My (indigenous) girlfriend said something recently that I just have no clue how to grasp.
Disclaimer: I've always been really bad at explaining opinions/making arguments to people.
We are amerikkkan (sorry)
We we're talking about china and it's modern government. This had always been a sensitive topic for us: I usually state something to the effect of "there are some very real problems with china but the country is an overal good for not only the people but the whole world." Whilst they take strong problem with destruction of historical artifacts/art during the revolution (they are an art historian) and find it irredemable. The thing that really confused me recently was them equating the "nepalese cultural genocide" (I have no real knowledge of what they are talking about) to the genocide of their people. For added detail, they and their tribe are currently fighting for the preservation of what remains of the tribe's historical artifacts.
I don't want to add many personal details but it should suffice to say their tribe was almost completely wiped out.)
Am I just off base for not understanding what they are talking about here? This comparison seems completely wild to me and I don't know if I'm just being insensitive or something.
I’m not aware of accusations of a genocide against Nepalese but there are a wide range of accusations about a genocide against the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang province.
The accusation keeps changing over time being variously millions in gulag concentration camps, mass sterilizations, and claims of a “cultural genocide” or of assimilationist ethnic policies.
These are all false. When you look into these claims the evidence just isn’t there (eg you can’t actually hide millions of prisoners in concentration camps and it turns out there’s no sign of them), or sometimes there’s a kernel of truth that was grossly distorted (eg the claims of mass sterilization turned out to actually be the provision of free birth control aka providing healthcare).
Almost all of these claims are traced back to a religious zealot named Adrian Zenz in Germany who believes he was given a mission directly from God who he believes spoke to him telling him to free the Chinese from evil atheist communism and convert them to Christianity.
So this guy just makes shit up the BBC prints it because it’s state run media by a state that is seeking to defame China, and similarly these claims are run uncritically in the USA where the council on foreign affairs is nominally independent but functionally an arm of the state department.
Put simply, it’s propaganda and almost completely invented.
There was a heavy handed police crackdown against far right Islamic separatism in the region as Xinjiang province is located very near to Afghanistan, so a lot of the Al Qaida and ISIS style Islamic extremism merged with Uyghur separatism and so China did crack down pretty hard on Islamic extremists back in the 2000s and you could perhaps criticize this action as heavy handed or even authoritarian but it wasn’t a genocide. It was against Islamic extremism in the 2000s and you can read about it in the UN report, only around 10,000 were imprisoned which sounds about accurate for that kind of police action.
Anyway Adrian Zenz takes 10,000 or so people imprisoned and rounds that up to “millions”, and he takes the fact the Chinese government provides free healthcare services such as birth control and that’s “mass sterilizations”. The BBC and the council on foreign affairs are waging a propaganda war against their geopolitical enemy China and BAM you have 90% of the west convinced China is a genocidal regime.
They are motivated to make you think of China in the same sense as Nazi germany because they are building political support for military action against China. It’s the drums of war. That’s what it is. They want to get your blood up with righteous anger and demand that they destroy China. They want to attack China and so therefore they want you to demand they attack China.
I showed them enough evidence on the uyghur thing that they aren't a believer.