This was discussed here just yesterday:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24292962" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24292962</a>
<i>BuzzFeed News identified 268 newly built compounds by cross-referencing blanked-out areas on Baidu Maps with images from external satellite data providers</i><p>Pretty cool. Trying to hide the facilities made them easier to find.
It’s disgusting that nothing will be done because everyone is addicted to cheap goods from China. If we cannot break free from current economic arrangements even after the pandemic, we will never be able to do so.
Boycotting "Made in China" labelled products is not effective enough. How would you motivate large population groups to engage globally? Politicians and democratic countries should force China to stop torturing their own citizens based on religious or ethnic affiliation.
Just buy less. Western consumerism gave China it's power.
Have a leader who the world believe he acts in good faith regarding ideals, and not busy subverting ideals for game and profit.<p>But no, you'll choose power and war.
When I was traveling around Xinjiang about two years back it was obvious something was going on.<p>In Korla everyone getting off the train had to submit to a retinal scan, presumably so authorities know all the ingress and egress into town, going to a park involved going through a checkpoint. To get into any train station at all involved 3 levels of checkpoints, the first checkpoint started before you got to the plaza before the train station, so checking in took about 3 hours. In Kashgar the old city had checkpoints at every corner. The entire province only had 3G, the moment you cross over from neighboring Gansu your China Telecom signal dropped from 4G, so sending videos or even pictures is very difficult even on weChat, if you try to do it through a VPN the experience is even slower.<p>Some checkpoints were vigilant, but in my experience most were just bored. One checkpoint basically forgot to check my ID because I was seated all the at the back of a van. Young Uighur men or woman sometimes with a Han standing around or sitting at a chair with a desk in the middle of the street, writing down the names of everyone who crosses his "stand".<p>What surprised me the most was that most of the guards manning the checkpoints in towns, highways, at gas stations (which involved a full car search in order to pull into) were Uighurs themselves. I get the impression you basically went to jail or joined the security apparatus, a modern variation on a old Chinese strategem of using barbarian to fight barbarian I guess.<p>The whole experience changed my perspective on human beings in general. At the end of the day, when I got back home the only conclusion I could come to wasn't even about China or Chinese, if we look at the long span of human history the only thing I can arrive at is human beings in aggregate have a high tendency to do shitty things. Goodness exists in individuals but as soon as we have to appeal to the common denominator of a group or groups more often then not being a piece of shit is the easiest and most expedient.
Unrelated to the article content: is there any way to “escape” from full screen maps embedded in a webpage? I scrolled down to the map of detention facilities and found that I could no longer return to reading the article because every interaction with my screen just manipulated the map.
They are apartment complexes.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/_tchiek/status/1299386623390617601?s=20" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/_tchiek/status/1299386623390617601?s=20</a><p>Sorry for not getting caught in this anti-China craziness that has gotten Americans into a frenzy very very recently.
Karl Marx on religion
“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.“<p>A popular song:
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too<p>The CCP is simply following a core tenant of communism. From the perspective of the ideology, they are freeing people from religion.<p>A much more important quote, a warning about accepting new ideas that too few heed today as always:
“Let us keep our minds open, by all means, as long as that means keeping our sense of perspective and seeking an understanding of the forces which mould the world. But don’t keep your minds so open that your brains fall out! There are still things in this world which are true and things which are false; acts which are right and acts which are wrong, even if there are statesmen who hide their designs under the cloak of high-sounding phrases.”. — Walter Kotschnig November 8, 1939
It's important to realize that Xinjiang is a colony of China. China took over Xinjiang in the past few hundred years; historically, kingdoms there were independent. Sometimes they had tributary relationships, other times they were allies of the Chinese kingdoms. Colonialism takes many forms and Europeans don't have a monopoly on it. The Uyghurs have rebelled many times and even formed short-lived states, the last before the Mao era. What was a territorial annexation has taken on ideological (the Chinese state demanded ideological adherence in art and politics just like in the rest of China ), economic (Xinjiang is rich in mineral resources), and settler-colonial (Han Chinese have been moving into Xinjiang in large numbers) aspects.
I am a Chinese. I don't think anyone outside Xin Jiang knows any details about these.<p>My wife is from Xin Jiang. She is not Uighurs. I have been to Xin Jiang. I don't think non-Uighurs in Xin Jiang knows the details about these.<p>They are like secrets. You know something is happening. But you don't know what exactly is happening.
Imagine how much positive impact Bezos could have on this if Amazon led the way on identifying China’s reliance on western money to continue funding cultural genocide. He could spend have of his money on this and still have $100,000,000,000 to play with.
John Oliver recently made a episode on the subject (China & Uighurs: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17oCQakzIl8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17oCQakzIl8</a>
The Communist Party of China (CPC) are running sinicization and antireligious campaigns of ethnic and religious minorities. The totalitarian and authoritarian countries don't make good neighbors. China will be making inroads into Taiwan soon if the world does not act.
To those that believe that they would not have turned a blind eye during WWII to the systematic extermination of Jews, the current generation has been given a similar challenge. Where is your cancel-culture now? How will our children think of us?
