On November 21, Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed an extraordinary joint meeting of the leaders of the BRICS countries, along with the leaders of those countries who have been invited to join the cooperation mechanism from January 1, 2024, called to discuss the situation in the Middle East with particular reference to Gaza. The meeting … Continue reading Xi Jinping: the collective punishment of people in Gaza must stop
Dense. She treated people she barely knew like dirt, the entire time I holidayed with her in China she would look down on the culture of the different towns as if Beijing was the holy grail, and she would constantly competitively insert herself into someone else's conversation. I loved her, because she could be incredibly sweet, but she was also capable of being incredibly mean. But fine, that makes me a chauvanist.
Nah that doesn't make you a chauvinist but it does mean you're using the word dense wrong especially if the above behaviors are your examples for it. Anyway, ignore my low effort cheap shot. It's not really worth responding to other people will actually engage with you on the subject.
As hominem aside, I keep trying in the hopes that something materialises. I'm always happy to persuaded I'm wrong on a topic, but I'm not seeing the silver bullet here
Well I think you should frame the issue the other way. What's the silver bullet convincing you of genocide? An off hand testimony and western news? I've seen video evidence and photos of Palestinian people being bombed and murdered as well as specific evidence showing how Israel is moving them off their land. Crimes on a scale that can't be hidden.
That's what's being claimed about Xinjiang. What Israel is doing to Palestine is what they claim is happening to uigurs. Regardless of prejudice or repression people may be facing there, I'm not convinced they are, there certainly isn't a genocide. If the Western line is that there is one, they better have some damn credible evidence, which, as far as I can tell, they don't.
That's fair. I saw this video[0] and it was covered by DW, BBC, Telegraph, Aljazeera, and Turkish media that I consider to be relatively independent from one another. The counter evidence that I see is only what is the official line from Beijing.
You question Western news as an unreliable source, and that it sometimes indeed is. The Guardian had its offices raided by police a few years back, and since then even it toes close to what the government says. But these media outlets are owned by rich people, who often don't see completely eye-to-eye on a certain topic, and by looking at the differences in these narratives on the same topic you can build a bigger picture.
Chinese media is completely state controlled. There is none of this deviation in narrative, it is literally parrot talk, so it is in my opinion that its much less trustworthy than a western source.
As for Palestine, I don't think anyone buys what Israel and the US say on the matter.
Finally a claim and a source. I recommend you rewatch that BBC video and try to separate the claims from the evidence. The BBC has this great technique where they mix claims backed by some evidence (which might not be good) with a bunch of claims from interviewees backed only by sounding authoritative. You'll probably notice the "evidence" provided is basically:
A man claims he was arrested.
The main thing, the (racistly named) China Cables, and a bunch of reactions to those documents. You can check the documents themselves here, though you have to weigh the possibility of them being forged or the translation being doctored. Though you'll notice that even this dubious document does not describe anything that looks like a genocide.
A woman says she got arrested.
Another woman saying her husband got arrested.
Yet another claims that she was forced to teach there.
That's it really.
Now, if you pay attention you'll notice the BBC horribly obfuscates their sources, but reading the main document (which they claim to be a concentration camp manual), it reads like a very heavy-handed manual for what they're actually advertised as: vocational training and de-radicalising centres.
Then later on they say a man was arrested for using WhatsApp, and show some hacker aesthetics version of bulletin 20, but that one describes people who use 快呀 (kuaiya) software (apparently a file sharing app) to spread violent material.
After that, they do the same thing with bulletin 2, framing the notion that people with passports who can't be ruled out as terrorists needing security checks as a bad thing. Specially considering some of the countries listed have a history of financing terrorist groups abroad. Note that none of the claims by the previous interviewees (cameras checking even which doors you use) are in this source.
Skipping over all the interviewees again they cite the telegram to say that inmates have to stay at least 1 years and there are some conditions for leaving, such as good scores and less terrorist behaviours. If you ignore the sad music, sounds like a pretty normal thing for a de-radicalisation centre. Then they randomly add that "after that students may have to do forced labour" but cite something else entirely that says that they should be aided and monitored for one year. Weird.
Then they interview the "Washington-based Uyghur group guy" lol. That's all, really, but with a lot of fancy music and cinematography. I purposefully ignored the interviewees because each of them would be a can of worms that only pad for time in this one, but you can look them up too.
So to sum it up, their brand new evidence is a purposefully misinterpreted set of leaked documents, which may or may not be real, and which support the narrative of genocide less than it does the official one of de-radicalisation centres. In fact notice that the BBC guy doesn't use the word "genocide" once, but launders his argument through the interviewees. Since you mentioned the scientific method, consider the null hypothesis as China's official narrative being true and the genocide narrative being your hypothesis. This does not make the genocide hypothesis more likely.
