Uyghurs

(pseudo-serious rationale for this thread): The Uyghurs live in Xinjiang province in northwestern China, on the outskirts of the Tien Shan mountains (so I was wrong to say the Himalayas) in the middle of the Taidamakan Desert and along the famed Silk Road. From what I've read, life there is pretty much like the movie "The Man Who Would Be King." The area always interested me since I was a kid, looked at a map of China, saw this big vast bit of nothing in the northwest corner, asked my Mom "what's there?" and Mom told me "look it up yerself."

(real answer) If the Samoans can get a thread, why not the Uyghurs? Any hippie-unfriendly culture deserves to be discovered, dontchas think?

A silent cultural genocide – if you'll allow the euphemism – is underway. We've known this for a while now, but I don't often see it discussed anywhere. The suppression of Uighur culture and Islam in general seems to be part and parcel of a broader push for absolute social uniformisation (see: the social credit system). Is the local reality as dystopian as it appears when viewed from abroad?

Anyhow, this was a sad read:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/07/revealed-new-evidence-of-chinas-mission-to-raze-the-mosques-of-xinjiang

It's pretty heartbreaking, yes, and hardly seems to be happening in secret. I wish there was a sense of pushback from somewhere.

Not while the West loves money and hates Islam.

It's a bit more complicated than that:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-canada-western-nations-condemn-china-at-un-for-repression-of-muslims/

Basically, Canada and the US have at least called China out on its shit. Meanwhile,

Indonesia commended “China’s strategic approach” to ensuring the “well-being of its population.” Malaysia pointed to China’s “many achievements in human rights.” Kuwait suggested Beijing focus “on the prevention of juvenile delinquency to ensure minors’ physical and psychological health.” Saudi Arabia recommended China “continue friendly exchanges in the field of cultural and religious issues.” Syria urged China to counter “extremist religious movements and continue its struggle against terrorism and separatism.” Pakistan said China should “continue its efforts to maintain and promote peace and stability.”

That's also pretty depressing. It's good that the Canadian and US governments have spoken up. The worst of the realpolitik here is about whether anybody - governments or NGOs or whoever, has the power and the will to pressure the PRC on this kind of thing, because right now I'd say that's a clear no.

the statements from indonesia, malaysia, saudi arabia, pakistan, etc. are coldblooded but also most of those regimes have shown themselves to be comfortable with strike hard campaigns against restive minority religious groups and xinjiang probably doesn't look that different, maybe even more humane than how things are conducted in most places.

western governments making statements amount to next to nothing, especially when led by figures like rubio (currently distracted by stirring up trouble in venezuela, but i mean mostly the u.s. state-funded operations, anti-communist groups, etc. who are using this as part of a campaign against china that involves claims about the oppressed christian minority in china, rather than a program of global justice or anti-islamophobia, and moving beyond those ghouls, i'm sure western leaders are worried about uighurs, absolutely, sure, totally reasonable, but with a background of anti-china hysteria in the west, it's harder to take it seriously). make all the statements you want, magnitsky act chen quanguo and his cronies, but leaving aside how absurd it is for american establishment politicians to criticize the prc for destroying minority communities or whatever, the west in general when not profiting looked the other way on this for the past decade at least (just taking the urumqi riots in 2009 as the beginning, and it could just as well be post 2001 war on terror golden age, or even the late 1990s, to avoid going back further), a good amount of tech and know-how was shared between the prc and the usa that made this all possible, hundreds of american firms operating in xinjiang, many connected in some way to the security apparatus. the turn in china towards bellicose nationalism didn't just happen overnight and it didn't happen in a vacuum. the massive project of state surveillance isn't happening in one corner of china and nowhere else but is part of a global project.

that's basically my argument for: yes, criticize the prc for locking up possibly a million or more uighurs and kazakhs, attack them for all of their other disgusting actions, definitely pressure more progressive groups to speak out, look up the list of american firms doing business in china, and read about joe biden's son, but you know, end of the day, i think we might make more progress standing up to general warmongering, racism, fascism in our own backyards (including current anti-china hysteria), where i'm sure we are aware of examples of marginalized communities being snuffed out, too.

