I’m not very informed on modern China and there’s a ton of sources accusing China of killing and even harvesting organs from Uyghurs and Falun Gong believers.
Is there any truth to those claims or is it all ?
China does not harvest organs from Falun Gong weirdos. I have been counselling Chairman Xi to change his mind on this to no avail.
Read the UN report on Xinjiang. It’s the closest thing you’re ever going to get to an “unbaised” report. When Wahhabi paramilitaries began trying to expand in to Xinjiang and convert local Muslims to Wahhabi beliefs, with the violence and disruption Wahhabi beliefs entail, China responded with a bunch of different counter-terrorism programs. Some were overtly military, some were intelligence based, some were aimed at making Xinjiang more resilient in the face of subversion attempts. The programs that got spun in the west at genocide involved surveillance, some restrictions on movement, arbitrary arrest and detention of some Uighur Muslims for as much as 3-4 months, and related activities. These are certainly violations of human rights as conceived by the west, but are not genocide by any definition and frankly aren’t much different from the day to day behavior of western security forces. Interviews in the un report describe being held in prison facilities for several months while undergoing questioning, some cultural and religious education programs intended to instill Uighur cultural identity and Chinese national identity, while also showing how Wahhabism contradicts many islamic principles and brings violence and instability. Also apparently a lot of being forced to sing patriotic songs, which, really?
Was it nice? No, arbitrarily arresting people is not nice. However it needs to be positioned within the context of the global war on terror and the enormous amount of bloodshed the west and it’s allies unleashed “fighting terrorism”. At any rate, it seems to have worked - wahhabi violence in Xinjiang has dropped off and afaik the Chinese counter-terror program was wrapped up several years ago, and was already wrapping up when the UN investigation was being conducted.
Seriously, read the UN report. It’s very much critical of china and it’s critique of what china was really doing shows how absurd and bad faith the accusations of genocide were.
You’re missing one step in that: when those counter-terrorism programs were first rolled out the western media railed against them as being too soft compared to the preferred western strategy of random air strikes and entrapping alienated kids with fake terror plots. It was only years later, when the programs were being wound down as no longer necessary, that the western media started pushing the “genocide” conspiracy theory.
when those counter-terrorism programs were first rolled out the western media railed against them as being too soft compared to the preferred western strategy
Reminds me of the critique of China’s COVID policy.
First it was the stupid lazy peasants and their wet markets, the incompetent bureaucrats who couldn’t enforce a quarantine, and the primitive medical technology of backwards China that caused a rapid spread of the disease.
Then, China got their epidemic under control while it ran rampant in the US. The media narrative shifted to claim that Chinese quarantine controls were outright fascist, that police were brutalizing people in the name of quarantine, and that actually this whole thing was a high tech invention of the evil geniuses at the Wuhan Lab who had engineered a virus specifically targeted to Western DNA.
Whatever China does is wrong. The policies don’t matter. The results don’t matter. The relative comparison to US policies don’t matter. It’s bad and it’s wrong and the Chinese government shouldn’t be allowed to continue existing for the sack of their own people.
Don’t forget the narrative that china was lying about their numbers the whole time because there’s no way a bunch of ASIANS could do better than WHITE AMERICANS.
This is the first time I’ve heard this angle of the issue. Where can I learn more?
Thanks for pointing me toward the UN report. It’s fairly long (as it should be), but they helpfully provide a summary of their findings:
The Summary
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Serious human rights violations have been committed in XUAR in the context of the Government’s application of counter-terrorism and counter-“extremism” strategies. The implementation of these strategies, and associated policies in XUAR has led to interlocking patterns of severe and undue restrictions on a wide range of human rights. These patterns of restrictions are characterized by a discriminatory component, as the underlying acts often directly or indirectly affect Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities.
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These human rights violations, as documented in this assessment, flow from a domestic “anti-terrorism law system” that is deeply problematic from the perspective of international human rights norms and standards. It contains vague, broad and open-ended concepts that leave wide discretion to officials to interpret and apply broad investigative, preventive and coercive powers, in a context of limited safeguards and scant independent oversight. This framework, which is vulnerable to discriminatory application, has in practice led to the large-scale arbitrary deprivation of liberty of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities in XUAR in so-called VETC and other facilities, at least between 2017 and 2019. Even if the VETC system has since been reduced in scope or wound up, as the Government has claimed, the laws and policies that underpin it remain in place. There appears to be a parallel trend of an increased number and length of imprisonments occurring through criminal justice processes, suggesting that the focus of deprivation of liberty has shifted towards imprisonment, on purported grounds of counter-terrorism and counter-“extremism”.
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The treatment of persons held in the system of so-called VETC facilities is of equal concern. Allegations of patterns of torture or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence. While the available information at this stage does not allow OHCHR to draw firm conclusions regarding the exact extent of such abuses, it is clear that the highly securitised and discriminatory nature of the VETC facilities, coupled with limited access to effective remedies or oversight by the authorities, provide fertile ground for such violations to take place on a broad scale.
