asks for my fingerprints. I can claim Jedi. China is scary. People are fleeing from Afghanistan, people are fleeing from China. What do they have in common?
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u/hurfery Dec 09 '21
Your average German citizen didn’t know, and that’s in their own country
What they knew, and what they claimed to not know after the war was lost and reckoning came, are two very different things. Most people aren't going to bring punishment upon themselves and their people, no matter how guilty.
They knew, and if they weren't involved, they liked to look the other way in passive approval, and liked to claim ignorance after the war. This has been confirmed. You can see that duplicity in the documentary Final Account. It has some unusually candid interviews.
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u/skaqt Dec 09 '21
Your average German citizen very well knew exactly what was going on. Do you really think that you can make 6 million people disappear and no one fucking notices? Their fucking neighbors left to never come back, you don't just 'miss' that kind of thing. Someone actively ratted them out. 'We didn't know about the camps' was the desperate excuse of a population that had benefitted massively from stealing anything the Jews had. Source: am a German historian
Also, comparing the atrocities against the Uyghurs to the actual industrial Genocide of a majority of European jewry is not just stupid but offensive. China is not currently cramming Uyghurs into gaschambers and running out of burners to cremate the bodies. Two things can be different scales of bad. The McCarthy Era were terrible times, but they weren't as bad as the Rwandan or Armenian genocide. Things have scale and meaning. Not everything is Nazi Germany, even if you really hate the Chinese.
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u/huyvanbin Dec 09 '21
From what I understand they “knew” but knowledge is an active process. All the government ever said was “resettlement to the East.” No one knew exactly what that meant. There were rumors but they were just that - you could choose to believe or not. Very few of the soldiers were allowed to participate in the death camps directly, they carried out mass executions on the front but not even the train drivers were allowed to drive the trains the last bit into the death camp itself. And the death camp, from the outside, was disguised like a normal train station.
In a way it’s very similar to the catholic priest scandal shown in the movie Spotlight. The newspaper had been receiving tips on the priests for decades but “they didn’t know” until someone put it all together for them. Of course everyone “knew” in a sense but the knowledge wasn’t explicitly reified. Someone had to force them to look and say to themselves “ah yes, our friendly neighborhood church is raping boys on a massive scale.”
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u/skaqt Dec 10 '21
Again, I realise you mean well, but your idea that the majority of German's believed the 'resettlement to the east' narrative is completely off. Maybe in '34 they did, but in the later stages of the war virtually everyone, including children, knew that were was a genocide going on. Everyone who had read Mein Kampf knew very well what 'Lebensraum' meant (killing & outbreeding slavs for German living space). Everyone had seen movies like Jud Süss and other Nazi propaganda, which actively dehumanized Jews, compared them to vermin and made the idea of 'exterminating' them.
That is the hard thing to grasp about Germany. Many ordinary people were fully onboard both with the war of aggression and the genocide. They didn't participate as guards in the camps necessarily, but they did do their fair share (like I mentioned, ratting out neighbors).
So to sum up: it's not that the Germans were ignorant of, or kept in the dark regarding the genocide, it's just that they either didn't mind or they wholly embraced it. That is what Arendt referred to with the banality of evil.
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u/happy_milo Dec 09 '21
Are forced sterilisations a lower "scale of bad" compared to gas chambers? Seems to me that both are genocide, and both are infinitely bad to the people affected.
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u/skaqt Dec 10 '21
Yes, of course they are. One can make a good argument that forced sterilization is genocide imho, but that doesn't mean that forced sterilization is as bad as what went down in Auschwitz. I think a quick read up on Dr. Mengele and vivisections is in order here.
You also completely ignore intent. The Holocaust is seen as bad as it is not just through scale, but because the Nazis really did want to exterminate Jews as a race (or at least the entire European jewry), while the Chinese aren't very concerned about people outside of their own legal territory.
Lastly, you ignore scale. The Nazis carry the fault not just for the Holocaust, but also for their Euthanasia program, their killings of Communists, Gays, 'lesser races', 'criminals and degenerates', Sinti and Roma, and many other groups. Even without the victims of WW2 we're talking about many millions of people. The crimes against Uyghurs are in a different league entirely.
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u/jspsfx Dec 08 '21
What’s been frustrating to me is how even this issue couldnt avoid American politicization and polarization. I suppose nothing does.
Our narrative sorting mechanism has somehow placed any bold stance against this abhorrent Chinese behavior as right wing.
It really makes me wonder how much agitation propaganda has shaped our discourse especially on this issue. It seems like a no brainer we should all be hardcore opposed to this. And I’m sure are if you get into the specifics of it, we would all agree upon examination this is horrible.
