Uyghurs

And I wasn't aware that there are concentration camps in Western countries dedicated to annihilating minority cultures at the moment.

― pomenitul, Tuesday, May 7, 2019 11:31 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Two New Tent Cities Built in Texas to Hold Migrants

13,000 Migrant Children In Detention: America's Horrifying Reality

etc...?

Oh i didn’t see that post.

I was saying that he was otm in saying this didn’t have to do with the west. We should condemn this kind of thing wherever it happens and the “glass houses” thing is a deflection

Point taken, in orbit. But comparing 'The West' to China is a tricky endeavour to begin with. Focusing on the US is more convincing imho, like I said upthread in response to dylannn.

No sorry that wasn't in response to being otm or not! That would be harsh and I borderline think I agree that we don't need to focus on the US to address the thread topic. I was just throwing the immigration human rights crisis in there because it seemed to apply.

I don't want to overlook it or erase it as the concentration camp/genocide that it is.

Is it naive or ethnocentric of me to think that a way to bridge the perspectives here is to consider the Uyghur situation as part of a global rise of anti-Muslim oppression? There aren't Muslim concentration camps in the US or Canada, but there are explicitly anti-Muslim legal actions being taken. I don't want to elide important national/cultural differences, but one of the alarming aspects of this is how neatly it dovetails with far-right sentiment in Europe, India, North America, etc.

pomenitul actually otm a few places. but i wanted to say and a million xposts in between

...comparing a borderline genocidal policy that was implemented recently, complete with actual concentration camps, to historical issues that have been mostly addressed, albeit imperfectly...

can i cover that first? And this is not really connected to the rest of my point but: this “borderline genocidal policy” has been a thing since the early 1950s, when the prc was putting back under their control a region that had broken away with soviet support during the warlord era, and since the bingtuan and mass han migration starting in the mid-1950s around the time of the sino-soviet split when khrushchev and brezhnev were bankrolling separatism, and the anti-rightist campaign and cultural revolution which were carried out in ways in xinjiang (and mongolia and tibet) that were—more than in the rest of the country— about bringing ethnic and religious leaders to heel and rooting out minority culture. 1976 to, say, the mid-1990s were a brief respite in a long history of oppression.

the campaign against uighur communities heated up in the 90s partly due to there being more calls for separatism/autonomy (+ acts of terrorism), which was partly connected to nationalist movements in central asia that emerged following the collapse of the soviet union. by the mid-2000s, most moderate uighur leaders that hadn't been incorporated into the local bureaucracy were in exile or in jail or afraid to say anything, which was part of the reason why extremism could take root but uh...

BUT at this point, it's not so much that the uighurs present any real threat.

part of it is about a nationalistic policy that’s taken hold as economic growth is seen as not the way forward for establishing the legitimacy of the party, and securing han lebensraum is something people can get behind, also helps with crafting the ethnoracial and political identity of the prc. that’s part of it. a chinese nationalist project.

but also a more global neoliberal project. the old quarters of urumqi aren’t being knocked down to destroy uighur culture so much as they are to feed a real estate boom. in beijing, the excuse is fire code and they kick out the migrant workers, but in xinjiang it can be part of the nationalist project, too. the idea that extremists can be identified based on beard length or going to certain mosques, and that they can be converted back from sharia to believing in science and progress and the market. or less abstract, you can point to hikvision, who won a government contract in china to sell facial recognition systems and cameras, backed by western pension and equity funds, shareholders, whatever, and then they sell the technology developed for those government contracts, monitoring re-education camps, back to western state security apparatus, the same cameras scanning faces for terrorists in london and in xi'an and in tulsa and in munich.

so, the clean up your own backyard thing is not to say we can't criticize or it's useless or western powers are doing "the same thing" but xinjiang is not some crazy aberration, some horrible one-off experiment run by red china to destroy an ethnic minority. it's a glimpse into the whole world's not-so-distant future. so yes criticize the prc and get progressive voices to criticize the prc but recognize how western corporate power and the power of the transnational capitalist network and neoliberalism (and warmongering and fascism and right-wing populism) AND WHATEVER ELSE feed into the problem and fighting them would probably do more to improve the lot of people in xinjiang (and a hundred other places) than directly criticizing the chinese communist party (or other wicked foreign powers).

Great post, dylannn. I'm not entirely sold on the 'futorologist' aspects of your analysis, nor even on the extent to which the 'transnational capitalist network' is responsible for the current situation in Xinjiang, but you're certainly right to point out that it's far more interconnected than first meets the eye, and I very much appreciate your historical reminders.