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The systems of arbitrary detention and related patterns of abuse in VETC and other detention facilities come against the backdrop of broader discrimination against members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim minorities based on perceived security threats emanating from individual members of these groups. This has included far-reaching, arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions on human rights and fundamental freedoms, in violation of international norms and standards. These have included undue restrictions on religious identity and expression, as well as the rights to privacy and movement. There are serious indications of violations of reproductive rights through the coercive and discriminatory enforcement of family planning and birth control policies. Similarly, there are indications that labour and employment schemes for purported purposes of poverty alleviation and prevention of “extremism”, including those linked to the VETC system, may involve elements of coercion and discrimination on religious and ethnic grounds.
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The described policies and practices in XUAR have transcended borders, separating families and severing human contacts, while causing particular suffering to affected Uyghur, Kazakh and other predominantly Muslim minority families, exacerbated by patterns of intimidations and threats against members of the diaspora community speaking publicly about experiences in XUAR.
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The information currently available to OHCHR on implementation of the Government’s stated drive against terrorism and “extremism” in XUAR in the period 2017- 2019 and potentially thereafter, also raises concerns from the perspective of international criminal law. The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups, pursuant to law and policy, in context of restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.
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The Government holds the primary duty to ensure that all laws and policies are brought into compliance with international human rights law and to promptly investigate any allegations of human rights violations, to ensure accountability for perpetrators and to provide redress to victims. Individuals who are arbitrarily deprived of their liberty should be immediately released. As the conditions remain in place for serious violations to continue and recur, these must also be addressed promptly and effectively. The human rights situation in XUAR also requires urgent attention by the Government, the United Nations intergovernmental bodies and human rights system, as well as the international community more broadly.
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OHCHR is grateful to the Government and other institutions for sharing with it information about aspects of the situation in XUAR. This assessment was also facilitated by the vast amount of research that has been completed by non-governmental organizations, researchers, journalists and academics over the last years (and independently assessed by OHCHR). OHCHR is deeply grateful to the victims and witnesses who were willing to share their experiences with OHCHR, despite the potential risks to themselves and their loved ones.
It’s… not great! Taken at face value, it’s full of human rights violations! And also nothing resembling genocide.
I think that’s part of what makes it hard to talk about. There were human rights violations, including some very strange ones. So when you throw it at the average lib and say “This isn’t genocide!” they’ll often shift the goal posts to arbitrary arrest and detentions without disclosure of where the detained person is being held, never pausing to consider that while that’s bad, it’s not at all what they asserted initially.
The Uyghur stuff is the lie of the decade.
Like, consider what even is the claim they are making.
The way it works is to take some tiny nugget of news and expand it beyond recognition into genocide.
For example, the Chinese government made birth control free. A provision of sexual health care and the ability to conduct family planning. This became the claim that China was conducting “mass forced sterilizations.”
Another example was China providing free meals to kids at school. Now, during Ramadan Muslims do not eat during the day but children are excluded from this and are allowed to eat. The age at which someone is expected to participate isn’t well defined and different Muslim communities adopt different standards for when someone is considered a child for the purposes of Ramadan. In Uyghur culture it is typically into the teens. So when China was providing free meals to kids at school… this was spun a campaign to assimilate Uyghurs and “cultural genocide.” Free meals to school kids is cultural genocide.
There is a heavy handed security presence in Xinjiang related to Islamic terrorism since there has been a problem with Islamic fundamentalism intersecting with Uyghur separatism. I do have sympathy for the heavy police intervention and there has been at least some degree of racism in the way that was applied. So there are valid criticisms to be made about how China responded to the problem of Islamic extremism. But the heavy hand of the state seems to be receding as the threat of fundamentalism declines, so that is at least improving, and it needs to be contrasted with the western response to Islamic fundamentalism which was extremely violent.
When you make that comparison then the Chinese response is exemplary, without denying the examples of racism and police violence in that response but also acknowledging those issues do not seem to have a systemic character.
The truth of Xinjiang is that the USA and the west likes to exploit and promote ethnic conflict within adversary states. It’s called a “fifth column”. A way to weaken your enemy is to promote internal conflict.
The USA has sought to promote ethnic conflict in China by funding Uyghur separatists, and Uyghur separatism is inextricably connected with Islamic fundamentalism.
When you look at these “international committee to free east Turkmenistan” they are usually based in Virginia.
The narrative of Uyghur genocide is to train a western audience to view China as another Nazi Germany because this provides a (false) moral basis for war and geostrategic conflict with china.
Whenever you read these articles, look for the name “Adrian Zenz”. He’s a fundamentalist Christian based in Germany who doesn’t speak Chinese and hasn’t been to China or Xinjiang. He has previously claimed that God gave him a mission to destroy communist (atheist) China. As in, he described a voice talking to him and giving him this divine mission. He’s the source of about 80% of this bullshit and the BBC uncritically repeat his claims because the BBC is state-owned media.