You're looking at this from a very American perspective, which is fair, but I'm not convinced that the social credit system and Western-style state surveillance are equally harmful in their effects, not least because the West is less of a monolith than the CPC. And I wasn't aware that there are concentration camps in Western countries dedicated to annihilating minority cultures at the moment.

agree with most of dylannn's posts there and that's where my sense of sad inevitability comes from - governments and their foreign policy/diplomatic strategies aree long haul, irrespective of who the representatives are at any given moment

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!' I'm not saying that's what you're going for, but it's kind of exhausting how whenever human rights are quashed outside the Western sphere of (direct) influence, including in a country that is widely reported to be one of the most powerful and hence autonomous in the world, we still find a way to make it about us. That said, I do agree that protesting at the local, national level is bound to make more of an overall dent.

I don't think the point is that some forms of hegemonic repression aren't worse and more brutal than others pom, but that the PRC doesn't operate in a political vacuum, and that there other ways of promoting cultural conformity than state repression operating successfully around the world.

Tbh i don't have a smart answer to hand i'm just depressed at any and all movements to decreasing cultural diversity and erasing historic material

That's fair, and I'm with you on the sad powerlessness this elicits.

Don't think there needs to be an either/or in this case, if the USA hadn't made a laughing stock out of the UN & international law in general there might be more we could do.

Lots of people in China alway seem pretty scared of Uyghurs, the only time they meet them is when they sell stuff on the roadside, they imagine them all to all be terrorists, though there have been almost zero incidents. Speaking to one about his life, how impossible it was to rent a house or get a job, this was one of the first things that opened my wife's eyes to things not being as they seemed, but very few will have that same chance.

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!'

One of my close friends, a Canadian of Chinese descent who has spent several years in Beijing, routinely dismisses the topic whenever it comes up. My exasperation at whataboutism is partly due to conversations we've had wherein he unreservedly told me that a) it makes sense to snuff out a culture that has the 'potential' for terrorism (because some are simply immune to it, of course); b) China shouldn't be expected not to commit human rights abuses in its quest for global domination since Western countries have gone about it in the exact same way, including at the expense of China itself; c) I simply cannot understand the rationale behind it due to my status as a Westerner (never mind that Eastern Europe is a different can of worms). Much of this stems from his family education, but he also tends to twist legitimate grievances towards the West that he's picked up elsewhere (while oddly sparing the US, for most part) for self-serving reasons, so we mostly avoid the topic these days.

I don't think dylannn's point was whataboutism, but rather that the PRC isn't going to bend to outside pressure when those pressuring it are doing the same things as the PRC. So rather than protest against the PRC, westerners could try to stop their countries from doing those things, and then there might be a way to isolate the PRC and get it to change. In the meantime, the PRC will just continue to do what it sees as having already been so successful in the west.

I'm sorry, but I still don't get how Canada, for instance, is 'doing the same things as the PRC'.

I don't want to single out Canada, but I have a number of Canadian friends active in the First Nations community who would be happy to make such points. Though I thought the point was more to do with the modes of western capitalism, including surveillance, that are widely shared across the west. Though maybe Canada is exempt from this?

You would be hard pressed to convincingly make such points about contemporary Canada, although there is still much to be done for the sake of First Nations rights. As far as surveillance is concerned, Canada is most certainly not exempt from the problem, but once again, China's social credit system is on a whole other level: you can lose the right to buy a train ticket just because you were caught jaywalking or you may be barred from going to a good university if members of your family have a criminal record. There is nothing even remotely similar in the West, at least not as of yet.

First Nations women were being sterilized under the guise of "family planning" in 2017 !

Money talks and will continue talking until we have actual communism.

Ironic huh?

As vile as that is, I'm pretty sure it's not official government policy.

xp

ogmor otm, but also the schools!