Thanks dylann for excellent post there, agreed with nearly everything and fascinating to know further details of the history of the region, just one thing I want to query though is

recognize how western corporate power and the power of the transnational capitalist network and neoliberalism (and warmongering and fascism and right-wing populism) AND WHATEVER ELSE feed into the problem and fighting them would probably do more to improve the lot of people in xinjiang (and a hundred other places) than directly criticizing the chinese communist party (or other wicked foreign powers).

I would really group the CCP in with the transnational capitalist network, neoliberalism, warmongering, fascism and right-wing populism

that was my whole point!

with all that being said, i think if you're sitting here reading this and don't like what's happening in xinjiang, and you're not like me waiting for the collapse of global capitalism to solve everything, do your best to get a deeper understanding, then use your knowledge to pressure reasonable, progressive voices to join in that criticism.

xp it was? ok, so maybe misreading a bit there, but do you mean that it's less effective to oppose the CCP as a whole than the others? because I often see "...but you have to respect the achievements of the communist party" when western liberals are discussing anything to do with China, and feel that complacency is a huge part of the problem.

after a decade in China I'm now back in the UK for good, so afraid my understanding is unlikely to improve much at this point

My own soothsaying daimon tells me that global capitalism will collapse sooner rather than later and that it will create a brand new set of unsolvable problems, some of which will resemble those of the pre-capitalist era. This is equally unprovable, of course.

2xp

i) Doubt Capital would just collapse, and that it would solve anything, and ii) yes it will be a lot of work to begin to undo the damage it has bought on all of us.

CaAL i'm western but not a liberal and i do think you have to respect the historical achievements of the chinese communist party but that shouldn't mean the party cannot be criticized (hopes and prayers to all the disappeared marxist reading group members and labor activists that spent may day locked up).

i just meant the impulses driving the party / prc elites + driving western regimes / elites are often interconnected or one and the same. and addressing i'm sure 99% westerners here, their energies could better be put into reigning in those impulses in their own countries rather than directly attacking the prc, which is good and noble (but with a background of anti-china hysteria probably hurting more than it is helping, unless that criticism is coming from reasonable and progressive voices, or perhaps directed at western companies and individuals doing business in xinjiang?)

Looking again at this thread.

As a side note, there's something oddly exceptionalist and neo-colonial about whataboutism: 'Oh so you think those guys have committed grave ethical transgressions? Look at us!'

This is just bizarre. We can't use any kind of economic sanctions (which are terrible anyway) because so much of the world economy everyone has signed up to depends on that region. That leaves anywhere between shaming to appeal to the Chinese government - where you'd need a high moral ground that almost all countries in the West simply don't have. And it isn't an act of erasure on the Uyghurs to point out the atrocities we commit to our own minorities and how we brutalise the poor, AND how in our foreign policy we fully collaborate with the Saudis, Israel and India (a far from exhaustive list), and many countries who murder and repress their own. Saying we aren't doing worse as these people over there isn't putting on enough of an examination of what we are doing to ourselves.

Funnily enough tearing surveillance contracts that Dylann mentions is the one thing that could make a material difference. But you know, its "futurology".

Eh, suit yourself. I do think many contemporary Western countries (including, yes, Canada, for all its numerous faults and flaws) have enough of a relative moral high ground to say something – once again, there are degrees of ethical imperfection to consider (I'm even tempted to say, contra ogmor, that certain differences of degree are so great as to be indistinguishable from differences in kind). And I'd rather ponder dylannn's historical analysis: it's way more interesting to me than the usual narcissistic self-flagellation, which doesn't get us anywhere either (unless you're American, and even then, only up to a point).

As for those surveillance contracts, that would indeed be a massive step up, no question about it – my futurology dig was in reference to the notion that this is what awaits the whole world. I mean… maybe? I have no idea tbh – no one does at this stage.

this is one possible reaction. john oliver, please save the uighurs.

https://imgur.com/6PDy5ZK.jpg

Its not "self-flagellation" to say what an easy response and utterly ineffective response it would be to simply shame the country. Much before this we have had plenty of repression of dissidents but trade has flowed on and on with little concern.

The harder bit to think about is changing the economic model underpinning all of this. Its similar to the Saudis - we could say harsh words and cancel defence contracts but that is only the beginning of what needs to be done.

Progressive disarmament on an international scale would have be on the menu as well, which seems… unlikely to occur any time soon.

my futurology dig was in reference to the notion that this is what awaits the whole world.

