It is clear that many people (sometimes with good intentions) would bring this logic to any discussion about this matter.
.
China is having their Muslim population put into camps and they live in a horrible injustice situation. They are targeted because of their religion /ethnicity.
Chinese government saying that US is being hypocrite because they did so and so in Iraq and whatever happened after 9/11 from abuses..etc would be good. If only they did that in general while not trying to say okay don't talk about us doing it because we think you did the same.
That would be great if you stand up against oppression in general not just when you can benefit. It would be great if we can just talk about people suffering and try to help them in every possible way.
I think a major resentment people have when they see these "moral stands" by the US, is that in its literal present day actions, neither US nor China "stand up against oppression in general not just when you can benefit", but also, China does not rhetorically claim to do so -- the US does make that false claim.
The easy present day case to back up this claim that the US does not "stand up against oppression..." is Yemen: https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1113852. With various slight modifications, and given enough time to explain, you can add a host of other countries to that list: Afghanistan, Syria, Israel+Palestine, etc. Go back 20-30 years and you can add Iraq. Go back a little further and add Indonesia+East Timor, Iran, most of South and Central America. It's more complicated to make the case, and there are still too many uncertainties about what actually happened, but you could probably even add "nice, Western" countries like Italy to that list.
The point is, China often uses this false talk of "moral stands" as a (mostly sarcastic) retort to the US, because the US sincerely engages in the same false talk in 90% of its communications and more importantly, in material actions that affect actual lives on the ground.
But we do try to make things right for US citizens (and often foreigners) inside our own borders. What happens inside your borders is way more important than outside.
I don't think what we've done in the middle east is remotely good but it's substantially different.
I don't think that matters really. First, I don't see the point in doing moral rankings. If I live in the US and the US does a bad thing, that's what I should care most about (up to a point). Even if I thought, "well, my morality points ranking shows China's worse", that shouldn't affect my political decisions in the US, where I can influence US decisions but not Chinese ones.
But sure, if I have to pick which country to live in, on this metric I'd probably pick the US (we're smoothing over some extremely significant internal problems in the US here, but not directly comparable to Xinjiang, so OK, let's side-step them for the moment).
But that's a pretty selfish view. Good conditions at home don't justify imposing awful conditions abroad. To think so is literally imperial logic. I realize using phrases like "imperial" induces eye-rolling in some, but it's appropriate for the concept we're discussing here. The US's cold calculating cruelty is perhaps less obvious, but it undoubtedly impacts far more lives and deaths. So while I won't weigh in on whether the US is an empire (don't care), if you buy into the logic that "we're only evil abroad, at home we try to be nice", then that is imperial logic.
> ICE stopped sending immigrant women to Amin after the allegations of nonconsensual and unnecessary procedures came to light. The FBI is currently investigating Amin for a series of unnecessary, rough, or abusive procedures, according to a report in Prism by Tina Vásquez earlier this month.
> The feds shut down the entire facility after the allegations came out. It wasn't a case of one doctor.
Well the hysterectomy thing was the one doctor (and the facility failing at its duty to properly oversee him). However, it wouldn't surprise me if there were other issues there as well.
Habitually performing major surgery without informed consent is a structural problem that can't be pinned on a single doctor. An incredible amount of checks have to break down to get to that point.
> Habitually performing major surgery without informed consent is a structural problem that can't be pinned on a single doctor. An incredible amount of checks have to break down to get to that point.
No, because I doubt very much that it was "a lack of oversight". He pretty much must have had support for what he was doing. There's a difference between not noticing something occasionally weird and mass sterilization.
> No, because I doubt very much that it was "a lack of oversight". He pretty much must have had support for what he was doing. There's a difference between not noticing something occasionally weird and mass sterilization.
> At least 43 women at Irwin county detention center (ICDC), in Georgia, have now alleged misconduct by Amin. He is accused of operating on migrant women without their consent or performing procedures that were medically unnecessary and potentially endangered their ability to have children.
> Ogburn, who has worked as a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist for nearly three decades and who has led organizations that develop patient care standards, said Amin did a variety of tests and surgeries for patients that “did them little or no good, and potentially caused harm.”
> “In summary the care provided by Dr. Amin did not meet acceptable standards based on the review of these records,” Ogburn wrote as part of his complaint. “My concern is that he was not competent and simply did the same evaluation and treatment on most patients because that is what he knew how to do, and/or he did tests and treatments that generated a significant amount of reimbursement without benefitting most patients.”
1. Less than 43 women is not "mass sterilization." It's well within the scope of damage could be expected from one incompetent doctor.
2. It's quite believable to me that the jail officials never questioned the medical activities of the doctor (let alone understood what he was doing was malpractice) and just ignored complaints they received from the detainees. For comparison, this outrageously incompetent guy (https://www.propublica.org/article/dr-death-christopher-dunt...) managed to avoid oversight for two years while he was maiming and killing people.
If you click through to the compliant it's not claimed that only 43 women had issues, but instead every woman that doctor came into contact with. They were only able to track down 43 women after ICE started covering their tracks.
> Everybody he sees has a hysterectomy—just about everybody.
Nurse Wooten, who filed the whistleblower complaint.
I mean, after the lawsuit was filed, ICE shutdown the facility and expedited the deportations of all who had filed the suits leaving no paper trail and nowhere for the lawsuits to go. That's not exactly what I'd expect from an org acting on the up and up.
Chinese government (propaganda) is usually deploying this logic to suppress the discussion about their actions. It is a wide spread tactic that we see everyday. It is not like china is ever interested in helping people in Iraq, Afghanistan.. they could just stop doing the same (if not worse) as a good well gesture.
I personally think China has done a great work in Afghanistan than US. They sent humanitarian aid to poor people who were never responsible for terrorism. I acknowledge that China might have their own interest, and might be some Shenanigans. Or, it might just be a marketing tactics to earn good will & gesture?
However, US freezing the whole country account is bad. This doesn't just punish few bad people, but it punishes many good people. Liberation happens through development, not through revenge & suppression.
China is actually interested in helping people in Afghanistan. They sent aid[1] during the winter crisis and they have called for the return of the assets of the Afghan people that have been stolen by the United States[2].
Fun facts about me, I'm not Chinese or paid by the Chinese government. I don't want to see my friends or our collective kids go off on a stupid war with China or another war in the middle east. We remember the WMDs lie, we remember decades of wage stagnation, we remember the decades of politicians low-balling us on healthcare reform/student loan forgiveness/nuclear power plants/other green energy. We know how much Iran/Afghanistan cost. We know who, for decades, sent all our jobs to China. It wasn't China. Want us to give half a shit about putting Xi in jail? Put Bush and Cheney (random names from a long list) in jail first. We can't afford any more wars. We're tired of endless do nothing politicians and constantly being gaslit.
It's a completely fair question to ask what is the Chinese justification.
I found this documentary[1] by CGTN about the recent history of extremism and terrorist attacks in Xinjiang to be useful in outlining some of the context for this.
These terrorist attacks were a real problem and have resulted in the deaths of over 1000 civilians (including Uyghurs). China's argument is basically their re-education "camps" are an attempt to address the underlying causes of this, which is basically economic under-development, lack of education and job opportunities. So China basically identified the people who were involved in these groups and susceptible to radicalisation by them, and set up these schools for them which would teach them skills, including Mandarin, that would help find decent jobs that could provide for them and their families, which eliminates the underlying material basis of the support from some parts of the population that the terrorists may have had.
