Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/18/tibet-2-pt-0.html
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May I be the first to say, on this occasion at least, FUCK CHINA!
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I am Jewish with a father who is Dukhobor. I do not know how to begin stopping this. I hate this feeling.
It was supposed to be “never again”.
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This is definitely ethnic cleansing.
I don’t know yet if it is a mass-extermination in progress, but it sure has a lot of those markers 
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Right, because that worked out so well for us. /s
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It may not work, but USA doesn’t have much moral authority to complain either after invading Afghanistan and Iraq, killing half a million people or so. Being sent to a reeducation camp is slightly better than being blown up by a drone. (assuming you aren’t used for organ harvesting, of course).
You do realize that a government is not its population, right? Just like the PRC is not synonymous with everyone it rules. I’m not a government, and the unethical thing would be to not criticize ethnic cleansing by my own or any other government. No moral authority is required to speak out against injustice.
It’s not a contest between which crimes against humanity are the lesser ones.
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I suppose I could have written “the US government doesn’t have much moral authority to complain”, but when you talk about countries like this it is generally implied that you talk about their government. Last I checked USA was still a democracy, although far from perfect, so the people aren’t exactly blameless. A majority of American reelected Bush in 2004 despite the atrocities.
From the Chinese perspective it does matter if they can deflect any US complaints by pointing out that USA has been even more brutal in their fight against terrorism.
This is by all means a genocide, but beyond race this is also about individual freedom and why HK protesters are doing their best to stand against China. It will inevitably happen there too that dissent will be swept under the rug and people will absolutely die in a veil of corruption and secrecy.
There’s just no fucking way the international community doesn’t know about these concentration camps, but they all want China’s money so watcha gunna do about it…
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It’s generally assumed. That’s a mistake.
A majority of voters. Not everyone can or does vote. Power is massively unevenly distributed within the American Empire.
Being an American does not make what one says statements on behalf of the US government. No country is a monolith. Dismissing criticism of ethnic cleansing from people who live in a place on the basis of their government is a fallacy of deflection. Neither Cory nor I are mouthpieces of the US government, and Cory isn’t even a US citizen.
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This is awful and disgusting. Short of a full scale invasion or massive sanctions against china by an administration that actively dislikes the victims of this… just wtf can we do?
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My feelings exactly, and I don’t know what to do either. :’-(
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Do you really think China, government or people, are going to care about a few American citizens complaining? Bringing it up to government level with threats of international sanctions may mean anything, but then you are back to the problem of US moral authority.
Remember the Soviet invasion of Hungary? The reason they figured they could get away with it was the Suez crisis where Israel, UK and France had just invaded Egypt.
P.S. I also find it ironic how careful you are now in making a distinction between US people and government, given what you wrote to begin with: “Right, because that worked out so well for us. /s”. Not “the US government”, “us”.
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It was meant to be “never again” and many good people have been working against acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing…but as a historian of the postwar world, since the Holocaust… well… we’ve not done a great job of that.
It is a horrible feeling.
We can push for sanctions, meaningful ones at that. We can continue to speak out and to share stories like this. We can write to the UN, and support candidates here that support these policies, including candidates who support a robust refugee program for ALL people, regardless of race, religion, or country of origin - push to make your local community a safe community for refugees.
This is unfortunately always the question… what can we ACTUALLY do in the case of these events, and often outside of calling attention to it, and being vocal in our opposition and writing to people who have more power in the world, there isn’t that much.
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If you don’t then why are you rebuking said criticism?
My imprecise choice of words in my first comment is the first valid criticism you’ve responded to me with in this thread. You know, I actually thought about typing “for the US government” instead, but I was being sarcastic and didn’t really anticipate someone rebuking me for criticizing genocide. Live and learn. 
BTW, I generally find your contributions to this forum pretty good and constructive, so know I harbor no I’ll will. But I adamantly disagree that Cory or I or anyone else here requires any moral authority to criticize ethnic cleansing anywhere by anyone. Silence is complicity. You are of course quite free to disagree.
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Preface, explanation does not mean endorsement.
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It’s a little disappointing to see someone media savvy like Cory repeatedly endorse questionable sources like Chinese organ harvesting studies by Falungong, ChinaTribunal, ETAC etc. Or extremely tenuous claims by Washington based NGOs with clear anti-China agenda like East Turkistan National Awakening Movement. Or atrocity propaganda by Sayragul Sauytbay whose narratives changes wildly with the news cycle. This is not to claim FLG or Uyghurs aren’t being repressed in China, they absolutely are, but quoting these sources are pretty poor demonstration of media literacy.