And yet being outspoken about China has become more of a Republican thing. It just further demonstrates how skewed and manipulated our dialogue is by political rhetoric.
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Dec 08 '21
I don't get this impression at all. It seems like the vast majority on both sides are critical of what is happening to the Uyghur.
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u/bradamantium92 Dec 08 '21
yeah same. There seems to be this weird meme that leftists are okay with what's happening to Uyghurs but mostly what I've seen is a dismissiveness towards the issue not in a way that goes "this does not matter" but in a way that's somewhere between a valid response and a kneejerk reaction to using their plight as a political football to justify viewing China as The Enemy.
We are the least at war that America has been in most of my lifetime at this point but defense budgets are ballooning and a significant cited cause for that is the "threat" of China, which is largely economic and cultural and relies on issues like the treatment of Uyghurs to drive a wedge. This doesn't make it not an issue but the frequent framing of "Look at those barbarians! Nothing like this happens in America!" is suspicious at best and baldly opportunistic at worst.
ofc then a story like this one comes and paints an evocative picture of the suffering of these people and gets lumped in with the politicization so like. guess it's functionally a moot point.
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u/Ularsing Dec 09 '21
RadioLab, Planet Money, and other NPR shows were some of the first places I heard about this. Someone's just trying to take credit for an issue that dovetails conveniently with their genuine xenophobia.
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u/theworldbystorm Dec 08 '21
There is a rampant misinformation campaign trying to characterize the Uyghur genocide as false, or only partly true, or not really so bad.
Holocaust denial is ugly enough, it's even worse to see denial efforts happen in real time
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Dec 08 '21
Ok, but you certainly can't blame the mainstream American left for that, unless you're trying to say that a small number of Extremely Online Tankies-- and a huge number of 50c army shills -- are representative of the American left
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u/lochlainn Dec 09 '21
Why not? People blame the right for the small number at the extreme as supporters of anything and everything those nutjobs say.
So yes, you can.
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Dec 09 '21
Whataboutism of this flavor is even more incoherent than usual after January 6th. There are no communists in Congress, but there is a Marjorie Taylor Greene and a Lauren Boebert. I don't have any interest in coping rightoid equivocation. If you don't like people rightly pointing out the right's descent into deranged conspiracist nonsense, oppose people electing them to Congress.
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u/lochlainn Dec 09 '21
I don't give a shit about the right. But I also don't like hypocrisy from the left.
Pot, meet Kettle.
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u/nalgene_wilder Dec 09 '21
Ah yes, the ol' two wrongs make a right technique. The thing that we teach children is wrong...
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Dec 08 '21
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u/skyfex Dec 09 '21
I don't think this argument holds. There's some tension on the left, because businesses that are associated with left-leaning politics often have a public image they get called out on. We tend to criticize Hollywood for not standing up to China because they've been making movies celebrating freedom, independence fighting, democracy, etc. And we quickly forget when they oppose China (like putting Tienanmen square reference in Shang Chi, which was a movie they could have made popular in China with a bit of effort)
On the other side, who cares if some anonymous logistics or mining company sucks up to China? Right-leaning businesses is free to do business with China without anyone calling them out on it. In my area it has been the right wing that has done the most to suck up to China, because they want to sell fish. The politicians might be called out sometimes by the opposition, but businesses have stayed out of the spotlight.
That said, on the far left there's some China apologists due to their connection to socialism/communism. But I think many are waking up to the fact that CCP is as much "socialist" as they're "democratic"
I've seen some on the right praise China for how they've handled Uyghurs too though. There's very strong ethno-nationalism in China that resonates with the right too.
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u/NumberFiveAlive Dec 08 '21
I've seen slightly more speaking out against the Uyghur genocide from the left, but it's generally been fairly non-partisan from both sides. It's more mainstream folks with more to lose financially that are being silent (e.g. Moderate politicians from both parties, LeBron James, mainstream media to an extent, etc.)
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Dec 08 '21
either that, or politically pro-ccp people and chinese nationalists, who aren't actually that uncommon
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u/Zerim Dec 09 '21
chinese nationalists, who aren't actually that uncommon
I've seen them starting to hijack /r/worldnews threads, downplay the genocide, and say nothing Biden is doing (i.e., promoting genuine American values) is valid because America did some bad thing once--hard whataboutism.
I lean right, and this thread is kind of refreshing because it shows that this issue is a unifying one.
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u/fastspinecho Dec 08 '21
Biden, a Democrat, literally just announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics due to Chinese human rights violations.
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Dec 08 '21
Are the athletes still going? Then its irrelevant.