Having said that, there is still a huge discrepancy in what China says it's doing and what the west claims it's doing. Western sources claim that these are actually "concentration camps" and that there are as many as one or even two million Uyghurs interred there. These allegations are dubious for a number of reasons, but that's a topic for a different post.
Like I said, your question is the right question: what is the Chinese justification for this? And I think it's fair to say their answer is at least plausible on the surface of things and internally consistent. But it leads us to another question: if the claims of western sources of one million plus Uyghurs in "concentration camps" are true, then how does the west explain China's motive for that? China isn't stupid. Why would it put 10% of the population of an entire province in a concentration camp? Are they just that cartoonishly evil? It doesn't really add up to me.
At end of the day repressing restive frontier minority that accounts for less than 1% of population for domestic security (especially terrorism) is the "correct" political decision for CCP. There isn't any feasible calculus for not taming XJ (or Tibet or HK or TW). The real answer is they were left alone for too long due difficult access (whether by geography or politics), granted privileges in hopes they would not stir up trouble. That didn't work, and now wealthier PRC can build high speed rail into their provinces to forcefully integrate. Something every other Chinese province was subject to post 50s. In short, it's simply their turn.
Even the most pessimistic Zenz estimates of XJ internment at 1/12 of population is roughly lifetime incarceration level of US blacks. And the hit job articles on XJ vocational/reeducational "slave" labour programs still have "inmates" paid dramatically better than US prison labour in absolute terms and substantially better in regional terms. Exceeding ~40% of 600M Han Chinese subsisting on informal wage economy. Han Chinese would lose their shit if they find out the amount of subsidies going into XJ securitization and sinicization. If they the the choice between spending trillions to "tame the savage" in XJ versus 12M bullets for an actual genocide, the amount that would pick the latter would be disturbing.
US tried to nation build and spread western values in Afghanistan - PRC is nation building in XJ and spreading PRC values. Just with less bombs and more infrastructure.
Zenz is literally _the_ source of anti-Chinese propaganda. He's the main person behind "Chinese Tribunal", which... well, a private NGO, operating without any legal basis or oversight, calling themselves a "tribunal", think what you will.
I am not saying that it is the case, but let's assume for a moment that China is "re-educating" the Uyghurs to help them "find decent jobs that could provide for them and their families" and so on. Do you think it is acceptable to force someone to undergo "re-education" against their will?
> hypocrite
...
> just talk about people suffering
Talk all you want, PRC's position is the hypocrisy is moving beyond talk into sanctions and other actions that undermine XJ development for counter-insurgency actions. Same reason rest of world is annoyed into being pressured to sanction RU over invading UKR when US/west did not. It's about weaponizing morality for geopolitics.
Of course they support it. From their point of view, China is showing them how to deal with domestic separatist religious movements. All they need is for the Chinese to point to the Hui Muslims and they will be more than fine with it - they may even have endorse it.
Formally they actively support it - they endorse PRC "deradicalization" policy since they suffer from extremist problems themselves. This isn't complicated, plurality of the world does not buy US/western genocide framing - they see PRC policy as relatively peaceful counter-insurgency and actual nation building effort for restive peoples which these regions have to deal with in spades. It's absolutely in their interest for XJ model to work, and perhaps be adoptable through a neat package like Huawei smart cities. West exports democracy that ultimately destabilize vs PRC exports security for serenity. Of course latter is preferable.
>Formally they actively support it - they endorse PRC "deradicalization" policy since they suffer from extremist problems themselves.
The USA just spent 20 years in the middle east 'deradicalizing' or at least that's the going claim from both these regimes. The USA doubts China because they know they were oh so wrong about that claim, not that they admit it.
99 terrorists on the wall, drone strike one, 105 terrorists on the wall.
>This isn't complicated, plurality of the world does not buy US/western genocide framing - they see PRC policy as relatively peaceful counter-insurgency and actual nation building effort for restive peoples which these regions have to deal with in spades.
I wonder how much the US/western biased media is really the one at fault here.
>It's absolutely in their interest for XJ model to work, and perhaps be adoptable through a neat package like Huawei smart cities. West exports democracy that ultimately destabilize vs PRC exports security for serenity. Of course latter is preferable.
This is interesting to me. I feel like you're saying something different. In a way you're saying democracy is unstable and PRC communist control with security is serenity.
This shanghai situation... brink of a peasant's revolt. Some crazy stuff going on there and the government decided to flipflop on an ultralockdown. The original reason for ultralockdown has actually only gotten worse. This is far from serenity in my books.
IMO misplaced doubt since forceful integration is as old has human civilization. US/west did it with indigenous peoples, and modern CCP has done it with fragmented post civil war China. People criticize cultural revolution / reeducation but forgets it works, almost always with proper application of force and commitment. Which US lacked in Afghanistan but PRC doing in spades with XJ securitization. There's been 0 terrorist attacks since. It's time tested instrument of control.
>biased media
The entire XJ genocide initiative is spearheaded under lying Pompeo, using host of US funded NGOs to launder fabricated narratives with hundreds of millions of propaganda funding directed to manufactured consent. So at least that much.
>democracy is unstable and PRC communist control with security is serenity.
No I'm saying PRC approach to COIN/deradicalization with mass monitoring and securitization infra has so far proven to be more effective for maintaining peace than haphazardly blowing people up while dumping money into corrupt reconstruction efforts. It's just a more serious and systematic approach because by all accounts US gave up rebuilding politically and was shovelling resources into a hole for maintenance mode due to politics.
>brink of a peasant's revolt
Same was said about Wuhan and other PRC chernobyl moments. I'll wager there will be less upheaval than antimask/vax protests. Citing "flipflop" as if western epidemiological responses haven't had massive same week changes according to development. A privileged Tier1 city of 25m lockdown with expected logistic hiccups and so far it's mostly people moaning on social media with very little "revolt" bleeding in real life - hasn't even escalated to tier of drama at end of Hubei lock down when adjacent provinces were trying to block cross border travel. It's milder than anything experienced in the west so far for lockdown more severe than anything west have implemented. There's nothing unanticipated about public outrage over inconveniences from lockdowns - that's how humans lash out everywhere regardless of severity. But seeing "peasants revolt" and "far from serenity" because western media reposted some weibo complaints is how PRC collapsists have been consistently wrong.
Couple month from now, if SH trends the way of Jilin or Shenzheng then CCP could be bragging about system defeating infectious covid strain that broke every other system (including soon to live with virus TW). The ability to mobilize and logistically supply 25M people with some initial blunders will also be massive propaganda win - everyone blunders, state capacity is about who blunders least and self corrects quickest.
It spokes a lot when you see that nearly all those defending the CCP are in fact criticizing other countries as CCP tyranny is undeniable and indefensible. But human rights violation isn't a competition, past and existing mistakes don't justify scaling up evil.
I think one crucial thing people forget about Xinjiang is the context: namely, why those camps are there. They are a way of fighting terrorism - an alternative to how the West is handling this problem, which is killing those people from safe distance. US is propping up Xinjiang subject, because if China is successful - if they can show those people can be brought back into society - then it proves again how wrong the American invasion on Middle East was.
For all the faults of the western world, we will have to serve as the preserver of the record of all these abuses in countries that don't allow anything but the official version to spread. It should be noted that without the international news of the Uyghur repression there wouldn't even be an official version from the Chinese government, they were silent about it until it became big. We can't do a lot for the Uyghur people, but at least let's not get fooled into doing Xi's work for him.