The residential school system harmed Indigenous children significantly by removing them from their families, depriving them of their ancestral languages, exposing many of them to physical and sexual abuse, and forcibly enfranchising them. Disconnected from their families and culture and forced to speak English or French, students who attended the residential school system often graduated unable to fit into either their communities and still subject to racist attitudes in mainstream Canadian society. The system ultimately proved successful in disrupting the transmission of Indigenous practices and beliefs across generations. The legacy of the system has been linked to an increased prevalence of post-traumatic stress, alcoholism, substance abuse, and suicide, which persist within Indigenous communities today.

Ok, do we still have them today? Is anyone clamouring for their return? This is exactly what I was talking about.

It's horrible, but not quite the same as Uyghur Re-education camps.

And this thread has literally devolved into whataboutism. As they always do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps

We're comparing a borderline genocidal policy that was implemented recently, complete with actual concentration camps, to historical issues that have been mostly addressed, albeit imperfectly, and that will no doubt give rise to increasingly more reparations over the years. No one in Canada thinks this is ok, except for the closet psychopaths. How are the two even remotely comparable?

a significant & arguably essential part of imperialist colonialism has always been unofficial.

2010s are not v historical. they're both examples of organs of the state controlling 'native'/established/minority populations, differences of degree not kind

Well, when my mom once locked me in my room, it was kinda similar to a concentration camp as well. Difference in degree, not kind.

For a brief moment there I considered engaging w fred b! What a Tuesday I'm having!

Leave for Friday after a heavy sesh ogmor

Again, why must this be about 'us'? Why must a thread entitled 'Uyghurs' devolve into postcolonial one-upmanship? Indeed, the still-prevalent narrative according to which Western nations have always been on the right side of history needs to be shot down, again and again, but in the context of ILX in particular it just seems so… rhetorical.

It doesn't have to be about "us", if the goal is merely to describe what's happening in China. But if the goal is to discuss how to change what's happening in China, then, as dylannn wrote, "we" become relevant.

If I had the choice I'd rather take my chances in a concentration camp, rather than being stripped of citizenship and abandoned homeless/stateless in a dangerous country with a very high homicide rate, with the last communication with the UK foreign office ringing in your ears being: disguise your UK accent cos criminal gangs will target you. Not meaning this as whataboutery - more like don't fucking throw stones in a glasshouse, Western countries.

I think I'm gonna check out guys, much respect (I'm being serious btw), but this is where gets a little too kooky for me.

My by-no-means-comprehensive take on the issue:

* Coverage in Western media is generally about repressed minorities - when you see protests about these from a Chinese POV they look "anti-Chinese" i.e. our concern is about big bad mass of (Han) Chinese steamrollering over other groups, nobody wants to stand up for the regular people of China except the good old CCP, etc. - Not saying this is how it is, just the obvious reading by most Chinese
* Getting on for 40 years of consistent economic development has given the impression of great success, record numbers lifted out of poverty, etc. This is a massive thing and not to be forgotten, for all the downturn recently people still seem to feel like things are going well and they are actively optimistic about the future.
* The new middle/upper class in China are the people you usually meet, they have done very well in the last 40 years and any sort of disturbance to the system that lifted them up is frightening.
* So a certain kind of expat in China will see and absorb all of this and conclude that China is doing ok, but the western media is always on about human rights, therefore western media = biased, myopic and unreliable, all of which is correct in a sense, but
* CCP propoganda actively pushes this POV to disguise their immense failings, push viewpoints like "human rights is a western notion which doesn't apply in the same way in our culture" - they have absorbed so much from the west, but have always resisted giving people rights, especially rights at work, this goes in hand with partnerships with western companies, honestly find it disgusting how these companies have conspired with them to bring over western culture minus the workers rights people fought and died for a century to get.
* All of which is of course tied into the history of colonial oppression and humiliation which Chinese always take into consideration but which the west always seem to forget about.
* So the CCP seem to think they can get away with anything now, this is bad!
* As western commentators we should consider and be educated about all of the above but also not use this as a way to let the CCP off the hook, obviously sanctions isn't viable at the moment, but authoritarians around the world are still growing in power all the time and none of them should be allowed to control the argument, all I would ask is that it be made clear that criticism of them be properly separated from real racism and ignorance about China and Chinese people.

seems like 100 years from now the treatment of china's uighur minority will be rightly seen as horrifying and vile, except by weirdos who will analogize it to being punished by their parents in order to score woke points in some online debate.