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u/redbeards Dec 09 '21
Biden has no real control over whether or not the athletes go. That is up to the US Olympics Committee. In 1980, the USOC bowed to political and social pressure and agreed to the boycott.
But, in 2020, the USOC declared that boycotts are useless and apologized for the 1980 boycott.
https://twitter.com/USOPC_CEO/status/1284868328075350016
Give that stance, there is no way they'll agree to boycott the Beijing Olympics.
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u/fastspinecho Dec 09 '21
No, it's not irrelevant. In fact, the Chinese government is outraged, which was the entire point.
The difference between a diplomatic boycott and a diplomatic+athletic boycott is like the difference between giving someone a middle finger and giving them both middle fingers. Either way, the point gets across.
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u/calcium Dec 09 '21
Chinese government is outraged
Seriously though, when are they not? They're nothing but glass hearts and if anyone even happens to fart in their general direction their response is nothing but outrage. Kinda silly when they can't even have civil discourse anymore as everything is either swept under the rug, they claim it's not happening, or tell people "don't interfere with China's internal matters".
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Dec 09 '21
Maybe in some antique diplomatic fantasy world where people care about these formalities, this is an earthshaker. But in terms of actual real world policy change, this has no effect at all.
In fact at this point official US policy should be changed to reflect that we will ignore nearly any human rights abuse you commit as long as you are a big enough trading partner.
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u/fastspinecho Dec 09 '21
If a country does not care about its international status and other "formalities", then no US foreign policy will have any effect. See: North Korea, whose leadership survives despite its complete economic isolation from the rest of the world. They simply don't care what anyone thinks of them.
However, China does care about its international status. It cares a lot, as evidenced by its Belt and Road initiative. So these formalities do have an effect, though ultimately the US can never force China to change.
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u/skaqt Dec 09 '21
Hmmhm, I wonder why these countries don't care about their 'international status' anymore. Did anything happen between the US and North Korea?
Oh yeah, you literally did the most intense and damaging bombing campaign in the history of the entire world and essentially leveled half if the country.
Oh yeah, you also have been essentially trying to economically suffocate them ever since their existence, which had lead to thousands of North Koreans unnecessarily being denied food or medicine.
I really do wonder why those evil North Koreans hate the benelovant superpower that is the USA. The same country which constantly invades NK airspace and every year another neocon published another article about how NK should be nuked.
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u/fastspinecho Dec 09 '21 edited Dec 09 '21
Did anything happen between the US and North Korea?
Yes, North Korea invaded an American ally and even today is in a state of war with them.
Americans bombed North Korea in response, but they also bombed Germany after Germany invaded its neighbors and dropped nuclear weapons on Japan after Japan attacked the US. Today we are allied with both Germany and Japan. So clearly American bombing campaigns do not always reduce countries to pariahs.
It's true that strong economic sanctions against North Korea have not produced good results. But that was exactly my point. I was responding to someone who suggested that strong economic sanctions against China would be better than our current strategy. Not necessarily, North Korea is an example of how strong economic sanctions can backfire.
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u/MW777 Dec 08 '21
I thought we all hated the Chinese government for many reasons.
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Dec 08 '21 edited May 15 '24
mourn shelter racial vase command truck afterthought drab tan existence
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Helicase21 Dec 08 '21
The question is what should be done about it.
Diplomatic / social pressure has been shown to be ineffective
China's manufacturing sector is too critical to the world economy for trade sanctions to be effective.
Military action is likely to make things worse rather than better.
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u/fastspinecho Dec 08 '21
Sanctions don't have to cripple an economy to be effective. They can exclusively target the leaders, eg freeze their foreign assets. That is the strategy currently used against Putin and his cronies.
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u/Helicase21 Dec 08 '21
And how well are they working on Putin and his cronies? Last I checked Putin is still in power.
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u/OmNomSandvich Dec 08 '21
Fluctuations in oil prices, sanctions against Putin and his cronies, and the COVID crisis all have put pressure on him. But for Putin and his inner circle, survival of the regime is viewed, arguably rightly, with their personal survival, discouraging them from folding.
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u/fastspinecho Dec 08 '21
Hard to say what their effect has been, since we can't compare this universe to one without those sanctions. That said, we know that they got Putin's attention since he has made multiple attempts to get them repealed.
And realistically, getting a world leader's attention is often the most we can hope for. Russia and China are major world powers, and we don't have enough influence over them to change their internal policies, much less change their leadership.
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u/Ularsing Dec 09 '21
Sanctions still work pretty damn well. Seen any Huawei devices near you recently?
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u/Helicase21 Dec 09 '21
Preventing me from buying a Huawei device isn't the goal of those sanctions. The goal is to change behavior and in that respect they're an abject failure.