You read or heard about those things from reports originating in western media (yes, you might have read it somewhere else, but even the People's Daily is reliant on western media for the stories it makes about how the west is bad). The free dissemination of information sets us apart from the likes of China and Russia. We shouldn't self-censor news from China because Biden is an asshole, we can report about both. If the situation really was symmetrical, there wouldn't be any discussion about US abuses, because it would be outlawed.
There needs to be a better response to pointing out hypocrisy. If you care about China's abuses but not ours and our allies, you do not have the moral high ground, and morality is a political tool to you.
"Whataboutism" is not a valid refutation in most contexts.
It's more of a chant, a mantra, a trigger word you are conditioned to bring up when some kind of obvious hypocrisy or double standard is being pointed out that you cannot otherwise refute.
[edit] Also, "whataboutism" the word, sounds like from 2ndgrader vocabulary
It's not a refutation. You aren't replying to an attempt to refute something.
You're replying to an expression of shock at the behavior on display (specifically, people claiming - in a thread about Chinese torture camps - that we should not talk about them, because we weren't talking about American torture camps, so it would be hypocritical to talk about the Chinese ones).
I'm generally in agreement that this isn't great behavior.
Complaining that a word sounds childish while displaying your ignorance of its meaning is not the slam dunk you think it is.
A post about Chinese torture camps makes an impression that torture camps are exclusively a Chinese thing. It would be fair to mention other countries involved in similar behavior.
The post could have been "torture camps are bad" piece. It is instead focuses on "China is bad" propaganda
> A post about Chinese torture camps makes an impression that torture camps are exclusively a Chinese thing.
Yes, to an audience who have read nothing else on the topic. The people here for this discussion are - by definition - people who read about and/or discuss these topics.
As a discussion thread for a news story (and not, say a textbook for an introduction to world powers and their deeds), discussing tangentially-related events draws diminishing returns.
"Torture camps are bad" is an essay you could ask a high-schooler to write. It's neither news nor informative.
"We are obtaining new evidence that the government of China is running torture camps" manages to be both news and informative.
"US government runs torture camps" is neither news (has something changed?) nor informative (it's been well known for years).
Publishing a comparative treatment of national misdeeds might also manage to be informative; statistical modeling of the harms done by various governments, for instance.
> A post about Chinese torture camps makes an impression that torture camps are exclusively a Chinese thing.
I don't think it does, and I don't think it's a good idea to attribute meaning when there is no one if you want to keep an open, good faith debate. At any point in time there are lots of terrible things being done in the world, to a various degree and to a various number of people. You can't talk about all of them every time you want to talk about one of them.
> A post about Chinese torture camps makes an impression that torture camps are exclusively a Chinese thing.
No it doesn't.
> It would be fair to mention other countries involved in similar behavior.
That would be exceedingly impractical. Must every discussion anything contain mention of every thing someone things is similar? No of course not, that's pure distraction.
How fair do you think it is to the Uyghurs that any discussion of their plight must turn into an obsessive digression about the US?
The insanity of an emotionally out of control mob of people pretending it's not a radically greater moral crime to torture millions of innocent people, than it is to torture a thousand people.
It's the scale difference between the US blowing up a wedding party by accident as a moral crime and Russia raping and murdering their way through Bucha or Mariupol. The emotionalist mob would proclaim they're the same thing.
Describing the US attacks on wedding parties as "a one time accident" rather than "our targets often spent years in hiding before finally coming into the open for a wedding, so we ended up bombing hundreds of weddings and calling them legitimate operations" is... ahistorical, to put it kindly.
No, it's not the same scale of evil as wiping out a city, but... pretending it's less than it was is an ugly look.
As if the wedding party incident was a single, isolated case.
True, the scale of destruction in Iraq, Afganistan and dozen other countries is nothing like Ukraine military shelled and shot their own civilians then staged a photo-op.
> True, the scale of destruction in Iraq, Afganistan and dozen other countries is nothing like Ukraine military shelled and shot their own civilians then staged a photo-op.
Now we know what you are. I reference the on-going vast war crimes of Russia in Ukraine, and you talk about it being a self-inflicted, pretend photo-op.
The scale of destruction in Afghanistan? This is how I know you're flailing. The US spent an epic amount of money attempting to build in Afghanistan. The US paid for more schools and hospitals to be built in Afghanistan than the rest of the world combined fifty times over throughout all of Afghanistan's history.
Now Afghanistan is ruled by the Taliban, which was their situation before the US went in. The Taliban are promptly tearing down civilization, instead of trying to build it up.
> US spent an epic amount of money attempting to build in Afghanistan
I wonder where all this money end up, then.
It really shows how the US failed in the Afganistan -- when the Afgan people prefer the Taliban over US occupation.
Btw, did you know Taliban banned poppy cultivation and opium production promptly after the US evac? Why did drug trade flourished under the US rule? (dont bother, I know the "approved" answer is that there was nothing else for the population to do)
You can call it “whataboutism”, but the only practical outcome of this performative caring in my lifetime has been the justification of endless wars, increased arms dealing, and brutal economic sanctions, which help no one but the US elite.
I am an American, not a “global citizen”. My responsibility is to America. Let the people of other countries take moral responsibility for their governments. To pretend that America has some unique moral insights that need to be imposed on the rest of the world is both deeply racist and contradicted by history.
Yes, anyone actually interested in maintaining Liberal Hegemony would be better positioned if they tried to make the US actually like the "shining city on the hill". Instead the US "projects its values" by committing the "crime against peace" that contains within it all the other war crimes and that's against the UN charter, aggression, on a regular basis. Another way the US "spreads democracy" is by providing full military and diplomatic support (usually by stifling all criticism rather than full-throated support) for highly repressive regimes and full-on wars, including with the use of landmines, cluster bombs, white phosphorous, etc.
A particularly egregious example of this was the US condemnation of Russia at the UN for using cluster bombs in Ukraine, when the US has directly used some cluster bombs in Yemen in the last few years, and continues to supply massive quantities to Saudi Arabia. This claim is often "disputed" by saying that the US stopped manufacturing these weapons years ago, but with stockpiles as high as the US has, that is no refutation at all.
Focusing primarily on these US failings is exactly what a US person should do.
The problem is that these allegations and institutions are not trustworthy.
Institutions that are controlled by the west and are applied only against the enemies of the west. Immigrants who speak out against their motherland under the promise of a better life in the west. Groups that once were terrorists, and killed by our military en masse, are now freedom fighters with a just cause.
Just ten years ago, the US was bombing Uyghurs in Afghanistan based on Chinese intelligence.
Now this issue is used to ban Chinese clothing and solar cells.
I don't recall any US prison in the last 70+ years where people on the order of a million people, largely from a single region or ethnicity, were imprisoned on suspicion of mere affiliation. Every country probably has a signature few cases of prosecution that may provoke our indignation. That's not the same as putting people into prison because their religious beliefs make them enemies of the state.
No. It's not. In some instances people were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or treated poorly based on pretty minor actions, but even at it's height Guantanamo housed < 1000 people. If we were sweeping up any an all Islamists I'd expect a good deal more than that.
Also, the U.S. didn't 'get away with' Guantanamo. It was a big news cycle and the prison is nearly shut down now, and operates with much more consideration for the prisoners, giving them access to counsel and repatriating then when able.