Another whole angle of this I was thinking about the other day - you actually CANNOT just genocide a group of people without them responding in some way. People can tell when the atmosphere of the state they’re living in is turning towards genocide against them (and a culture preparing for a genocide to the point of ordinary citizens accepting it generates a HUGE amount of propaganda, which there is obviously no evidence of in China). Before WW2 there were millions of Jewish refugees, and during it there were Jewish militias and partizans fighting back. Colonized countries rose up again and again to throw out the colonists who were exploiting and killing them. And now Israel is showing exactly what happens in the modern day if you try to annihilate an entire population: absolutely intractable guerilla warfare. Israel would love to just send in the army and gun down all 2 million people in Gaza, but they CAN’T because their army would be torn to shreds.
So to suggest the people of Xinjiang - which shares hundreds of miles of desert-mountain borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan - would just meekly accept a million people (literally 1/20th of the population!) disappearing without fighting back using the enormous amount of weaponry and guerilla warfare expertise within a trivial distance of them, or even just trying to escape with their lives, is outright infantilizing. WW2 shows they would fight back, the history of decolonial movements shows they would fight back, Gaza shows they would fight back, and the total lack of such a violent conflict in Xinjiang shows that whatever is happening there is not a genocide.
Yeah this is what I’ve tried saying to people. Genocides breed active resistance. People don’t just stand in line to get genocided, they panic, the state will get sloppy too and try to rewrite reality as it’s happening. Or they have to employ the worst sort of violent oafs to carry out the violence, and it generally spills out into massive conflict. There hasn’t been anything like that in Xinjiang from what I know
I tried to find out about the uyghur situation so I went to Wikipedia. The first source not pay walled I could find, I had to dig 4 sources after that to find out the primary source referenced as evidence for the genocide was written by a fed employed at the victims of communism memorial non profit.
I’m deeply suspicious of any state but I think it is impossible to be informed on the situation given the atmosphere in the West that China bad.
That’s the other thing, if there was a genocide going on you would see millions of people fleeing to nearby nations as refugees. There are virtually no Uighur refugees in neighboring countries. Unless you think they were all gunned down by the PLA or the armies of nearby countries. But that sort of thing is impossible to hide.
Falun Gong is the Chinese equivalent of Scientology. Shen Yun, the dance show, and the Epoch Times are both arms of the church.
It’s absolutely in their interests to make up anything smearing a government that doesn’t tolerate their shit.
What western media doesn’t talk about is that cult got banned in China after publicity dousing children with gasoline and lighting them on fire. When they crossed the line into literal death cult killing kids, the Chinese government had to act because the outrage from the general public demanded it.
It’s ironic that the US and a lot of western media claim they are wrongly persecuted when the US federal government would have sent in the ATF and FBI with armored personnel carriers to kill all their leaders (what the US does in such situations) had they pulled the same shit in the US.
With the situation in Xinjiang it was a similar line crossed when the US backed islamist groups started slaughtering elementary school children and people at places of worship, many of whom were muslim. They even started killing local Islamic religious leaders. The public demanded something be done. So ofc steps were taken to improve economic conditions, improve infrastructure, increase security, bring those responsible to justice, and identify disaffected young men who could be put through what in the west is called “diversion programs” but elsewhere gets labeled “reeducation”. The real irony is within a few years the Chinese government turned the situation around with communities in the region having mostly positive opinions on the outcome while in the US school children and people at places of worship being slaughtered is something people just accept a normal part of life nothing can be done about.
And then for a number of members doing public self-immolation, with one of the people in the biggest incident also setting her daughter on fire (the kid survived).
But I think even before that there were problems with FG members committing suicide believing they would go to heaven or whatever.
Imagining a world where the West had the balls to ban Scientology and other cults
If you were to list the top ten cults in the United States by harm done, Scientology wouldn’t make the top ten. It would mostly be Protestant churches who will do another Waco if forced which honestly isn’t something anyone should want.
Scientology is bad, but they have one thing going for it that most cults don’t. Sexual abuse is not common, like obviously it happens but probably to a lesser extent than the Church. Scientology is much more focused on exploiting the labor of its practitioners and covering up the occasional death caused by lack of medical care than getting horny. Like legitimately the reason why Scientology still exists is that it is not a sex cult.
I just named Scientology because it’s a safe, obvious example that everyone agrees on
You can dig into the details, but you don’t need to. The holocaust has tons of physical evidence. It takes a lot of stuff to commit a genocide. For this genocide there isn’t even a photo. Also, the politician most invested in the genocide accusations was Joe Biden. His only response was to cancel a diplomatic delegation going to the olympics in China. The delegation wasn’t even real. These aren’t the actions of someone who actually thought there was a genocide happening.