I swear this board is getting stupider day by day

Try posting less then. Take that how you will.

Or I could kilfile you as well. That might help.

You have a particular fondness for calling people stupid I've noticed.

You know, the guy who doesn't believe in resorting to personal abuse.

Omg, are you policing my language? What is this, the Cultural Revolution?

What can you hear me from up there on yr high horse?

And this thread has literally devolved into whataboutism. As they always do.

not that we can ever have any good faith assumptions on Twitter of any sort ever again of course

it would be great in these situations to have a news source that one didn't have to second guess the agenda behind

China discourse on twitter is of different brands, from full-on Tankie to anarchist-left and against PRC but not exactly interested in the capitalist sort of 'liberation'.

By contrast what he's saying about our media is shooting fish in a barrel, everyone already knows this stuff.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, 21 July 2020 bookmarkflaglink

He was talking about the discourse on left-leaning and liberal media and I wouldn't be so sure on that. Yes, trust is poor on the media in general but on international reporting I've seen people gobble up no questions the reporting on Morales last year, for example. A Nick Cohen piece was linked here no questions asked (imagine if someone linked one of his pieces approvingly on the uk politics thread). Decent, accurate reporting is key but if that isn't available then that isn't available.

I think orgs such as Victims of Communism blaming the virus as solely China's fault is part of the propagation of really awful views on China that has contributed to Sinophobia too.

The disturbing reality of sinophobia in the West should not blind us to the atrocities committed by the CPC, just as the existence of antisemitism is never sufficient grounds for silencing critics of Israeli expansionism. Likewise, opposition to Western neoliberal imperialism should not automatically lock you into a binary alternative (if it can even be called that!).

no doubt, but the discussion here is on the difficulty of finding journalism that doesn't serve one side or other of the binary

"no questions asked"

This liberal vermin asked

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camp

See the ‘Testimonies of treatment’ section in particular.

And did anyone watch that Al Jazeera video I posted upthread?

Allday's similar to Brendan O'Neill, in that you know exactly what he's going to say about any particular topic long before his fingers hit the keyboard.

idk how to solve the media trust issue. It obviously doesn't help when you have papers of record publishing reports from Falun Gong front organisations as independent, for example. One of the most interesting pieces i've seen on Xinjiang was, iirc, from some idiot tech blogger who'd somehow wound up there and detailed how surveillance-heavy and militarised everyday life is.

If you’re hoping for impartial, freely available investigative news sources from China, I’m afraid you’re bound to be disappointed.

Not linking to dodgy people doesn't help.

(goes for all of us :-))

Nick Cohen is obviously a POS on both personal and professional levels, however he's sometimes right, for example he's been one of the few people to consistently fight against Spiked/LM for the last 20+ years. I wouldn't dare post anything by him on the UK politics thread, but we all know that's a special place. He can be right about things sometimes, and he has a platform, if that's the best we can get then of course that's not good enough, but it's better than silence.

I haven't heard of these "Victims of Communism" people before, but they sound pretty typical. They are coming from a place where everything you see is propaganda, and the way you fight against that is to make some more propaganda for "your side" - and being used to armies of wumaos means assuming there are similar armies of 白左 doing the same thing in the west, only they don't even get paid. Conspiracy theories flourish everywhere, because nobody trusts anyone or anything. For my wife, being left wing and opposed to the PRC makes her basically alone in the online Sinosphere, and it's really pretty sad.

One of the most interesting pieces i've seen on Xinjiang was, iirc, from some idiot tech blogger who'd somehow wound up there and detailed how surveillance-heavy and militarised everyday life is.