Name a government that hasn't abused it's power at one point. Not sure what your definition of normal is in this instance.
> Who ended up in prison for it?
I'd be ok if China simply stopped what they are doing without sending anyone to prison.
To answer your question though, no one. It's hard to prosecute individuals for an organization's failings without dismantling the organization, which is the US military in this case. The best we can hope for is fixes to prevent such abuses inches future, which we got.
Many Americans, myself included, wish some people were put away, and also sincerely hope that the perpetrators of abuses in Xinjiang find similar ends.
I'd be okay if the US simply stopped invading some countries or toppling random governments every 5 years.
Many people of the rest of the world wish for the responsible US politicians to be put away. I hope the American perpetrators find similar ends.
Its an awful kind of mockery to see the US displaying themselves as the hand of justice in the Xinjiang situation. I wish countries like the Netherlands or Switzerland would do it instead, their hands are much, much cleaner.
This is the same kind of mockery as having Saudi Arabia on the UN panel for womens rights.
> I'd be okay if the US simply stopped invading some countries or toppling random governments every 5 years.
Me too, not sure what that has to do with anything.
> Many people of the rest of the world wish for the responsible US politicians to be put away. I hope the American perpetrators find similar ends.
ok? Not sure where that fits in though.
> Its an awful kind of mockery to see the US displaying themselves as the hand of justice in the Xinjiang situation. I wish countries like the Netherlands or Switzerland would do it instead, their hands are much, much cleaner.
If you consider doing nothing at all about bad things happening clean, then sure. Also, your diction leads me to believe you are Chinese yourself, so maybe a little bias?
> This is the same kind of mockery as having Saudi Arabia on the UN panel for womens rights.
The US doesn't have over a million people in a concentration camp right now, so I don't see the similarity.
Its also racist to make people held accountable for their ancestors. This is what the Nazis did to the Jews, and the US teached germany the hard way that it is not right. How comes you didn't learn that lesson?
Germany got the Nürnberger Trials, the US (clarification: politicians) was never held accountable for anything.
Other than that the US kidnaps people from various countries, often without approval of the country where the kidnapping happens, brings the rebel (patriot?) to Guantanamo Bay without even trial by US legal system and waterboards and tortures them and holds them indefinitely - although some are realized to be the wrong identity and let go - there is another point...
...Cuba has denounced the US military occupation of Guantanamo Bay for decades, and requested the US to leave. So this is happening against the wishes of the country it is happening in.
> ...Cuba has denounced the US military occupation of Guantanamo Bay for decades, and requested the US to leave. So this is happening against the wishes of the country it is happening in.
It's not a military occupation in the sense you imply. It is a perpetual lease made between the US and Cuba. [1]
See, it's not an occupation, it's a "perpetual lease". That I happen to enforce with my army. And we didn't steal that land, they kindly gave it to us. When we held a gun up to their heads and made them sign a document they did not understand. Oh, and these aren't slaves, they're workers. Who happen to be on an unbreakable contract.
(and also, how could I forget, "these Uighurs aren't prisoners, they're just people who, realizing their mistakes, kindly happened to voluntarily come here for education")
The point is that some party insisting that they have some legal contract giving them permission to do something does not mean that contract is legitimate or voluntary.
The remainder of the comment illustrates some very obvious examples of this from the past.
> U.S. control of Guantánamo Bay came about through the end of the Spanish-American war and the Platt Amendment. This amendment was initiated in 1903 and outlined seven conditions for the U.S. withdrawal from Cuba. The United States intervened at the end of the Spanish-American War, taking credit for Cuban independence from Spain. The Platt Amendment was an amendment to the Cuban constitution that supposedly gave Cuba sovereignty, however it included conditions that allowed for U.S. intervention and the ability for the United States to lease or buy lands in order to establish naval bases. The U.S. was allowed to create up to four naval bases on the island of Cuba, but only ever built one, at Guantánamo Bay. The Platt Amendment was repealed in 1934, which is why the Cuban government considers the U.S. occupation of Guantánamo Bay illegal.
"conditions for the U.S. withdrawal from Cuba" = military force. "perpetual lease" my ass.
There was another lease, which was perpetual, signed with Cuba after that. See the link I posted. [1]
"A 1934 treaty reaffirming the lease granted Cuba and her trading partners free access through the Bay, modified the lease payment from $2,000 in gold coins per year to the 1934 equivalent value of $4,085 U.S. dollars, and added a requirement that termination of the lease requires the consent of both the U.S. and Cuban governments, or the U.S. abandonment of the base property."
> Can you point to some less biased source than the US military?
Yes. I called the 1934 document a lease, but it was actually a treaty that also included a modified form of the earlier lease's provisions.
In 1934, a new Cuban-American Treaty of Relations,
reaffirming the lease, granted Cuba and its trading
partners free access through the bay, modified the lease
payment from $2,000 in U.S. gold coins per year to the
1934 equivalent value of $4,085 in U.S. dollars,
and made the lease permanent unless both governments
agreed to break it, or until the U.S. abandoned the base
property. [1]
United States - Cuban Agreements and Treaty of 1934 [2]
Cuban–American Treaty of Relations (1934)
Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Law Library [3]
Cuban–American Treaty of Relations (1934) [4]
Hey, I could have cited the untold millions who perished under Mao in that same range, but I didn't, because it's not relevant to the point: no one who made the decisions today at Guantanamo was also responsible for Japanese internment, and I'm happy to exonerate the CCP leadership today of Mao's misdeeds by benefit of the doubt. The length of time matters.
The US did have the moral high ground, which is a remarkable thing given what we're talking about: that's how horrific what China is doing is.
Were the Japanese released from that internment? Yes. Were they genocided? No. Were they stripped of their culture, heritage, social lives, and tortured for decades due to their beliefs? No. Does the US today recognize the Japanese internment as a moral crime? Yes.
That last one is a critical difference between cultures.
In China today you can't even discuss what's going on in Xinjiang.
You are of course lambasting the US, on a US website. Nothing bad will happen to you because of that. And in this thread you won't find thousands of bots attempting to say that the Japanese internment is ok, or otherwise justify that it should have happened; instead, most of the replies are fully agreeing that it was atrocious. Try that in China, see what happens.
> Does the US today recognize the Japanese internment as a moral crime? Yes.
Not only is it recognized as a moral crime, but the US government passed a law to give restitution to interned people. Does that clean the slate? No. Does that make it ok? No, of course not.
The point is not that the US is perfect or even good. The point is that the US system allows open discussion, criticism, protest, legislating, etc. It has built-in mechanisms to improve itself which it has done and continues to do.
The point is that you forget all the inconvenient facts - from American national guard murdering students in broad daylight, without any kind of punishment afterwards, to secret military kangaroo courts - and build your arguments on plain ignorance ("China has none of that").
In the US, we can acknowledge those "inconvenient facts", freely discuss them, educate people about them, push for accountability for those who did them and to change policies so that they do not happen again.
And then, quite often, the police at various levels of government infiltrate the groups seeking accountability, engage in provocations to discredit them publicly and frame them for unrelated crimes for which they are prosecuted and punished, and actively coordinate with and/or passively use non-enforcement to enable opposed non-police groups to carry out violence against their members. (Of course, we can then acknowledge those inconvenient facts, educate people about them, and push for accountability, if we are willing to start the cycle over again.)