See how much easier it is to examine claims when you provide them clearly and with sources? I may sound snarky but I'm actually glad you did, since this documentary (back when it was hosted on BBC proper, don't know what happened there) was when I started seriously questioning the mainstream narrative.
Now as a sidenote, note some absences. You have complained about impartiality in this thread, but throughout this whole documentary the Beeb guy does not interview a single Chinese official in good faith, only that shouting interruption with the diplomat. Every single interviewee is of the same position, there aren't even people from the other Muslim countries who have visited and disagree. Are we supposed to believe that this is impartial just because they bring a lot of people but with the same opinions?
Besides that there is no official number cited from their sources. The guy shouts at the diplomat "hundreds of thousands" but such a number never pops up in the documents. At another point somebody else says "a million" which famously comes from Adrian Zenz.
Also I think it's cute one of the biggest point in the main document back in 2017 was "prevent epidemics." And point 13 is explicitly saying inmates should be able to contact family to "keep family at the ease" and "make students feel safe." Horrifying.
And lastly, have this uncited court document that spells CPC wrong and lists as smoking gun a guy being arrested for actual clear-cut religious intolerance. "All people who do not pray are Han Chinese kafirs."
And I think you're being a little too trusting of bourgeois media. Lest we forget the Iraq war and lessons we were supposed to learn from that.
Like I said, again, I'm not seeing bodies. I'm not seeing death squads. I'm not seeing violence fighting back. If there was Islamic terrorism in the region prior to any of China's programs why would the violence from them decrease after they started rounding people up? Why would the population of Uighers increase over the past years that a supposed "genocide" is going on.
Why aren't Chinese people as openly fascistic towards these minorities? I have many friends from China and none of them speak or act like fascists when it comes to minorities of all types in China. I don't think you can have a genocide and hide it, without a population that vehemently supports it. This further then raised the question of why would fascists who love murder try and hide? They'd be proud like the Nazis.
I think additionally you'll see this reflected on the way the "genocide" in Xinjiang is treated like a story of the week. It's not a fun short little thing that can be completed in a
Few weeks, months or even years. It takes time, or millions of people being mobilized. Which is evidently not something we're seeing there.
Sometimes you can read through the cracks, others times you can't. Gleaning reliable information from what appears to be a lie isn't possible ya know?
A little bit. I do appreciate your last long comment. I'm still trying to reconcile what I've read here with what I've heard from my colleague who fought to get his family out of the region.
I guess "genocide" was definitely too strong. I'm now leaning more towards "mass forced re-education". Baby steps here.
Incredibly dense or just didn't agree with you?
Dense. She treated people she barely knew like dirt, the entire time I holidayed with her in China she would look down on the culture of the different towns as if Beijing was the holy grail, and she would constantly competitively insert herself into someone else's conversation. I loved her, because she could be incredibly sweet, but she was also capable of being incredibly mean. But fine, that makes me a chauvanist.
Nah that doesn't make you a chauvinist but it does mean you're using the word dense wrong especially if the above behaviors are your examples for it. Anyway, ignore my low effort cheap shot. It's not really worth responding to other people will actually engage with you on the subject.
As hominem aside, I keep trying in the hopes that something materialises. I'm always happy to persuaded I'm wrong on a topic, but I'm not seeing the silver bullet here
Well I think you should frame the issue the other way. What's the silver bullet convincing you of genocide? An off hand testimony and western news? I've seen video evidence and photos of Palestinian people being bombed and murdered as well as specific evidence showing how Israel is moving them off their land. Crimes on a scale that can't be hidden.
That's what's being claimed about Xinjiang. What Israel is doing to Palestine is what they claim is happening to uigurs. Regardless of prejudice or repression people may be facing there, I'm not convinced they are, there certainly isn't a genocide. If the Western line is that there is one, they better have some damn credible evidence, which, as far as I can tell, they don't.
That's fair. I saw this video[0] and it was covered by DW, BBC, Telegraph, Aljazeera, and Turkish media that I consider to be relatively independent from one another. The counter evidence that I see is only what is the official line from Beijing.
You question Western news as an unreliable source, and that it sometimes indeed is. The Guardian had its offices raided by police a few years back, and since then even it toes close to what the government says. But these media outlets are owned by rich people, who often don't see completely eye-to-eye on a certain topic, and by looking at the differences in these narratives on the same topic you can build a bigger picture.
Chinese media is completely state controlled. There is none of this deviation in narrative, it is literally parrot talk, so it is in my opinion that its much less trustworthy than a western source.
As for Palestine, I don't think anyone buys what Israel and the US say on the matter.
0: https://inv.vern.cc/watch?time_continue=707&v=NGDr38eU62U
Finally a claim and a source. I recommend you rewatch that BBC video and try to separate the claims from the evidence. The BBC has this great technique where they mix claims backed by some evidence (which might not be good) with a bunch of claims from interviewees backed only by sounding authoritative. You'll probably notice the "evidence" provided is basically:
A man claims he was arrested.