― Scampo di tutti i Scampi (ShariVari), Tuesday, 21 July 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Similarly one blogger posted his journey to North Korea by rail, got there by a back route and saw it for a few hours before he was picked up iirc, and it was just this poor, mostly rural bit of land.

I didn't know anything about Nick Cohen other than that he is a columnist for The Observer until imago pointed it out. I am not as well versed in British journalism and politics as you are, for obvious reasons.

guys xyzzzz JUST HAS SOME QUESTIONS

Don't really need to reach for Victims of Communism (who most people have never heard of) when Donald Trump is saying basically the same thing on a much bigger platform.

In general its extremely difficult to report on this story full stop - probably harder than in most wars - with a reliance on any first hand testimonies you can get. And as with Syria the grey area that creates becomes highly fertile ground for all sorts of charlatans with dodgy agendas.

Thing about Nick Cohen is that he's always more interested in bashing "the left" or even liberals in general than he is about what he's writing about. So internment camps and forced labour become just another stick with which to beat his usual targets. There's other dodgy stuff about his behaviour as well but he has forged a 25 year career denouncing everyone else's hypocrisy while being blind to his own (or just conveniently pretending it doesn't exist).

They are coming from a place where everything you see is propaganda, and the way you fight against that is to make some more propaganda for "your side"

Indeed. It's also interesting to note that Václav Havel, Lech Wałęsa and Emil Constantinescu have sat on its international advisory council.

You don’t have to have heard of Victims of Communism when the narrative they’re pushing gets disseminated by much more high profile people than them.

the grey area that creates becomes highly fertile ground for all sorts of charlatans with dodgy agendas

Paul Celan:

No one
bears witness
for the witness

"Victims of Communism (who most people have never heard of)"

Its one of two orgs Zenz is linked to who has done a lot of the research on this issue, whom Cohen links to.

I haven't heard of these "Victims of Communism" people before, but they sound pretty typical. They are coming from a place where everything you see is propaganda, and the way you fight against that is to make some more propaganda for "your side" - and being used to armies of wumaos means assuming there are similar armies of 白左 doing the same thing in the west, only they don't even get paid. Conspiracy theories flourish everywhere, because nobody trusts anyone or anything. For my wife, being left wing and opposed to the PRC makes her basically alone in the online Sinosphere, and it's really pretty sad.

Yep, it's pretty eye-opening to be in China with people freely talking about how corrupt the CPC is, how much land and how many state-backed corporations are still owned by Mao's relatives, how ludicrously expensive things like healthcare and housing can be, etc, etc, in a way that never makes it into the online space for obvious reasons.

Yes that's true, I would entirely believe you if you told me Trump and his team were avid followers. (xpost to gyac)

Re “sinophobia” I think it’s also important not to treat this “phobia” as equivalent to a pure racial prejudice. China is a longtime imperial power that is not that far off from playing an equal or greater role in global dominance to the US. Anti-China sentiment is not really the equivalent of “these damn Mexicans sneaking across the border” or whatever liberal centrists try to make it out to be.

the victims of communism folks include the nazis killed by the red army during wwii in their tally of communist atrocities iirc, just to give you an idea of the level of their playing field

Nah, but the most available people racists target are going to be working class Chinese immigrants, ethnic Chinese and others who are not responsible for the wrongs of the state. It’s not the ruling class they’ll hurt.

allday is a cop

sorry if this offends

If you were a Chinese immigrant in the UK prior to about two or three years ago you would have experienced a lot of garden-variety racism mostly centred around how funny you were to the person abusing you. In the last year in particular that's changed and become explicitly wrapped up with the actions of the Chinese state, Huawei etc, and turbo charged since January. Nothing racists like more than a socially acceptable excuse to heap suspicion and hatred on minority groups (as Muslims have found out for decades now).