Is the US government less effectively repressive of dissent than the PRC? Sure. But it still does tend to violently repress dissent, especially when that is about conduct of policing or war.
Nice theory, doesn't work. Weed was made illegal to suppress ethnic minorities and war protesters, 50 years later that law is still serving the same purpose. Meanwhile US lawmakers are busy denying voting rights to those same minorities, and making it illegal to teach inconvenient parts of american history.
It's silly to bring up Kent State in a discussion comparing openness to criticism between the US and China. Kent State is well documented, it's taught in school. Tiananmen Square (government troops murdering protesting students) is actively supressed in China.
Yes, the US has done bad things. And some of those bad things have been forgotten. But if you want to find out about them... the government is not going to prevent you from doing so. China is much worse in that regard.
Tienanmen Square is taught in Chinese schools as well. There's a key difference however: people responsible for Tienanmen were punished, with Prime Minister spending the rest of his life in house arrest. Those responsible for Kent State didn't. And that's a common pattern with "bad things" happening in US.
I won't argue with that. The US has vastly improved in that regard over the last 70 years (or however far you want to go back), or the West in general, and could be considered ahead in many ways. However, if you want to put yourself on that high ground, it always comes across rather weird if you add overly specific inb4's. And actually, I think "well at least we can openly call out our government for having done fucked up shit even though nobody in charge will get prosecuted" is kinda rather a sad state of affairs too.
As a side node/regarding initial topic, I also really dislike the quick jump to "whataboutism" to try and kill off any form of discussion that draws parallels and comparisons with other countries (or, to anything else more generally). Because this is unfortunately how it mostly gets used today.
> In China today you can't even discuss what's going on in Xinjiang
You absolutely can, they openly put it on their own government websites and everything even. These measures are written into public law. All of this is behind some misleading language of course, but chinese people aren't stupid. People, especially in Xinjiang, being aware of what's going on is in fact beneficial to the government, as it serves as a warning to anyone who might resist in the future.
Also, aren't you German (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31001842)? Would you agree that the lesson of Nazi Germany is Germans have no grounds to criticize any human rights abuses anywhere in the world ever again?
Why are you criticizing the US for human rights abuses? Aren't you a hypocrite?
Shouldn't we be talking about the Holocaust, right now? After all, what China's doing here pales in comparison to that atrocity. They're only imprisoning one million, while Germany murdered six million.
> Thats fine, where is your Nürnberg Trials equivalent? Which of your politicians have been hanged or gone to jail?
There is none, because the US didn't lose an aggressive war during which it also exterminated six million people based on ethnicity.
No one in Germany would have been hanged for Nazi crimes if it hasn't lost a war totally.
When you don't lose like that, past human rights abuses are handled differently. For instance, the US government has formally apologized to Japanese Americans for wartime internment and paid reparations for it.
> I think the EU should ally up with China and Russia. Korea and Vietnam will probably also want to join us.
So is this about human rights, or just monomaniacal anti-Americanism?
I'm sure you're aware of the quite Nazi-like aggressive war of conquest happening in Eastern Europe right now, where civilians are being indiscriminately shelled. Why would you want to ally with a country doing something like that?
> Go fix your own country first before pointing at others.
I'm sure the Uyghurs would appreciate that.
Should the US have followed your advice during WWII? After all, slavery was quite a sin that hasn't yet been fully atoned for, and even less so in the 40s.
>>> Go fix your own country first before pointing at others.
>> Should the US have followed your advice during WWII? After all, slavery was quite a sin that hasn't yet been fully atoned for, and even less so in the 40s.
> Yes.
Even if that meant the Nazis won or achieved a negotiated peace that left them in power (e.g. no Nuremberg trials, no hangings)?
When China shuts down their internment, officially condemns it, gives restitution to the interned, and stops censoring any education, discussion and criticism of their internment on message boards in their own country but instead welcomes it as part of the self-correcting mechanisms that allow a nation to continually bend towards greater justice and not repeat the old injustices, then the situations will be equivalent.
Let me remind you that a number of US states is fighting to introduce censorship of education, because apparently teaching objective truth is "anti-american".
And yet you can openly criticize those actions, mobilize people to fight against it, file lawsuits, create and distribute alternative resources to continue to educate about whatever is being censored, and no one will stop you.
>> I don't recall any US prison in the last 70+ years where people on the order of a million people, largely from a single region or ethnicity, were imprisoned on suspicion of mere affiliation.
> coughinternment of japanesecough
cough2022-70=1952cough
That was also like three generations ago: there are a lot of things that happened in the US at that time that the US itself now roundly condemns.
You may return with this comparison when the PRC makes a formal apology to the Uyghurs, pays reparations, and teaches about the Xinjiang camps in schools as a shameful event of Chinese history.
I don’t recall China invading and destroying a successful Middle East country twice and utterly laying waste to the region and throwing it into chaos. One can debate over which crime is “worse” I suppose.
What’s also interesting is that towards the late 80s and 90s the USA was really warming up to China at a time when they were carrying out pretty horrible atrocities, far worse than the USSR, but that was the political agenda of the time.
> Every country probably has a signature few cases of prosecution that may provoke our indignation.
A “few signature cases”??
I completely agree that what China is doing is completely wrong, immoral and bordering on genocide but let’s not swing too far the other way here.
The US has used the prison system to persecute black people en mass for the past 70 years. Look at differing rates of incarceration and length of sentences.
On top of that, the reason that the US has the highest prison population is because of the war on drugs, which the US has long used as an excuse to persecute minorities, whether they are black, Hispanic, Chinese or Mormon.
> The US has used the prison system to persecute black people en mass for the past 70 years. Look at differing rates of incarceration and length of sentences.
Do you mean the absolute difference between rates (black people in prison for 1000, white people in prison for 1000) or relative to the crimes that people commit (X people getting a longer sentence on average than Y people for the same crime)?
It should be noted that it is only "bordering on" genocide by the very watered down defintion that the UN countries themselves were willing to approve such that their own actions (notably the native american genocide) were not considered genocides.
Given that in the order of million people were killed abroad as a result of certain escapades people on the opposite site of the fence are never going to view the west as sitting on a high horse. Hell the US openly accused china of purposefully not keeping extremism in check few years prior when some ended up flowing into Afghanistan.
Fuck the CCP but I'm sure they have an easy time using the US's own actions in the domestic arena where they have the upper hand.
As they can magnify every bit of hypocrisy and flaw just like happens here.
Countless incarcerated? Still much less than in the US!
Hell they too can probably make up some stuff on the go. Refer to the Tibetans that were armed and then paid by the US to leave and claim similar stuff is happening now.
It doesn't take much for their people to align with em. Hell plenty were already mad about exemptions the uighurs got from the 1 child policy and such.
Whataboutism is a distraction from discourse regardless of the conduct of the target. As an example, if even Nazi Germany had held the US accountable for interment of Japanese citizens, that would still lead to a positive outcome. Their own acts of genocide wouldn't excuse the US's actions.
> The incarceration rate is around 5 times that of China
You have no idea what the incarceration rate is in China in fact - part the charm of the zero human rights modern China, which is itself an authoritarian prison state - and their supposed official figure does not include millions of Uyghurs.
So you have no problem trusting statistics from a warmongering country with world's highest incarceration rate, and very obvious racial skew among those imprisoned (those fortunate enough to not be shot on the street by police), but you up front assume that it's the Chinese statistics that can't be trusted.
