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.

gyac I agreed with that

thx dylannn for the good posts, generally agree with nv and calzino here and glad for the revive

I suspect a lot more people in Canada think the current programs are OK than just "closet psychopaths" fwiw

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.

thanks especially for this

i saw an awful scene in shanghai back in 2006, a group of civilians surrounding a Uyghur man on his knees in a parking lot. he was on his knees and they were all yelling at him and threatening him. apparently they said he had stolen something. somehow that doesn't sound quite as bad as it really was - it was like stepping back into a Jim Crow scene, just chilling. There was a police officer standing about 30 feet away, acting like he didn't notice.

CaAL's posts have been v interesting and relevant

pomenitul is the one that’s otm in this thread

interesting how this wasn’t basically seen as cultural genocide

I certainly view it as such. But once again, I think it's fairer to compare 21st century Canada to China (if we wish to go down that route), pace ogmor's comment about timelines.

CaAL's posts have been v interesting and relevant

Indeed!

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

(Both M. Usman's comments and especially F. Deif's response.)

that's a good link again ty. absolutely horrifying of course, and it feels like less and less can be done

This whole thing is incredibly heartbreaking.

It is. I've been thinking of listing the 'conflicts'/murdering going on around the world pretty much unnoticed, or not cared for, in these orona times. Erdogan is bombing the Kurds, in modern northern Iraq, and no-one bats an eyelid. No UN/EU/USA comments about it, nothing. Jemen a tragedy of its own. Uyghurs: same. From next week on Israel will probably be annexating more. No-one is doing anything about it. It's maddening.

Necropolitics is necropolitics

Someone just leaked drone footage of CCP authorities loading Uyghurs onto trains, presumably to transport them to reeducation camps.

Look familar? pic.twitter.com/zfmEvpObMX

— Neoliberal 🌐 (@ne0liberal) July 15, 2020

hmm...been looking at this because Sir Keith QC has posted about it, and so it has been bubbling merrily on twitter.

That Nick Cohen piece cites Adrian Zenz, the wiki:

Zenz is a born-again Christian. He stated that he feels "led by God" in his mission.[1]

Who is some kind of Chrstian scholar? The wiki cites him as the author of this book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Worthy-Escape-Believers-Raptured-Tribulation/dp/144976908X

I see he is also part of this v weird org:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victims_of_Communism_Memorial_Foundation

Which was just mentioned earlier on anoher thread today as doing the following, again from the wiki:

In April 2020, the organization announced they will be adding the global victims of the COVID-19 pandemic to their death toll of communism,[14] blaming the Chinese government for the outbreak and every death caused by it.

So yeah I've got questions.

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.

With this and everything else in China it's just impossible to get any news which is untainted by some sort of agenda. This isn't an accident, it's a deliberate policy, and we've seen how effective it is, and not just in China.

I think the balance of evidence which we can see is that there are truly appalling things going on in Xinjiang - "a new holocaust" is obviously a stretch for what we have to go on, but I am just clad that some attention is being paid to it, and it winds me up something rotten when I see people trying to reach out a hand to this cynically brutal, authoritarian regime.

I don't think this is an excuse to say stuff that might not be true (such as the sterilisation program) or hasn't been checked out by multiple sources that in the end just end up making nasty sorts like Nick Cohen look superior. Most of the press give the goings on in Xinjiang attention but it could come without the hysterics.

there's no genocide, because i don't like the messenger

You were downplaying Starmer's, calling him a 'dork' last week. I'd stay out of this.

*racism.

Why is a left-wing platform bringing out someone from Spiked to talk about this.

The only guest Novara had discuss (i.e. crudely demonise) China whines about “tankies”, writes for Spiked, shares articles on how “wokeness is the new racism” & retweets the horrible racist Matthew Goodwin. With an alternative media like this, an establishment one is unnecessary. pic.twitter.com/DD6IYLV3Kk

— Louis (@Louis_Allday) July 21, 2020

The account I link from is pro-PRC however it doesn't change what it is pointing out in this instance.

This is what I am talking about with everything being (deliberately) tainted by an agenda. It's a massive disappointment that (a) left wing commentators seem to have nothing to say about Xinjiang or HK and (b) Chinese overseas dissidents are now overwhelmingly firmly pro-Trump / virulently anti-EU.

