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 ?
Falun Gong: yes.
Uyghur genocide: yes
There’s no need to bend over backwards to try to justify the government treatment of Uyghurs as being a genocide. It just isn’t and there’s no evidence that it is. The claims are paper-thin and always trace back to these things:
- Adrian Zenz
- Close collaborators of Adrian Zenz working in think tanks that are clearly NatSec cutouts.
- Radio Free Asia and similar.
- “Government in exile” NGOs funded by the NED that say the wildest shit and are clearly just a propaganda tool.
- Literally the US NatSec ghouls
I remember watching hexbears tie themselves in knots trying to justify this or that academic spewing absolute bullshit, like they are just itching to believe a China Bad line. Believing statements next to satellite images analyzed by a teenager and going, “yeah that checks out” or citing one Zenz-collaborating academic ghoul that has literally never been to China nor speaks any Chinese languages but appropriated the language of the left so I guess it must be legit.
I’d also like to remind everyone that the claim of genocide magically appeared as a result of think tank ghouls that cited no new evidence and did not make any kind of case that stands up to the lightest criticism. It just got put out there in the classic style of manufacturing consent during a series of anti-China pushes. Prior to this, it had been getting called a cultural genocide, a term intended to play on the gravity of genocide while being fuzzy enough that libs who know nothing can argue about any level of ethnic discrimination fitting the bill. The claim of cultural genocide was supported by people duped into believing that salafist politics is traditional Uyghur culture (because they didn’t deign to actually learn anything about Uyghurs before believing the paper-thin propaganda of empire) and that any form of ethnic oppression, any form, is cultural genocide. If you find that you or anyone else on the left is trying this hard to make excuses for the imperialist line, take a pause and ask yourself why you’re doing it and whether you’re asking the right questions. You are not immune to propaganda and finding a way - any way - for the imperialists to be right is its basic function in these scenarios.
The claim of Uyghur genocide is a series of rhetorical escalations that do not match conditions on the ground and is coming from sources that any competent leftist should learn how to scrutinize and reject.
I started reading this comment right after reading OP’s “Is there any truth to those claims or is it all” question; with you starting with two “yes”, I’ve been frustratingly reading this comment waiting for the bad take until I realized you were answering OP’s title and there was no bad take.
To add to your answer, my go-to is often this open letter to the UN (PDF) from 51 states having freely inspected the deradicalization efforts in Xinjiang. I quote:
We note with appreciation that human rights are respected and protected in China in the process of counter-terrorism and deradicalization.
We appreciate China’s commitment to openness and transparency. China has invited a number of diplomats, international organizations officials and journalist to Xinjiang to witness the progress of the human rights cause and the outcomes of counter-terrorism and deradicalization there. What they saw and heard in Xinjiang completely contradicted what was reported in the media. We call on relevant countries to refrain from employing unfounded charges against China based on unconfirmed information before they visit Xinjiang.
… in the end they either realize it’s bullshit or their new position becomes “China made them say that” which basically means they’re arguing China can control over 50 countries including among others Algeria, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela; you know, clownery. At this point mocking them is an acceptable strategy; they won’t take it well but it’ll rattle them and increases the chances they’ll feel embarrassed and end up trying to look it up by themselves soon after.
That’s a very good document! Thank you for sharing it.
And yeah that’s very funny that I gave the exact opposite impression at first.
The thanks should go to the people that run the /r/TheDeprogram sub to be honest, they maintain a pretty useful wiki (which they also mirror here/through lemmygrad) and they’re the one that initially introduced me to it
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.
Uyghurs and the places they live are heavily surveilled, and rather than their schools being a more organic entity the state has a pretty heavy hand in running them. Anything beyond that is just a distortion mirror.
Practicioners of Falun Dafa are in prison or in exile or in secret, where they belong.
What’s an organic school? Like privately owned or state-run, but contracting from private corporations?
I’m pretty convinced its all bullshit, but:
Especially now more than ever: In my interactions with people on this subject I usually try to avoid framing it in the question of whether or not its true because IMO it doesn’t ultimately matter.
Even if you accept the Uyghur genocide itself as entirely true for the sake of discussion: the past few weeks should really clarify how much any and all moral outrage around it has been entirely cynical bullshit.
-If you stand with Israel in this situation then full stop you don’t actually give a shit about the lives of Muslims and you only scream about the Uyghurs because you want a cudgel to use against China.
-If you stand with Palestine in this situation then you have what should be a clear and self evident obligation to address the genocide your own government is actively funding and facilitating before you get involved in whatever the hell a foreign government is involved in. We have absolutely no moral leg to stand on regarding the Uyghurs until then.
Even if you accept the Uyghur genocide itself as entirely true for the sake of discussion: the past few weeks should really clarify how much any and all moral outrage around it has been entirely cynical bullshit.
I don’t think you can casually dismiss the presence/absence of a Chinese-sponsored genocide, precisely because of the language Israelis are using when perpetuating their own genocide in Gaza. Slapping a yellow star on your chest at the UN and claiming you’re the Real Victims is the modius operandi of these neoliberal ghouls. And what we saw in Xinjiang - a western-backed series of radical islamist terror bombings - is an eerie reflection of what Israel denounces Palestinians for.
At some point, this becomes an existential question of how you approach a radicalized population. The US/Israel model in Gaza is ethnic cleansing. But that’s not just in Gaza. We saw ethnic cleansing in Iraq during the civil war that happened under US occupation. And we saw it during the break-up of Yugoslavia, as western states flooded the region with agitprop and then used their own civil war as an excuse to invade. We’ve seen it in Eastern Ukraine, as a pretext for Russian invasion. We’ve seen it Indonesia and the Philippines (and before that, China and Taiwan) as Catholicism becomes the stalking horse of the western foreign policy apparatus, to divide and conquer the proletariat. Same with South America, where Catholicism becomes the thin wedge that white settler families use to separate migrants and natives. We’re seeing it in Modi’s India, with Hindus waging war on their Muslim neighbors. And we’re seeing it split populations throughout North and East Africa, too.
The Jewish/Muslim split in Gaza is simply the most obvious and pronounced method of divide-and-conquer hegemonic theory. And we need an antidote to that kind of destabilizing policy.
Its possible that Chinese policymakers have a solution, and that Xinjiang has become a major testing ground for Han-Uighur coexistence. Its also possible that China is engaging in more of the same, simply transposing western strategies onto their on soil.
But I gotta know which one is true and which one is bullshit. I can’t just concede “maybe Uighur genocide bad but Western genocide worse”.
One possibility points to a real path forward. The other leaves us all back at the drawing board.
Well to be clear: my argument isn’t really “Uighur genocide bad but Westen genocide worse”.
My argument is: “Uighur genocide is bad if true…but if true ultimately I don’t live in China and I’m not a Chinese citizen. I am an American citizen living in America…so I should probably prioritize discussion/action regarding the Genocide my own government is an active participant in.”
Your error is in trying to find a comparison between overt ethnic cleansings and pogroms and the treatment of Uyghurs in China. The propaganda line of empire is woven into this kind of thinking. Equate the unequal so that the stain can be transferred. You don’t need to have a motivation to do so in order to support that line, it’s inherent to asking questions in a certain way, the way we are all taught to.
I also see tacit support for the claim of genocide early-on and then nothing to challenge it.
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.
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.
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.
