#1
Post rating: ~
Is China oppressing them ala Turkey vs Kurds, or is China attempting to ensure an integral segment of its population isn't taken over by slaver religious extremists, ala USA vs CSA?
#2
Post rating: +
Well i dont know about all that but as mama ru would say, If you dont oppress yourself how in the hell you gonna oppress somebody else? Can i get a amen up in here?
#3
Post rating: ~
Seems like they've found the happy middle ground in sending them syria
#4
Post rating: +
https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-china-internment-camps-uighur-muslims/amp/
#5
[account deactivated]
#6
Post rating: +
Grabbed a copy of that podcast and I'm looking forward to listening to it when I have the chance. This is a topic I'm particularly interested in and I know I don't know enough about to criticise China yet for how they're handling a unique and very difficult situation at the intersection of national security and cultural integration.

As I think I might have mentioned in the real life thread a while back, I applied to go on a trip to China in January with my law school, and it turns out I'm going. It'll basically be a couple of weeks' intensive course on the Chinese legal system and then about a week focussed more specifically on human rights law. I'm sure Xinjiang will come up in that context and I'm very keen to get some perspectives from local experts.
#7
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~

Crow posted:

https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-china-internment-camps-uighur-muslims/amp/


#8
Post rating: +
Had a chance to listen to the RWN Uyghur podcast finally and it was great. Early on they deal with the issue of the "1 million in camps" story and point to CHRD being the sole source. They don't get into the funding of the group the way the grayzone article does (it's kind of taken for granted the group's backing is questionable) but they do focus on the clown school methodology of the report, that it extrapolates the 1m figure from the estimates of 8 individual people from 8 seperate villages in the Kashgar area.

Anyway, the rest of the podcast is really interesting, it ranges from the history of the area and the issues that have arisen over the last couple of decades, with a lot of insight from the guest Carl Zha, who seems really well plugged into online discussions among both Uyghur and Han Chinese in Xinjiang and greater China, and seems very level headed about sorting the reality from both Western and Chinese media messaging. Overall it was a great starting point for me since I was really needing something like this to get deeper into the issue from a (relatively) unbiased perspective and start to get a picture of the reality of the situation there and how things got where they are now. Highly recommend picking up a copy from the secret mp3 forum if you haven't already.

Also thanks to this I've learned that Carl Zha cohosts his own podcast which looks interesting too. Their recent Uyghur-focused episode is free (haven't listened yet but will report back when I do). Hopefully a full un-paywalled archive falls into our hands at some point.
#9
[account deactivated]
#10
Post rating: ~

Caesura109 posted:

Could anyone sum up the gist of this article for me? Would be much appreciated

http://gongyi.people.com.cn/n1/2018/1107/c151132-30386143.html



Quick and dirty translation tells me this is about the "relatives" system in Xianjing, which I guess pairs Han and Uighur families together for social and cultural events, and related national unity/ national integration efforts. I will work on a more refined translation when I have some time.

#11
[account deactivated]
#12
Post rating: +
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-10/16/c_137535821.htm

this is the official chinese take on it, though despite it people on twitter are still saying you're a dupe if you believe the camps exist at all...
#13
Post rating: +
"Twitter" Communism: An Infantile Disorder
#14
[account deactivated]
#15
Post rating: ~
what was creepy about it
#16
Post rating: ~
sounded pretty good to me imo
#17
Post rating: +
Framing mass internment that is part of counter-insurgency tactics as "vocational training" is pretty creepy. The conditions are probably better than US prisons and there might be a real threat of terrorism, but people shouldn't be sheepish in criticizing the predictably repressive policies of a revisionist state like China. The guy saying that hundreds of police officers have been killed was surprising, I wonder if that's exaggerated at all.
#18
Post rating: +

marimite posted:

Framing mass internment that is part of counter-insurgency tactics as "vocational training" is pretty creepy. The conditions are probably better than US prisons and there might be a real threat of terrorism, but people shouldn't be sheepish in criticizing the predictably repressive policies of a revisionist state like China. The guy saying that hundreds of police officers have been killed was surprising, I wonder if that's exaggerated at all.