You mean, the mechanism that allows one to ask government for something, and for the government to deny that information for whatever reason?
Okay, show me some example. US Air Force droning a wedding, where can I find information about that? Drone video recordings, perpetrators' names etc? Let me guess - that's "national security" and can't be public. And that's somehow different from how it works in China (if China was droning random civilians that is).
I think the point is you are wholly ignoring atrocities committed by the ccp and changing the topic. So what if the US did bad things, the ccp is doing horrible things and that is what the article is about. What is your response to that? They are imprisoning millions, it boggles my mind how bringing it to light could be considered nothing more than point scoring.
As long as the US can’t be held accountable, neither will China. Simple as that. China’s abuses flourish amid a global economic order that the United States of America has a stranglehold on.
Why does China not “enjoy” the same kinds of sanctions as the Russia? Because we live in a world without justice where the demand for open (not free!) markets and the flow of goods to the metropol.
And if you support out present system, you should acknowledge that things are exactly as they should be.
> And if you support out present system, you should acknowledge that things are exactly as they should be.
Why exactly? Are you suggesting that we do exactly nothing? Why can't we try to push our countries to be better citizens of the world?
I don't think we should accept atrocities. If outrage and anger didn't matter and if there actually was no way to change the economic order of the world Taiwan would have been invaded already.
I think it should have been clear enough from the reply that I think China's actions in Xinjiang are reprehensible?
Maybe here's an example you'll like better: It is true that Ukraine has had a serious rise in neonazi activity in recent history. I am not a fan of neonazis. However Russia's justification of their invasion by that is obviously disingenuous. Their own government is proto-fascist, obviously they are going to do anything but that.
If you apply that same logic to the US, you'll have a pretty good understanding of my position.
Do you think the camps in Xinjiang are as bad, or worse than Guantanamo?
I think they are worse because:
1) You are put there for your ethnicity and religion, (no suspected crimes are needed for detainment), despite being a Chinese citizen.
2) Freedom of press in the US means we found out bad things were happening in Guantanamo, and the prison has since been mostly wound down.
I think Guantanamo is good example of why the US's interest in Xinjiang is not disingenuous. We felt the same about Guantanamo as we do about Xinjiang: it's bad.
> Ditto in Guantanamo. I suggest doing a bit more research.
There are far more than 1000 Islamists in the US. Not sure where you're pulling that statement from.
> Done not by the US press but by Wikileaks, whose founder ( Assange) is being hounded by both the US govt and the media.
And I can freely read all about it.
It was picked up by every major news organization on American soil.
>Stop with the sanctimonious hypocrisy please.
Is it hypocritical to point out bad comparisons? I think Gitmo was bad. I think Xinjiang is worse given it's larger scale. I'd like both to stop, along with a billion other things, but here we are, on a thread about Xinjiang.
> There are far more than 1000 Islamists in the US. Not sure where you're pulling that statement from.
I am responding to this statement: "You are put there for your ethnicity and religion, (no suspected crimes are needed for detainment), despite being a Chinese citizen.".
I am sure you are aware that there were no suspected crimes needed for detainment in Gitmo and the US government said: "It Can Indefinitely Detain Anyone — Even U.S. Citizens".
> Is it hypocritical to point out bad comparisons?
No, not as an individual and I will concede that to you. But as a government, MOST certainly yes. The US always berates and sanctions other nations for policies that itself regularly carries out without any blowback. Most of the bad stuff never makes it to the US media if the media favours the party in power and it doesn't serve US interests.
One set of standards for the US (& its close allies) and another set of standards for the rest of the world
> I am sure you are aware that there were no suspected crimes needed for detainment in Gitmo and the US government said: "It Can Indefinitely Detain Anyone — Even U.S. Citizens".
My point was that didn't happen. If we were putting people there solely for their religion and ethnicity, it'd be much more than a thousand. It would be millions... like in Xinjiang.
> No, not as an individual and I will concede that to you. But as a government, MOST certainly yes.
I'm not a government. You called me hypocritical.
In any case, democracies are necessarily hypocritical. They change leaders pretty often, and different leaders tend to have different beliefs.
> My point was that didn't happen. If we were putting people there solely for their religion and ethnicity, it'd be much more than a thousand. It would be millions... like in Xinjiang.
Tens of thousands passed through Abu Ghraib too in Iraq. A truckload of torture and prisoner abuse done to people of only ONE ethnicity. People lost limbs in prison. No one in the US administration paid for these crimes against humanity.
Some folks in the US govt who were in explicit favour of hard intervention in Iraq and who were deeply influential in igniting the Iraq war are the same ones criticising China now. (Hint: Under Secretary of State). So, yes, it is definitely sanctimonious and ridiculous hypocrisy.
Not you personally, but I assumed you were supporting the US government in this stance. If not, I apologize.
> Tens of thousands passed through Abu Ghraib too in Iraq. A truckload of torture and prisoner abuse done to people of only ONE ethnicity.
If we put Iraqis in prison because of their religion and ethnicity, there would have been millions locked up. In Xinjiang, people are put in camps because of their religion and ethnicity, that's why millions are locked up. Key word: because
> Some folks in the US govt who were in explicit favour of hard intervention in Iraq and who were deeply influential in igniting the Iraq war are the same ones criticising China now.
Sometimes murderers snitch on murderers. Doesn't mean they shouldn't be arrested. I mean, there is plenty of evidence on what's happening in Xinjiang, it's not like we are talking about taking war-hawks on their word.
> In Xinjiang, people are put in camps because of their religion and ethnicity, that's why millions are locked up.
Well, it's not by Religion. If so, China would have ~45 million muslims permanently imprisoned. Contrary to popular belief, the folks in Xinjiang don't make up the majority of Muslims in China. Those would be the Hui who make up ~3% of the population just by themselves.
It is indeed deeply distressing that Uyghurs are detained for months, under-go re-education before being released. And torture if they fail to comply. But we have an international council for that - the UNHRC. The US has no leg to stand on to individually judge other nations with their extra-ordinary violent history and propaganda in the modern era.
> Sometimes murderers snitch on murderers..
Indeed and such people should be treated for the evil hypocrites they truly are until they pay for their crimes. American citizens can support them and be sanctimonious about this, but the rest of the world (esp Middle-East/Asia) will take it for what it truly is:
"Might Makes Right and Daddy USA is Mightier Than You, So None Can Judge Us, But We Can Judge You".
The US should make make a clear, evidenced case at UNHRC, hold an international hearing and attempt a resolution. But hey, then everything would need to be questioned and analysed from more than one party.
It would be, if it was true. So far, the only source is the "China Tribunal" - a private NGO operating without any kind of legal mandate or even oversight, which to me looks like a propaganda outlet masquerading as a proper law institution.
Freedom of the press doesn't prevent the majority of Americans getting served whole distorted picture of what happened in Iraq and the Middle East in general or just flat out misinformation, or simply no reporting at all.
Because there are very few actual journalist on the ground (and even less with any understanding of the local politics), most of the media just gets their information from gov news releases.
Eventually it wide spread abuse in one prison in Iraq came to be known and was downplayed and called isolated. People old enough will remember the prisoner on a dog leash for example. But there were many other prisons as well. And many had even worse control for abuse so we can assume what happens.
And tons of other things the US does in Middle East that are secret or so widely distorted that its hilarious to even call it news. Reliable allies turn into terrorist murderers within one strategic meeting. And terrorist turn into freedom fighters at the drop of a hat.