The main thing, the (racistly named) China Cables, and a bunch of reactions to those documents. You can check the documents themselves here, though you have to weigh the possibility of them being forged or the translation being doctored. Though you'll notice that even this dubious document does not describe anything that looks like a genocide.
A woman says she got arrested.
Another woman saying her husband got arrested.
Yet another claims that she was forced to teach there.
That's it really.
Now, if you pay attention you'll notice the BBC horribly obfuscates their sources, but reading the main document (which they claim to be a concentration camp manual), it reads like a very heavy-handed manual for what they're actually advertised as: vocational training and de-radicalising centres.
Then later on they say a man was arrested for using WhatsApp, and show some hacker aesthetics version of bulletin 20, but that one describes people who use 快呀 (kuaiya) software (apparently a file sharing app) to spread violent material.
After that, they do the same thing with bulletin 2, framing the notion that people with passports who can't be ruled out as terrorists needing security checks as a bad thing. Specially considering some of the countries listed have a history of financing terrorist groups abroad. Note that none of the claims by the previous interviewees (cameras checking even which doors you use) are in this source.
Skipping over all the interviewees again they cite the telegram to say that inmates have to stay at least 1 years and there are some conditions for leaving, such as good scores and less terrorist behaviours. If you ignore the sad music, sounds like a pretty normal thing for a de-radicalisation centre. Then they randomly add that "after that students may have to do forced labour" but cite something else entirely that says that they should be aided and monitored for one year. Weird.
Then they interview the "Washington-based Uyghur group guy" lol. That's all, really, but with a lot of fancy music and cinematography. I purposefully ignored the interviewees because each of them would be a can of worms that only pad for time in this one, but you can look them up too.
So to sum it up, their brand new evidence is a purposefully misinterpreted set of leaked documents, which may or may not be real, and which support the narrative of genocide less than it does the official one of de-radicalisation centres. In fact notice that the BBC guy doesn't use the word "genocide" once, but launders his argument through the interviewees. Since you mentioned the scientific method, consider the null hypothesis as China's official narrative being true and the genocide narrative being your hypothesis. This does not make the genocide hypothesis more likely.
See how much easier it is to examine claims when you provide them clearly and with sources? I may sound snarky but I'm actually glad you did, since this documentary (back when it was hosted on BBC proper, don't know what happened there) was when I started seriously questioning the mainstream narrative.
Now as a sidenote, note some absences. You have complained about impartiality in this thread, but throughout this whole documentary the Beeb guy does not interview a single Chinese official in good faith, only that shouting interruption with the diplomat. Every single interviewee is of the same position, there aren't even people from the other Muslim countries who have visited and disagree. Are we supposed to believe that this is impartial just because they bring a lot of people but with the same opinions?
Besides that there is no official number cited from their sources. The guy shouts at the diplomat "hundreds of thousands" but such a number never pops up in the documents. At another point somebody else says "a million" which famously comes from Adrian Zenz.
Also I think it's cute one of the biggest point in the main document back in 2017 was "prevent epidemics." And point 13 is explicitly saying inmates should be able to contact family to "keep family at the ease" and "make students feel safe." Horrifying.
And lastly, have this uncited court document that spells CPC wrong and lists as smoking gun a guy being arrested for actual clear-cut religious intolerance. "All people who do not pray are Han Chinese kafirs."
This was fun.
Great vivisection.
Man that's the BBC lol
And I think you're being a little too trusting of bourgeois media. Lest we forget the Iraq war and lessons we were supposed to learn from that.
Like I said, again, I'm not seeing bodies. I'm not seeing death squads. I'm not seeing violence fighting back. If there was Islamic terrorism in the region prior to any of China's programs why would the violence from them decrease after they started rounding people up? Why would the population of Uighers increase over the past years that a supposed "genocide" is going on.
Why aren't Chinese people as openly fascistic towards these minorities? I have many friends from China and none of them speak or act like fascists when it comes to minorities of all types in China. I don't think you can have a genocide and hide it, without a population that vehemently supports it. This further then raised the question of why would fascists who love murder try and hide? They'd be proud like the Nazis.
I think additionally you'll see this reflected on the way the "genocide" in Xinjiang is treated like a story of the week. It's not a fun short little thing that can be completed in a Few weeks, months or even years. It takes time, or millions of people being mobilized. Which is evidently not something we're seeing there.
Sometimes you can read through the cracks, others times you can't. Gleaning reliable information from what appears to be a lie isn't possible ya know?
Have you given this any more thought? Have you come to a different conclusion? Did you feel albigu's comments were lacking in some way?
A little bit. I do appreciate your last long comment. I'm still trying to reconcile what I've read here with what I've heard from my colleague who fought to get his family out of the region. I guess "genocide" was definitely too strong. I'm now leaning more towards "mass forced re-education". Baby steps here.