I believe China acknowledges the facilities exist, they would dispute that they are torture camps though. I'm of two minds, on the one hand I can easily imagine a government committing human rights abuses in response to a security threat. I think it's good to be skeptical of the state narrative that they're nice vocational training facilities. There's a decent chance things are happening that I would find unacceptable, I think that's fair.
On the other hand I see how our government and media are treating the Palestine conflict. I remember WMD, and the babies that were supposedly unplugged from the incubators in Kuwait. I've read about the Gulf of Tonkin. I know what we did to Mossadegh, and how we spun that coup against democracy as liberation.
I'm deeply skeptical of US and 'western' narratives of people that threaten their order. And yes I do believe a lot of things can be faked, especially things happening in a language almost no Americans speak or read and have to trust the interpretation of events being given to them by actors with a stake in the outcome.
On the other hand I see how our government and media are treating the Palestine conflict.
Related to that, another good thing to look at is how officials and the media talk about these sorts of things: there's all the vocal dehumanization and aggression towards Palestinians in occupied Palestine, towards refugees in the US, etc with the aim of whipping up hatred and inspiring eager genocidaires, whereas in China incitement of ethnic hatred is criminalized, official sources praise Uygur culture, Uygur artists are elevated in the media, etc.
Genocide requires incitement and hatred to sustain it, it doesn't just quietly get enacted without a strong militant base of support to actually carry it out, and it doesn't happen without the whole process leaking like a sieve either - not just from dissenters trying to spread awareness but from the genocidaires themselves celebrating it. If there were a genocide in Xinjiang not only would there be actual, material signs of that like refugees fleeing across the nearby border (instead of there being a constant, normal back and forth there as residents travel for one reason or another and return), there'd be dipshit footsoldiers posting selfies celebrating their latest atrocity and encouraging others to join in, like we see with the IOF publicizing their own crimes in Gaza.
more likely than not they are deradicalization centers - ie reeducation facilities
the us government has spent billions to radicalize the uighurs over the past 30 years. cant remember the name of the program. they wanted to create their own version of alqaida in western china but china was like, no, we aint having that
Right, I acknowledge that, although China unfortunately also had a hand in the radicalization effort: Blowback season 4 goes into it a bit, they wanted to poke the USSR so they actually helped fund the sources in Afghanistan that later backfired into Xinjiang. But like I said, they're dealing with a real security problem.
I would still say that an ethnically delineated camp is probably too broad of a response, but I'm also not one of the people that got stabbed. Maybe that's bourgeois decadence for me to think. Deradicalization appears to be very difficult to do while abiding by the convention on human rights, a more humane and successful attempt at what China is doing doesn't come to mind.
At any rate I am skeptical of the nightmarish cartoon version you normally hear, I wish there were more robust third party organizations that could be trusted to investigate something like this without being weaponized by the US or some wacky fundamentalist. It's just that there's a lot of room between "a genocide of Uygurs" and "everything is totally fine."
I can easily imagine a government committing human rights abuses in response to a security threat.
From what I remember, this was basically the conclusion of a UN report on the subject.
That China was engaging in this broadly successful de-radicalization campaign, that there was evidence of human rights abuses in certain areas of that program, but that they didn't amount to genocide. In fact, I don't think the report ever mentioned the word genocide.
I believe China acknowledges the facilities exist, they would dispute that they are torture camps though. I'm of two minds, on the one hand I can easily imagine a government committing human rights abuses in response to a security threat. I think it's good to be skeptical of the state narrative that they're nice vocational training facilities. There's a decent chance things are happening that I would find unacceptable, I think that's fair.
On the other hand I see how our government and media are treating the Palestine conflict. I remember WMD, and the babies that were supposedly unplugged from the incubators in Kuwait. I've read about the Gulf of Tonkin. I know what we did to Mossadegh, and how we spun that coup against democracy as liberation.
I'm deeply skeptical of US and 'western' narratives of people that threaten their order. And yes I do believe a lot of things can be faked, especially things happening in a language almost no Americans speak or read and have to trust the interpretation of events being given to them by actors with a stake in the outcome.
Related to that, another good thing to look at is how officials and the media talk about these sorts of things: there's all the vocal dehumanization and aggression towards Palestinians in occupied Palestine, towards refugees in the US, etc with the aim of whipping up hatred and inspiring eager genocidaires, whereas in China incitement of ethnic hatred is criminalized, official sources praise Uygur culture, Uygur artists are elevated in the media, etc.
Genocide requires incitement and hatred to sustain it, it doesn't just quietly get enacted without a strong militant base of support to actually carry it out, and it doesn't happen without the whole process leaking like a sieve either - not just from dissenters trying to spread awareness but from the genocidaires themselves celebrating it. If there were a genocide in Xinjiang not only would there be actual, material signs of that like refugees fleeing across the nearby border (instead of there being a constant, normal back and forth there as residents travel for one reason or another and return), there'd be dipshit footsoldiers posting selfies celebrating their latest atrocity and encouraging others to join in, like we see with the IOF publicizing their own crimes in Gaza.
more likely than not they are deradicalization centers - ie reeducation facilities
the us government has spent billions to radicalize the uighurs over the past 30 years. cant remember the name of the program. they wanted to create their own version of alqaida in western china but china was like, no, we aint having that
Right, I acknowledge that, although China unfortunately also had a hand in the radicalization effort: Blowback season 4 goes into it a bit, they wanted to poke the USSR so they actually helped fund the sources in Afghanistan that later backfired into Xinjiang. But like I said, they're dealing with a real security problem.
I would still say that an ethnically delineated camp is probably too broad of a response, but I'm also not one of the people that got stabbed. Maybe that's bourgeois decadence for me to think. Deradicalization appears to be very difficult to do while abiding by the convention on human rights, a more humane and successful attempt at what China is doing doesn't come to mind.
At any rate I am skeptical of the nightmarish cartoon version you normally hear, I wish there were more robust third party organizations that could be trusted to investigate something like this without being weaponized by the US or some wacky fundamentalist. It's just that there's a lot of room between "a genocide of Uygurs" and "everything is totally fine."
good post
Thanks!
From what I remember, this was basically the conclusion of a UN report on the subject.
That China was engaging in this broadly successful de-radicalization campaign, that there was evidence of human rights abuses in certain areas of that program, but that they didn't amount to genocide. In fact, I don't think the report ever mentioned the word genocide.