Being pro-PRC-government is like being pro-Nazi, it should not be fucking acceptable.

Like what is wrong about this quote? Everything in it is right!

This is staggeringly bad. According to Sarkar, ‘the left’ hasn’t been sufficiently critical of China because it understands imperialism as a “uniquely European phenomenon” & it is excessively sceptical of mainstream sources of information because of the war on Iraq. 🤯 pic.twitter.com/34kX2Im2HC

— Louis (@Louis_Allday) July 20, 2020

Being pro-PRC-government is like being pro-Nazi, it should not be fucking acceptable.

― Anti-Cop Ponceortium (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 21 July 2020 bookmarkflaglink

brb going to call Saddam 'H!tler' to make a point.

Mainstream liberal sources are often terrible and follow imperialist agendas. Look at the discourse on Morales and how it was used to support the coup last year. It's not just Iraq.

You can't just read Washington Post/NYTimes or The Guardian with a straight face on this at all.

Who is this person we're discussing here? He appears to be deeply suss to say the least.

Despite what the US wants you to believe, China is NOT akin to Nazi Germany, it’s NOT aggressive, it’s NOT imperialist & it’s NOT running “concentration camps”. It is going to eclipse the US economy over the next decade however, so expect the propaganda against it to intensify.

— Louis (@Louis_Allday) January 2, 2020

Imperialist propaganda successfully weaponizes well-intentioned people's instincts. A combo of naivety & western chauvinism leads them to easily believe the worst about the US' enemies & call for "us to do something" thus giving humanitarian credibility to imperialist aggression.

— Louis (@Louis_Allday) July 19, 2020

The reason calling Saddam "Hitler" was stupid was because he was really a much more minor figure, not because he was actually a nice guy and very misunderstood.

Not debating that mainstream liberal sources are often bad, however that doesn't mean we just go "oof, who knows what's really the truth" - that's exactly what they want, apathy. The PRC government are doing really fucking awful things and people are taking their side (which is very much not the side of the Chinese people) due to what seems to come down to "enemy of my enemy is my friend."

All of this is also true of Anti-PRC Trump-supporting Chinese dissidents btw.

Very much pro-PRC, Cuba, 'tankie' etc. I am not here to defend everything that he posts, but to make a point on the discourse using that one tweet I linked xp

I remember some fucking idiots selling communist newspaper outside SOAS ten years ago with the headline "CHINA IS NOT A CAPITALIST COUNTRY" and I wanted to give them a shake and ask them "have you ever been to China? It's capitalist in ways you've never considered possible!"

Idk, it doesn’t seem contradictory to utterly condemn what is happening in Xinjiang without giving succour to the various anti-communism without communism dangers, none of whom care about persecution of Muslims at home. The left needs a strong stance on this because otherwise it’s going to be the fascists happily joining in.

FWIW I think comparing China to the Nazis is stupid and counterproductive as well, in any case the right-wing press barely needs an excuse to demonise China right now and that's going to intensify, but if anything this story is going under-reported there. I know you're not defending it, but the desire to fly into a protective huddle when faced with stories of a large-scale human atrocity taking place is deeply dubious, we've seen that enough times before. By contrast what he's saying about our media is shooting fish in a barrel, everyone already knows this stuff.

(xpost)

I also find phrases like "demonise China" very odd - does this mean the government of China or the people? 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.

(Duplicate message deleted, nothing to see here)

There are a lot of people who aren't interested in making those distinctions or who will enthusiastically blur the lines. Chinese people over here are experiencing the sharp end of a climate of rapidly rising sinohobia this year and there are enough people in this country who don't care about that any more than they care about the treatment of Muslims in this country.

Matt you're talking to someone with a Chinese wife + child, I'm sure he knows all that!

I didn't actually realise that, apologies.

The sinophobia I see is 100% from racist idiots who absolutely don't read the Guardian, let alone Novara Media

Also, everyone with a Hong Kong flag in the bio is a total danger, let’s be clear. Got nothing to do with supporting protesters in Hong Kong and everything to do with acceptable Sinophobia (towards the people, not the regime).

I don't ever like flags in bios, however is that not including all of the HK democracy protestors?

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.