We should talk about the many abuses and injustices committed by the US, but why should every thread criticising Russia or China also be a thread criticising the US? If someone is genuinely concerned about the abuses of the US government then shouldn't they be making their own threads and posts without prompting, instead of just tacking them on to every thread about Russia or China?
Agreed, but perhaps, even more constructively: "Great, you agree we need more of an ability to shine a light on--and hold people to account for--human rights abuses worldwide."
The US has been deeply hypocritical by opposing the ICC, for example. But the policy fixes that we need for what's happening in Xinjiang--public accountability, international institutions with teeth--are the same ones we needed for what happened (and is still happening), at a fraction of the scale of Xinjiang, in Guantanamo.
"Whataboutism" only works because the whatabouters assume their opponents will reflexively defend the US (or whomever). The implication is, strangely, not "The US has done this too, so we need strong institutions to hold the powerful to account" but, rather, "The US has done this too, so whatareyougonnado?"
The people responsible for those many abuses and injustices are the ones cynically pushing for aggression against Russia and China. You can’t separate the two in reality.
This story is specifically about a man that members of the U.S. government were lobbying to come and testify at the ICC ("...after months of behind-the-scenes lobbying by U.S. lawmakers, human rights activists and international lawyers"). The ICC that the U.S. is not only not a member of, but specifically has a law against anyone assisting the ICC in cases against members of the American government[1]. I don't see why the motivations of the groups involved shouldn't be discussed.
Likewise, if someone suspects someone of bias, I don't think it's unimportant to ask them if they hold consistent positions. If a Trump supporter is talking about how Biden should be impeached for something Trump did, I don't think it's "whatboutism" to ask if they would hold the same standard to Trump (or vice versa). There's a big difference between being concerned about something because of an underlying moral principal, and being concerned about something because of a specific bias against one of the groups involved. This used to be considered an important distinction, but now people act as if we shouldn't even talk about it.
Then raise the specific issues about similar abuses. China's actions are a specific issue and light should be shined on them so the truth can be known.
But, if one criminal always gets away, I think many criminals will use that as a justification to commit atrocities.
That's why fair assessment is required. And, I personally think US & UK have no rights to teach other about humanity. They are currently pointing atrocities in China to forward their political agenda, not for humanitarian cause. Countries like Sweden & Switzerland are in better position to lecture other other countries regarding peace & harmony.
It's perfectly reasonable. If only some people are allowed to commit crimes, you're not punishing crimes, you're just punishing an underclass. Justice must be blind, or it's just tribalism.
Either way instead of this US vs China debate, the real HN conversation should be how do we hack the humanity psyche to stop our societal need to oppress minorities?
> Are we really going to trial Russian soldiers for war crimes when the US soldiers that committed "collateral murder" [1] are still free and will never face any charges?
If you're not going to, nobody's going to. You're our (Russian and Ukrainian) only hope of justice at this point.
For the accounts that are denying or excusing the xinjiang repression, see if there is a reddit account of the same/similar name, and if that account regularly makes posts in r/genzedong and r/sino. I have previously found quite a few
No, the legal system in the US absolutely does not have the resources to give a jury trial to everyone charged with a crime.
"According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2005), in 2003 there were 75,573 cases disposed of in federal district court by trial or plea. Of these, about 95 percent were disposed of by a guilty plea (Pastore and Maguire, 2003). While there are no exact estimates of the proportion of cases that are resolved through plea bargaining, scholars estimate that about 90 to 95 percent of both federal and state court cases are resolved through this process (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2005; Flanagan and Maguire, 1990)."
"...Plea bargaining results in disparate treatment concerning both legal and extralegal characteristics, especially regarding those who are more likely to be granted lenient sentences."
> What's the alternative? Someone commits a felony, and then you...?
The US is the OECD country with the highest per capita % of incarcerated individuals. By orders of magnitude. So it seems other countries have found other approaches?
> Source: Half of the OECD countries have less than 100 people in prison
per 100 000 inhabitants. Thirteen have between 100 and 200. Two
countries exceed this – Poland with 230 and the United States with
more than 700. The US rate is the highest in the world followed
by Russia with about 600 per 100 000 inhabitants. Except in the
United States imprisonment rates for women are negligible.
Not locking them in cages. The US locks up people at 10X the rate of every peer nation, literally. By my logic, this implies 90% should be free right now, via one mechanism or another.
> The CCP bots are in full force in the comments on this post. Whoa.
I know what you mean, but it's not bots. It's not even the real 50 cent party would waste it's time with HN. Whatever activity they have in English-language social networks is probably directed at places where there's more bang for the buck. like Twitter or Reddit.
I'm not so sure. Considering even niche cesspools Kiwi Farms have (laughably transparent) CCP propagandists, it's not a stretch to think a place like HN would either.
I think it's safer to assume bad faith on the part of anyone deflecting or trying to change the subject with whataboutist tactics (if not because they are literally paid propagandists, because this tactic is never conducive to discussion) and go from there.
> I'm not so sure. Considering even niche cesspools Kiwi Farms have (laughably transparent) CCP propagandists, it's not a stretch to think a place like HN would either.
It's not surprising that trolls troll.
> I think it's safer to assume bad faith on the part of anyone deflecting or trying to change the subject with whataboutist tactics (if not because they are literally paid propagandists, because this tactic is never conducive to discussion) and go from there.
I completely agree there. The point I meant to make is it's not bots or paid agents; Western useful idiots, people who are still in the CCP propaganda-sphere, and maybe some classic trolls.
And the difference between CCP bot and CIA bot can easily be recognized. CCP bots generally don't sway and entice people using words. CIA bots are very good in making specious arguments. They understand how they can imbue people with rage.
You know what, I'm a native Chinese living in Beijing now. On some Chinese websites, such as Zhihu, the Chinese version of Quora, I saw a lot of people calling others names. Those who support Russia call the other ones American spies or Taiwan spies, those who support Ukraine call the opposites "yellow Russians".
I was thinking that people on Hacker News would be a little more reasonable, since it's "hacker" news. Yet, I see you are calling each other "Communist bots" and "CIA bots"... What a day.
There's a 300 million dollar budget to counter "chinese influence" and "promote transparency." Where does that money go? Who knows. But traditionally this goes to paying for media narratives, and in the 21st century, online comments are definitely a good bang for your buck. And star witnesses are also a good way to counter the influence of a country and demand transparency. They've done it before. [2]
I don't think we'll know the reality of this until 20 years down the road.
This money can go to a lot of different activities, and I don't see any reason to believe that it's actually about comment farms and not "white-hat" PR.
Story about how bad China treats its people, “there’s definitely going to be a ‘But the west!’ ridiculous whataboutism. And here we are. I feel like I can predict comments on HN threads these days and it’s pretty sad.
No one have ever said that human rights abuses of any kind are okay.
Still, since "the west" uses tools such as illegal detention camps, blacksite prisons, etc to its advantage -- NOT using the same tools by everyone else would put them in a disadvantage.
The Chinese are not a party to the ICC treaty (the OP article above even mentions this, they are just "establishing ICC jurisdiction" e.g. coming up with an excuse for hostile actions toward China)
He's not a single witness, they used the term "key witness" (whatever that means). This is hardly news, there is just more detail that this person will hopefully testify on.
