Submitted by mofongo in meta (edited )

To expand, it is a current event and no one has reported any murder, but there appear to be re-education regarding their values, religion and to some extent their culture, in favor of Han Chinese one. Currently, it has been reported that 1 million Uyghurs are in these camps.

As site policy, should be considered genocide, or other.

I deleted a thread in /f/Communists for this reason, which prompted the question. See the moderation log.

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ziq wrote (edited )

It fits the legal definition of genocide.

http://preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext.htm

Forcible transfer of children may be imposed by direct force or by fear of violence, duress, detention, psychological oppression or other methods of coercion. The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines children as persons under the age of 18 years.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/09/china-internment-camps-uighur-muslim-children/569062/

China's Jaw-Dropping Family Separation Policy: Children and parents are being ripped apart on a massive scale. It may rob an entire generation of their Muslim identities.

Our terms of service:

Apologizes for police or military brutality, imperialism, eugenics, genocide.

Apologizes for violence towards children.

But the way tankies operate, they'll claim the child snatching isn't happening and it's all Western propaganda. They'll point out that all the sources are Western capitalist sources and then point to alternative "communist" sources that say the opposite.

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ziq wrote

You know, this really isn't a question of whether we should have a site policy about this one particular event.

Everything you criticize tankie regimes for will be met by tankies with stacks of texts to prove you wrong. Alternate facts have always been their currency. It's how they've manage to cling to their archaic ideology after 100 years of miserable failures.

They will justify any atrocity with long "authoritative" texts that explain in intricate but nonsensical detail why everything you think you know is wrong. These texts use every brainwashing method under the sun to ensure any argument you could possibly make can be immediately dispelled with a simple proclamation of "You're parroting western propaganda. You're a liberal."

There is no debating a tankie because they don't live in our world. They inhabit an alternate universe where it's perpetually 1917.

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blog wrote (edited )

The Chinese state says the camps and heavy surveillance in Xinjiang are for combating Islamic extremism. The targets are ordinary Uyghurs. Reading between the lines, the Chinese state equates Islam to extremism and wishes to exterminate it and conform Uyghurs to the dominant Han identity. It's genocide.

There are numerous reports of abuse coming out of these camps of all types. They sound like residential schools in the USA and Canada but for an entire population.

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rot wrote

even if genocide was somehow ruled out it's still state suppression 100% reactionary

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blog wrote

Sure, I'm just thinking about how this is plainly genocide and so apologia for it is explicitly against the TOS

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fabianhjr wrote (edited )

I think that reporting on those issues is important but most posts/comments become slandarous about how China is evil in itself and how it is a dystopic country while overshadowing incarceration rates of PoC in the US and equal or worse treatment of muslism in "western" countries. (For example, US Guantanamo Bay held Uyghurs for a while https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_Uyghur_detainees_at_Guantanamo_Bay and Europe is plagued with Islamophobia)

On the other hand, there is evidence that some sort of cultural reeducation is taking place at least similar to those that happened in the Americas with First Nations. (Canadian example: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system ) and 1 million is an overblown number, most estimates are around 30-60 reeducation facilities holding at most 120,000 Uyghurs total.

I don't think this issue should be considered as a genocide and it is prone for easy shots at China / Communist Party of China, but it is inline with how empires have acted and will continue to act. What should be forbidden is both denialism ("those are capitalist/western lies") and cheap dishonest shots at China ("China is killing 1 billion Uyghurs/muslism/minorities per year") since both are a diservice to the Uyghur struggle.

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mofongo OP wrote

Tbh, what happened in the Americas with First Nation people was genocide.

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fabianhjr wrote (edited )

We would be arguing semantics, I would rather have genocide for the narrow cases of mass-systematic-killings.

(I would agree that it is a cultural genocide in both cases but not a genocide)

EDIT: Just to clarify, there were also genocides of first nations in the Americas, what I was refering to was a modern forced reeducation policy in Canada.

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