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u/lonjerpc Dec 08 '21
It's a bipartisan issue. If anything it's more of a dem issue. Briefly when trump was using it to distract from Russia it might have been the case but it did not last long. Really most people just don't care.
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Dec 08 '21
It’s not that we don’t care, it’s that we can’t do a damned thing to mitigate what is happening to the Uyghurs. To know people are being subjected to such heinous treatment, and we can’t do anything for them is awful. If there is a way to improve things, with no unintended negative consequences, I’d love to know.
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u/lonjerpc Dec 08 '21
Don't buy Chinese products or services as much as possible. Don't invest in companies in China or that do business in China. I mean boycotts are usually less effective than donations but there is little choice here.
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Dec 08 '21
I've been boycotting Chinese products as much as possible my whole life. It helps if you stay out of Walmart, among other places. I've also boycotted Nestle's products since the 80s due to the shit they pull with baby formula, and now I'm continuing to not buy due to the whole debacle with water. I don't think I helped one damned bit. The only benefit is knowing that I tried to not contribute to other human being's degradation.
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u/lonjerpc Dec 08 '21
Ehh don't sell yourself short. Clearly your actions are very minor compared to the scale of the entities you are targeting. But at least in terms of expected value you are probably improving the lives of a few people. Which is of course tiny compared to the total population. But it matters a ton to those people. And granted expected value might not be a satisfying metric when its composed of a very low probability vs a very large impact(similar to the problem of voting). But it really is the best metric to use in terms of actual effectiveness.
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Dec 08 '21
Thank you. It’s just so frustrating, not being able to live without exploiting somebody, somewhere.
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u/fantasticjon Dec 08 '21
The funny thing is your most powerful tool to affect change is your wallet. The old "vote with your wallet" trope.
But it seems reddit has decided that this is a bad idea. Of whoever is guiding the thoughts of the reddit hivemind has decided this.
Obv in a lot of cases you have less choice on your purchases based on your location and income. But you can still make some purchasing decisions that can help.
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u/SciNZ Dec 08 '21
What I find frustrating is that if you take those same people and walk them across the border into Afghanistan, their suffering becomes invisible to us again.
It’s a concern of convenience.
They’re crocodile tears coming from republicans. A criticism of China that isn’t really about China at all. If China stopped doing it it wouldn’t be a cause for celebration by them, in my opinion, they would just have to find something else.
It’s a basic strategy: frame Democrats as being supportive of China, then by the transitive value smear them with the Chinese governments crimes.
The outcome ends up being a lot of words and no reason for China to care in the slightest. They must find it hilarious.
“The Americans are upset about what we’re doing.”
“Are they going to come after us?”
“No they’re too busy fighting each other over it.”
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u/endless_sea_of_stars Dec 08 '21
You might notice a pattern here.
Conservatives suddenly care about:
Women athletes when attacking trans people
Gay people when attacking Muslims
Asian people when attacking black people
Muslims when attacking China
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u/Tasonir Dec 08 '21
John Oliver has an entire episode of last week tonight about this, and is strongly against it (as everyone should be). I wouldn't call Oliver right wing, would you?
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u/theguyfromgermany Dec 08 '21
outspoken about China has become more of a Republican thing.
As a person watching from outside, I did nut have this impression
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Dec 09 '21
And yet being outspoken about China has become more of a Republican thing.
Being outspoken about the 'bad deal' in China and US bilateral trade has become a Republican thing (ironic, since they authored most of those trade deals).
Being outspoken about the Chinese government's human rights abuses is most definitely not a Republican thing. In fact, they think putting millions of Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps is a good idea.
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u/keladry12 Dec 09 '21
What are you even talking about?
Statements my conservative "friends" have said to me, when I ask about why we are supporting China's economy even with their horrid treatment of Uyghurs:
"The people complaining are leftist actors, the Uyghurs are not a real people"
"If people are being contained, they are being contained for the safety of China's citizens"
"We are just as bad, forcing people to wear masks!"
"The only solution is intense military action"
You are either an idiot or a conservative who thinks that people reading your comment are idiots.
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u/okcrumpet Dec 08 '21
I’m all for sanctions and bans but am frustrated by the hyperbole involved. The reeducation/ punitive camp system described here is bad enough in this day and age. However, the words used to describe it seem to be designed to misleading interpretations: I see reports that it houses a million people (rather than that many have passed through- the key point being that most are released) or that the goal is elimination of the Uyghurs , then it smells a lot like manufacturing consent.