I wonder if the "mass internment" is exaggerated at all. Wait, we already know it is

This is not a matter of sheepishness but first of all, fact finding. No investigation etc

#19
Post rating: ~
Of course it's exaggerated, but I also don't see how it's not the proper term. It's not like these people are convicted of crimes, nor is there a communist reason like them being class enemies.
#20
Post rating: ~
I guess you're right more investigation is necessary. Like I'm under the impression that people are detained for reasons beyond being convicted of crimes, but perhaps that isn't true.
#21
Post rating: ~
If the article you posted is anything to go by, the reason could be that there is a pre-trial diversion system involved, which is not unusual in the west and is usually lauded for helping keep disadvantaged kids out of the criminal justic system and giving them options. In fact I really don't see a good reason for not taking these sorts of official statements at face value until and unless evidence arises to the contrary, it seems counterproductive to start from western propaganda statements about what's going on and try and work back to the truth from there because it's likely to be much further from it.
#22
[account deactivated]
#23
Post rating: +
#24
Post rating: +
for what it's worth, when i was in china i searched "uighur" on baidu and there were no results



then i searched it in baidu translate and the 5th example sentence was notable



thank you this has been an independent open source bellingcat investigation funded in part by the broadcasting board of governors and the atlantic council
#25
Post rating: ~

Petrol posted:

I really don't see a good reason for not taking these sorts of official statements at face value until and unless evidence arises to the contrary


Well the official statements from the chinese state up to like a month or two ago were that the camps did not exist at all. so that’s probably a good reason to not take them at face value. western sources are lying when they say millions are being imprisoned, but like carl zha says in that thread, hundreds of thousands is still mass internment.

#26
Post rating: +
'war nerd' shared this article. author is pseudonymised, the website itself seems to be owned and operated by a couple of wonkish macron types fwiw, its probably a fairly accurate depiction of life in xinjiang

A Week In Xinjiang’s Absolute Surveillance State

#27
Post rating: ~
That article was a good read and seems to offer a pretty accurate depiction of Xinjiang from the perspective of a foreign tourist.

As it points out, the blanket surveillance and ubiquitous police presence is the Chinese solution for Islamist violence in the region, and on that account is clearly a success, whether or not it is tasteful. I still think the extent of forced re-education is unclear (i.e. how many are and have been through it), but more important is the matter of outcomes (bith individual and societal), and of potential alternatives to the entire Chinese security apparatus in Xinjiang. Are there any (hypothetically at least)? If so, do they trade individual freedoms for effectiveness?
#28
[account deactivated]
#29
Post rating: ~

Caesura109 posted:

id describe the racial harassment side as a bit more than "not tasteful",


forgive me, i should have pressed you on this point the first time you raised it, but i am unclear about the racism/chauvinism involved in the security project in xinjiang (i know you said this was discussed on RWN but i can't recall the details). does it go beyond education in mandarin language and han culture? i'm not trying to suggest there's nothing problematic about that, just want to nail down the details here.

#30
Post rating: +
Putting people in prison to educate them in Han culture definitely racist, an affront to multicultural socialist modernity, and also just dumb as hell, giving justification to separatist ideology.
#31
Post rating: +
Maybe these bureaucrats need to be put in prison until they stop sucking Confucius dick how about that.
#32
Post rating: ~

Caesura109 posted:

their talk of development and lifting the region out of poverty seems more sincere than the talk of their western neoliberal counterparts (theyve been sinking money into infrastructure like the LanXin rail, which serves no other purpose than to connect xinjiang to the rest of china), but the education camps and police state stuff being put in terms of "vocational training" and "enhance their understanding of Chinese (read:Han) history" was a bit creepy. the west is clearly mad in the ass because it does seem to be an effective way to prevent them from fueling local separatist and islamist movements as leverage against china except on the diplomatic level, but at the same time this "integration" work seems to be heavy-handed to an unjustifiable degree...



not sure if this is really that heavy handed considering that the usual result of festering extremist clericalism in the past 30-40 years has resulted in Groznys and Aleppos as the solution; reeducation is a nice change of pace imo, certainly better than letting it fester and become an insurrection that has to be put down, which of course will also be characterized as "heavy handed".

#33
Post rating: ~
The Groznys and Aleppos never would have happened if those states had been faithful to communist principles though. Islamism should be defended against of course, but the extent to which these problems are self made should also be acknowledged.
#34
[account deactivated]
#35
Post rating: ~

marimite posted:

Maybe these bureaucrats need to be put in prison until they stop sucking Confucius dick how about that.


🤔

#36
Post rating: ~

marimite posted:

Putting people in prison to educate them in Han culture definitely racist, an affront to multicultural socialist modernity, and also just dumb as hell, giving justification to separatist ideology.


I mean, for starters, define "prison". Can't believe three of you goofy motherfuckers upvoted this, especially in light of the next post

#37
Post rating: ~
Those confucian dick suckers need to stop being so racist!!1!
#38
Post rating: ~
I don't really understand those inscrutable chinamen!!! But i know one thing for sure....there a bunch of no good Racists!!!!!
#39
Post rating: +
yeah who can forget the sordid history of slander leveled at confucian thought by such orientalist institutions as uh squints the communist party of china 1921-1976
#40
Post rating: +
The Chinese revolution was a revolution against Confucianism and "Han culture" that these revisionists are trying to bring back, but I get it, you don't really give a shit.