I wasn't reading some kind of dystopian future. I was reading a reality of surveillance that you are surely aware of, companies that manufacture and distribute as if its like any other defence system. Its much more banal. And here. It doesn't mean every dissident will be caught and nothing can be done about it.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/24/china-cables-leak-no-escapes-reality-china-uighur-prison-camp

what's happening with china and the Uighur leaves me feeling helpless. what can be done? someone close to me is a scholar in the field, and as far back as 2006 he was telling me about the long terrible history. everyone knows about this problem, the facts aren't disputed. but what is the solution? what is even a partial solution?

what can be done?

the sad fact is that the people in a position to do anything directly to change this brutality are the ones who are most culpable for it happening to begin with. assuming you and I are similarly situated, living thousands of miles away, with no power, no leverage to influence those perpetrators, what we can do is very limited by the distance between our actions and the desired result. that's reality.

the best we can do is to speak up to those who represent us in government and to anyone else who may care enough to listen, and make them understand the facts. even then, the influence those representatives can exert is going to be highly indirect and only marginally effective. the Chinese government is very well insulated from such outside influences.

Well, quick check first off - not everybody knows about it. Most people I deal with in everyday life probably just have no idea at all who the "Uyghurs" are. Second off, a lot of people do know about it and are choosing to ignore what they know, to feign ignorance. We can make that difficult for them simply by talking about it, by not ignoring or excusing what is going on. Solutions to problems such as these tend to appear when enough people stop ignoring and excusing the problems.

that seems to put an unhealthy level of responsibility on the people within yr range for the actions of a government half a world away

the hong kong protests have garnered the world's attention. why not this?

"the world's attention" is shorthand for something so complicated that I can't unravel it into any kind of causal narrative. but I know it helps to have dramatic video.

i think it means that tom hanks will narrate a documentary about it in 25 years

tom hanks keanu reeves

the hong kong protests have garnered the world's attention. why not this?

Because Western journalists and reporters won't get anywhere near these camps, whereas they can frolic about in HK with hard hats on filming whatever they like - for the moment.

Also, if western media started caring about the lives of Muslims they might have to reconsider the million we killed in Iraq

Both Islamophobia and the mistreatment of Uyghurs began before the invasion of Iraq.

A large part of the answer is that the West was always focused on Tibet, and wanted Tibet to be a unique instance of Chinese cruelty. A lot of new age mythology behind that one.

think it was meeting Uighurs which showed me the true nature of the CCP. first I knew about them was as street vendors in beijing, all the han chinese I met seemed terrified of them, told me to steer clear, though they could never tell me why. then I had one as a student, was running a little teacher training school, the shit she had to put up with every day was crazy, even going to the allegedly Uighur restaurants she was the only one there (beijing has its own Muslim ethnic group to run these places), they called her "uyghur auntie", she seemed easily more out of place there than I did, still wonder what happened to her. then living in Guangzhou we used to talk to a guy who sold us lamb by the side of the road, he told us about all the trouble they had with chengguan, how they couldn't get an apartment or open a bank account, it was a real eye opener for my wife. this was soon after the couple of terrorist attacks and anti-uyghur feeling was running high. people just didn't know how to respond to terrorism, they knew nothing of Xinjiang and its history, just some scary bin ladens coming to get them and I hope the government sort it out. looking back this shit seems almost inevitable, not that it makes it any less horrific and inexcusable.

we really need some left wing politicians in the west to start being vocal about this, I find it a complete embarrassment when only right wing nutcases are saying anything

sorry for the big chunk of irregularly capitalized text, blame my phone

that seems to put an unhealthy level of responsibility on the people within yr range for the actions of a government half a world away

― deems of internment (darraghmac)

half a world away is still the same world we live in; for me it's not about "responsibility" per se but are there alternatives to throwing up one's hands in despair? yeah, there are.

course there are!

this is quite the makeup tutorial pic.twitter.com/TgO2gEys8X

— Rossalyn Warren (@RossalynWarren) November 26, 2019

I know, I know, it's The Observer, but this is spot on:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/04/why-do-muslim-states-stay-silent-over-chinas-uighur-brutality

Nor does anyone else seem to give a fuck, incidentally.

that article's author is kind of persona non grata

nonetheless, it is a horrifying and important topic. i'd want to know what *is* being said and done about it in the 'muslim world', and preferably receive something of a more complete picture

i.e. an article not written by a known [redacted] with a consistent history of [redacted]

Two from last year:

https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/neaxyw/why-are-some-muslim-countries-standing-in-solidarity-with-china

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/thestream/2019/08/25896-200325181332441.html

ty

truly though idk what this boils down to other than 'money talks', or if you want the more nuanced version, half the world is run by gangsters and the other half by crooks

night falls, and trenchant social commentary seeps out of his fingers

truly though idk what this boils down to other than 'money talks'

See this bit in particular:

https://youtu.be/1S_j7xdYl7w?t=643