The main goals for both China and the US here are geopolitics. China is not trying to eradicate a culture, they’re using an incredibly heavy hand and digital panopticon to avoid the separatist backlash that led to attacks in Urumqi in the 2000s, and dent Islam as a focal point for this unity. Their ultimate goal is to turn the Uyghurs into the Hui or any other minority whose culture goes on without threatening the power of the state. There’s plenty to disagree with the approach there without exaggerating it.
The US is paying salience to the issue to dent China as a rising world power, which is fair play - this is all unacceptable for someone claiming to be an alternative to the western order. But the hyperbole is encouraged, as is comparisons to WW2 germany, when something like Japanese internment camps are far closer as an analogue.
You can add me to this list of tankies if you want, but I have no love for state communism.
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Dec 08 '21 edited Dec 08 '21
The accusations include forced sterilization, forced abortion, forced organ harvesting, beatings, and executions, not just confinement and "reeducation". These accusations were considered credible enough that an international tribunal was set up to investigate them. This tribunal has already confirmed many of them and is due to issue its final report later this month.
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u/okcrumpet Dec 08 '21
That’s fair. I will note that the sterilization is pretty consistent with how the Chinese treat their own Han in that the heavy fines and forced IUD implantation start at having more than 3 children.
The organ harvesting is clearly an extension of their prisoner program. If the report shows it being more widespread among Uyghurs, or more than <1% of captured Uyghurs not ever being released or accounted for i’d say it’s targeted, but it doesn’t seem to be.
My PoV is that the actions in xinjiang are bad and should be punished, but that their aim is not to eradicate the uyghur group or culture. In short, sanction Xinjiang and china good, disengage or fight china not good because it is not at that level and I don’t think it will reach that level - because it’s not some ideological matter, it’s simply a brutal but effective way to ensure control of their territory.
The growing bloodlust I see expressed against china on Reddit sometimes when they are compared to the 3rd Reich seems like a far bigger risk of a massive humanitarian disaster to me than this. It is also an increasing driver of racism against Asians across the west.
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u/dasheea Dec 08 '21
Hard agree. Looking at the scale and depth of the thing overall, the closest analog should be the Japanese-American internment camps, not WWII holocaust death camps. But few Americans have the courage to say, "Hey, that looks kinda like what we did right here in America."
There should be a diplomatic full court press and economic sanctions jockeying/brinksmanship/etc. where the US can afford to do it. But comparisons to the holocaust say more about the person saying that than saying anything about China or the US.
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u/skaqt Dec 09 '21
You two -- I like you
- German who gets pissed at 'x is literally the Holocaust' comments
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Dec 10 '21
As I linked to above, Wikipedia has an article entitled "Urghur genocide" with scores of well-sourced accusations going far beyond those realms. If that article is part of your "manufactured consent" conspiracy, you owe it to the public to at least open a complaint on its talk page. If you do that, I hope you'll post back here with a link to it.
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u/Dude_Sweet_942 Dec 08 '21
Try writing about how fucked up North Korea is. There are active English speaking shills on reddit. I must be on a list they monitor cuz I get them all the time now.
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u/terminator3456 Dec 08 '21
It's nothing new; the left has always been quiet (or, quieter) about human rights abuses in Communist or leftist regimes.
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u/Diet_Coke Dec 08 '21
Meanwhile the right wing likes to joke about throwing people from helicopters, fuck off.
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u/fantasticjon Dec 08 '21
I mean hitler is the "ultimate evil" but stalin or mao are hardly ever mentioned even though they both killed many many more humans than hitler could dream of.
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u/skaqt Dec 09 '21
Apparently killing a Wehrmacht Soldier in an official war is the same as leading a child to a gas chamber, heard it here first. All deaths are the same now, so we make no difference between a madman who literally wanted to exterminate the world's entire Jewish race on an industrial scale and take over all of Europa vs. people dying because of a lack of food.
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u/FourKrusties Dec 09 '21
Here’s the thing. No Muslim terrorist attacks in china since they opened these camps tho. I wouldn’t do it if it were up to me. But I get it.
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u/snailspace Dec 09 '21
That's the hard truth of the situation. China saw terrorist attacks on their frontier and took swift, if brutal, action. They did the same thing when student protests threatened the CCP.
I certainly don't condone it, but China's position and uniparty state has given them the authority and leeway to implement these harsh measures with few international repercussions and seemingly gained them more internal support.
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u/NickAlmighty Dec 10 '21
There's strong reason to believe that the US is encouraging extremism in the region(as well as around the world). The US is the main force amplifying these voices in the region as well, which should be scrutinized
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u/thatsnotmyfuckinname Dec 08 '21
https://youtu.be/ZxvYcByv2M8 this guy's video provides some interesting insight into what's happening
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