Also it goes without saying that some of the most immediately at hand victims aren't going to be Chinese at all but the people we're talking about here aren't interested in distinguishing people from different East Asian countries let alone from the Chinese government.

who will police
the police

-- Paul Celan

with the Chinese ruling classes increasingly investing in/propping up English football teams, if anything they'll get more popular. proper blokes with proper money

that said I have a Huawei phone so idk how complicit I am in all this, probably very

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/world/asia/china-mask-forced-labor.html

who will police
the police

-- Paul Celan

― xyzzzz__

i never knew Juvenal's real name until now thanks

Got some answers now and are perhaps wiser than before. You're welcome!

supporting sources that are actively spreading disinformation is not a good way of going about things and a certain amount of skepticism of those sources and their framing is appropriate certainly

the analogy that keeps coming to mind is very immediate and present and it has to do with what is happening in portland right now

i am not a fan of twitter, i think it is not a reliable or trustworthy medium, i think there is a lot of bullshit and misinformation and disinformation that comes out of it

and when federal agents started kidnapping people off the streets of portland the only people talking about it were people on twitter, and they're not reliable sources and so it doesn't surprise me at all that it had to go on for a week until people started catching on

i'm beyond the point where i can employ source criticism on a level of "this is a reliable source and i trust it" and "this is not a reliable source and i don't trust it". sometimes the only sources for information you have are unreliable sources and sometimes you have to try and pick out the truth of what the hell is going on from the weird ass biased reports that come out

if you study ancient history you have to study herotodus, and people call him "the father of lies" and they're not wrong, and so everyone spends huge amounts of time trying to figure out what herotodus said that was actually true and what was some bullshit he just made up because that's the only way of knowing anything.

Nick Cohen is Herodotus for the left!

I’ll believe Uyghurs are being corralled into concentration camps when China confesses to its crimes.

No one is saying that China isn't suppressing dissent or that something isn't going on Xinjiang (allday denies it all but I was agreeing about his point on Novara inviting someone from Spiked on their show).

Distinguishing the two is key to everything here, blurring the distinction between the two is bad whoever is doing it, and tbh I do not understand why everyone doesn't just get this.

on the left a lot of this is the legacies of leninism & nationalism- the party/state is the people, useful thinking for people who are or aspire to be part of the former (most prominent leftists, way beyond obvious tankies). then reduction by the same people of all world events to a mirror image of the US neocon view of good guy/bad guy states, reinforced by various state lines and general war on terror racism. the thing about China not being imperialist is a tell, it only makes sense if you already accept a number of bullshit leninist and/or nationalist premises

this is the kind of shit that has had many prominent leftists helping the far right smear all dissident Syrians (& Iranians & Afghans & others) as US-backed Islamist terrorists, same thinking now applied to Xinjiang. it’s cost western leftists way more good will internationally than they seem to realise yet

obviously the right wingers using this as part of their yellow peril narrative to incite violence against asians don’t actually give a shit about any of it

xp it’s fake, it’s justified, it’s bad but exaggerated, use any and all as convenient, standard genocide denial. actually pretty widespread

Never knew truth telling is so easy, on the internet.

?

If you want the, uh, good guys to win, you gotta gloss over certain, uh, details. Otherwise you lose sight of the, uh, bigger picture.

Also wrt the footage posted by LBI above there is something desperate about the framing (and I've seen a couple of other tweets on my TL) of this as a new holocaust. I can believe there is something going on in China, but I can also see the voices pushing on about exactly what as to be questioned about how they get their info and their motivations.

An astonishingly dim take, even for you.

I know you wouldn't like it

Uighur doctor tells ITV News of disturbing testimonies of 'forced abortions and removal of wombs' | By @emmamurphyitv https://t.co/n135XfZWI2

— ITV News (@itvnews) September 2, 2020

This is horrifying.

I'd advise not clicking on that if you're likely to be distressed by the subject matter because there's some very grim stuff in there.

I don't know what to say other than fuck Xi and fuck every country that has abetted this, whether directly or indirectly. Just horrible.

Yeah :(

jfc.