Many details are not that difficult to cross-check. Similar stories (typically involving mixed part-Uyghur families torn apart by Chinese government) are abound on social media. BBC, others reported extensively on other victims as well as relevant findings from satellite imagery etc. From my understanding this is less about uncovering some categorically new information, but more about someone able to testify in court on what everyone sort of knew already.
I think this is somewhat optimistic about the degree to which the goal is going to be to uncover the actual truth vs painting the worst possible picture they can to justify whatever interventions they have planned.
I'm glad you mentioned. Those satellite images are jokes to most Chinese people. In fact, the western media's coverage of Xinjiang has demonstrated your hypocrisy to those of us who didn't know it before. After this, I think it's safe to say that western mainstream media has lost its credibility in China. Some of us (not me) don't even believe Bucha massacre, just because we heard it from your mouths.
Just for your consideration, I'm a pretty liberal person and I don't like my government more than you do. And I have plans to immigrate to EU in near future.
For the first question, most of us choose to believe our fellow citizens (who can easily travel to the regions highlighted in those satellite images) over western reporters. Plus the criminal acts described in western media sound more like US's doing rather than what we could picture our public officials.
The second one is more complicated. Our public consensus is, we *need* to apply some policies in Xinjing that can seem more "restraining" than the rest of China. It's because the west has chosen Xinjiang as one of its handles of infiltration. Historically, several major armed riots have happened in this area. Hundreds if not more Han (the majority ethnic group) civilians were killed.
Also there is this sanction on Xinjiang cotton. We all know how small Xinjiang's economy is within China. The sanction only does harm to Xinjiang's people than it influenced those policies. And yes, it is such a typical western propaganda tool that is drenched with consumerism.
I am Russian and I have been informed about the hypocrisy of the communist regime that my parents grew up in. Yes, train tickets are cheap, but a pretty big downside is that citizens can only think what power-hungry country bosses demand them to think.
I do not have an opinion on Bucha because I did not study evidence yet. However, while some Western media exaggerated at some points, it is not even remotely comparable with lies told by the Russian side. (I have relatives in Ukraine who had to leave a city as it was being destroyed by military activity, so I know a fair bit from their words.) Priors tell me Bucha news is likely to be at least 50% true, sadly.
Excuse me, but why would we take what most Chinese people believe as a factor when trying to verify or understand their government actions against Muslim minority?
I mean not to say that Chinese people that most of them probably never heared (or cannot) of the tank man would be a good judgment about truth which the government are hiding on a regular basis.
I did not mention anything about "truth". Truth is a myth, especially in this era.
What I did talk about, was how the average people in China think about all these. Note that all "genocide" evidence present here, is available in China (not as raw material maybe, but referenced and discussed). It's very different from tank man, which is hidden in public discussion.
And since you mentioned, tank man (89 incident as we call it), is actually a well-known fact (I might be biased, but since high school, my peer occasionally talked about it). It's just forbidden to talk about it in public.
That's all nice and reads even nicer, but hell will freeze sooner than mercenary bands like former Blackwater will be prosecuted in US for war crimes they provably committed. I mean real prosecution, with life/death sentences for murders of civilians, not some sham trial just to tick a box.
The topic is out there for more than a decade. Nobody actually cares that much.
There is simply 0 political will, and the dirty work done needs to be done by somebody (in the vein of 'we need to invade yet another country for blah reasons' vein of logic).
Naive me hopes Ukraine will change US population mindset towards offensive wars done for 0 good reasons.
People get upset by these “whataboutism” posts but they’re perfectly legitimate points to make. It’s good to interrogate the media that we consume and to consider the conditions that would lead to an article like this being produced and published.
Side note, there’s been a flood of anti-China content on this website lately, it’s odd.
I do wonder who pays to have all these comments put on hacker news. This happens a lot on Russia-related threads as well. Or is it just some nationality who learned incorrect history. On the Russia-related threads I would've put it to people from India as there's a big tech group there and they speak English and their country is cozy with Russia, but they wouldn't be defending China.
I'm from Germany, and i don't feel like the US is seeing itself as "equal" as to other countries. The US is one of the most militarily aggressive states, just within my lifetime, they invaded Afghanistan, Iraq and had several weird operations in Syria and Libya. "Normal" values would be zero.
I long for the day when US war crimes are treated the same way as war crimes by non-western countries. Instead they pull off shit like the Hague Invasion Act.
In all of the other wars you mention the US acted alongside broad coalitions. If you're going to criticize the US you should also criticize Canada, the UK, Spain, Italy, Australia and Germany.
You can make the argument about Iraq but in the case of Afghanistan the 9/11 attacks were a declaration of war and the US defended itself. 2,996 people died and over 6000 were wounded in the attack that started that war.
May I ask who paid for your comment? Why do you automatically assume that there's an organized campaign when the viewpoint disagrees with your own?
[Removed. Thank you commented below for the reminder to keep my background out of it]
I have watched the democracy, WMD, and human rights theatrics deployed before. There are always people saying "let's be a little skeptical" and they are always called treasonous and unpatriotic. Yet we find and time again that there is wisdom in heeding their warnings.
So please keep in mind that some of us are under the proverbial boot and so we have a good reason to remember how this play goes.
Since when does it take a pro-Western stance to condemn a war, terrible atrocities and genocides? What, non-Westerners lack a moral compass or compassion?
>Since when does it take a pro-Western stance to condemn a war
It takes a pro-Western stance to condemn Russia for invading Ukraine under false pretense but celebrate America invading Iraq under false pretenses (a war in which literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War).
Except no one is doing that other than you and people who want to change the topic to America even though America has nothing to do with the topic.
Sure if there was an article talking about what a great job the US is doing with foreign policy it's fair game to bring up times when the US had bad foreign policy.
Who is paying for all these pro-US government, anti-China, anti-Russia articles to pop up on tech news sites?
I know the US has interrupted the Grammy's broadcast to denounce Russia, or started the Saturday Night Live broadcast denouncing Russia, or fired various opera singers or pushed Russians out of sports federations so I guess tech is just another base to cover. After weeks of Russia bashing I guess it's time to get back to bashing the Chinaman's yellow peril.
The US "started the Saturday Night Live broadcast denouncing Russia?" So when you say the "US" did something, you mean Americans did something. Well Americans do a lot of things. I guess if your reference points are China and Russia, it may be hard to see the distinction
We recently had a discussion on good-faith communication here on HN.
In my opinion, it's perfectly OK for commenters to compare issues in Russia or China with issues in Europe or the US. And I can also relate that people in the US have a stronger opinion on fixing US issues than on fixing issues in China. If someone writes: "Let's fix discrimination close to where I live first!", that is not necessarily a bad thing or trying to distract or whataboutism. They are merely using this related topic to point out their own priorities.
I believe we should give them the benefit of doubt, especially if they mention real issues, and not just made up stuff. And in my opinion, faith-, color- or gender-based discrimination can sadly still be an issue in the west, too.
Also there's the issue of reciprocity: We wouldn't want China to intervene in the US. That makes it fair to ask why the US should be allowed to intervene in China / Russia. "We're the good guys" tends to be a lot more messy in practice.
Chinese government saying that US is being hypocrite because they did so and so in Iraq and whatever happened after 9/11 from abuses..etc would be good. If only they did that in general while not trying to say okay don't talk about us doing it because we think you did the same.
That would be great if you stand up against oppression in general not just when you can benefit. It would be great if we can just talk about people suffering and try to help them in every possible way.