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Chen Quanguo’s was architect behind the security appartus in Tibet before XinJiang. Incidentally, it was also in response to previous extremist attacks. He was promoted to XinJiang after Uyghur terrorist attacks, and while his response has been extreme, there has been no substantial attacks since his tenure. Countries wildly overreacting to domestic terror attacks is not new, there’s no proven COIN model for these situations. Obviously his successes plays well to domestic audiences. Again this is context, not endorsement.
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The NYT leaks is consistent with CPC claims that the camps in XinJiang are anti-terrorism / anti-extremism / vocational training* instruments. It would be appropriate to label the intent as cultural genocide, well cultural integration with Chinese characteristics, but also reinforces that the motivations behind the camps is not elimination, i.e. all the lazy comparisons to holocaust is unfounded. People in the west are too quit to draw on Godwins law. China is not out to eradicate Uyghur people if only because changing 56 official Chinese ethnic groups to 55 would look bad for Xi’s legacy.
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(*) Some context behind this policy. In response to separatist terrorist attacks, China is unofficially moving towards a 2nd general ethnic (MingZu) policy. The 1st generation policy was based around autonomous soviet oblasts. Minorities were afforded incredible affirmative action privileges over Han majority - exemption from taxes, family planning (one child policy), extra points for University exams etc. But following the attacks, factions began to question this multiculturalism “salad bowel” model, also informed by extremist attacks in the west by unintegrated Muslim enclaves. Hence the movement towards forced integration… based off US melting pot analogy. The new MingZu policy emphasized national unity, instead of local identity. The new focus is on GuoZu (State race), abandon individual identity to one national identity. HanYu (Han language) / PuTongHua (common language) has been renamed to GuoYu (national language) in official documentation. In response to Uyghur intellectuals / upper class teaching Uyghur languages to their kids, promotion of ethnic languages has (supposedly) been internally elevated to great evil status after extremist, separatism, terrorism. Increasing Han migration to autonomous regions to promote ethnic mingling. New restrictions on religion that will likely touch all religions.
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What can the West do. I suspect nothing. Obviously there’s a lot of geopolitics behind containing China. But the TLDR; is that more countries are aligned with Chinese success than western MSM would lead one to believe. Only US has any unambiguous incentive with containing China to maintain their global hegemony and is in a secure enough geopolitical position to do so. Demographically and economically, most countries including trade-GDP dependant western G20 nations has their future prosperity pegged to Chinese success in the long run. No one is interested in sanctioning China. And China is also no longer a trade-dependant economy, only 19% of it’s GDP comes from trade and that’s rapidly declining as she pivots to internal consumption/service model. Just for perspective, all Canadian trade to China equals 15 hours of Chinese annual GDP. It’s completely insubstantial.
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And frankly, Western countries with extremely poor demographic pyramids who depend on immigration to support their economic engines but are also increasingly destabilized by massive demographic changes (read racial) have perverse incentive to see Chinese rapid de-secularization / integration model work. Re-education with EU characteristics. The only silver lining is that ostensibly this leak proves China isn’t interested in Uyghur holocaust but minority integration, so there’s a chance they’ll change their tactics if current methods do not work. China likes to rush things, be it economy, infrastructure, academic papers, patents. I don’t think integration / people can be rushed, but it’s China, they’ll still try.
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China’s response
A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Geng Shuang, criticized the newspaper’s report, published on Sunday, saying the article smeared China’s efforts against extremism. But he did not dispute the authenticity of the leaked internal documents that confirmed the coercive nature of the measures used against Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims in western China over the past three years.
A statement from the Xinjiang regional government of China was far more strident, saying the Times article had been “completely fabricated by hostile forces at home and abroad” and calling it “total nonsense and a pack of lies, with sinister motives behind it.”
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I wasn’t, I was pointing out that the US government doesn’t have moral authority to complain given its own actions. The context was that Xi justified his actions by refering to US (government) actions.
It was deliberate nitpicking when your meaning was clear. Not something I normally do.
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Ah, there’s the source of the confusion. I thought you were referring to my or Cory’s criticism. I don’t entirely agree that the US government can’t criticize insofar as sanctions can be a practical good even if they’re hypocritical, which is of course itself not good. But the history of US imperialism makes that a delicate line to walk.
No worries.
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Honestly?
War of some sort. China has numbers but the technology is outmatched.
Otherwise, when the technology is no longer outmatched, what then?
A strong international response in Tibet at the time could have avoided this.