I can't believe this isn't something people are rallying for. Nor can I believe the mainstream media is hardly talking about it. The lessons from WWII aren't stories that we should memorise as fun trivia facts.
> This project was supported by the Open Technology Fund, the Pulitzer Center, and the Eyebeam Center for the Future of Journalism.<p>Hmmm<p>> The Open Technology Fund was created in 2012 as a pilot program within Radio Free Asia.<p>Okay<p>> Based on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia was established in the 1990s with the stated aim of promoting democratic values and human rights, and diminishing the Communist Party of China.<p>> Radio Free Asia was founded and funded in the 1950s by an organization called "Committee for Free Asia" as an anti-communist propaganda operation, broadcasting from RCA facilities in Manila, Philippines.<p>So an article funded by a clearly biased anti-China propaganda organization that uses flimsy satellite imagery evidence to accuse a country of massive human rights abuses in order to rile up their population for another cold war that will feed their military industrial complex for many more decades. Great.
My heart bleeds hearing about Uighurs suffering. And I welcome these kinds of posts. At the same time I am wondering why news about Palestinians are flagged and filtered away on HN. I read Haaretz on a daily basis, and what I read about this corner of the world makes me lose my faith in humanity.
I know and understand as single persons we don't have much power to do anything. But if you live in a western democratic nation, time to use that machinery. Call your Senator, MPs whoever your representative is. Let them know inaction in the face of this atrocity is unacceptable. Keep calling all Senators or members of parliaments. It might seem to have no effect, but significant changes come when many people demand something. It has to start somewhere.<p>Here is a site for resources and actions you can take [0].<p>0. <a href="https://www.saveuighur.org/act-now/" rel="nofollow">https://www.saveuighur.org/act-now/</a>
Yes, this is bad. I think we can all agree on that.<p>But does anyone have sources on _how_ China got into this situation? They wouldn't be detaining Uighurs at this scale for no reason. So what's the history behind this?<p>I left a separate comment here of someone else who commented on the article with a potential background reason (terrorism?). Although I'm not sure if can rely on just that one comment, and would love to hear what HN thought.<p>A part of a civil discussion requires that we understand and seek out the argument from all parties. As a society, we need to evolve from one-sided arguments.
Reposting the top comment on the article, was wondering what HN thought about this:<p>------------------------------------------------------<p>Godfree Roberts:<p>We created terrorists in Xinjiang, just as we did in Afghanistan. They murdered thousands of Chinese and, now that China has them under control, we make up stories about them.<p>US Ambassador Chas. H. Freeman, Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981: "The CIA programs in Tibet, which were very effective in destabilizing it, did not succeed in Xinjiang. There were similar efforts made with the Uyghurs during the Cold War that never really got off the ground. In both cases you had religion waved as a banner in support of a desire for independence or autonomy which is, of course, is anathema to any state. I do believe that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones applies here. I am part American Indian and those people are not here (in the US) in the numbers they once were because of severe genocidal policies on the part of the European majority”. 8/31/19
Do you guys remember when a Chinese soldier beat up someone who was holding the Koran? Well, except, it didn't happen:<p><a href="https://factcheck.afp.com/no-not-video-chinese-soldier-beating-uighur-muslim-having-copy-koran" rel="nofollow">https://factcheck.afp.com/no-not-video-chinese-soldier-beati...</a><p>Also, when are people going to stop using satellite imaging as a proof of evidence? I mean, let's not forget the whole casus belli for the last Iraq war, where there was clear evidence of WMDs from all those satellite images right? I mean, what's so different from the satellite image there and also a random business park in the UK (besides the labels and tags of course, and I used to be imprisoned in one of those blocks for most of my day that some people would like to call an 'office'):<p><a href="https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6220549,-1.2900712,1099m/data=!3m1!1e3" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6220549,-1.2900712,1099m/dat...</a><p>There's quite a few good answers here on Quora which I reckon are worth a read about the situation:<p><a href="https://www.quora.com/What-are-Uyghurs-doing-to-fight-back-against-the-mistreatment-they-receive-from-China" rel="nofollow">https://www.quora.com/What-are-Uyghurs-doing-to-fight-back-a...</a>
This is another distraction for the current BLM movement and thousands of death per day due to covid. I see a lot of hypocrite comments and I just want to laugh. Meanwhile on the streets of Detroit or Baltimore ghettos, kids/teenagers are under the influence of criminal culture and facing generation after generation of poverty they may never come out of. And I see no one even trying to figure out a solution.
Definitely bad and needs international attention.<p>China’s soft power will ensure that most countries won’t go beyond the usual virtue signaling.<p>Also keep in mind that the USA still has the most imprisoned people in the world by a large margin:<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarce...</a><p><a href="https://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/world_prison_population_list_11th_edition_0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/resources/...</a>
The thing is, there is a definite anti China sentiment within the present US government and many western media sources, in the sense that they seem to have a definite desire to villify China in recent times.<p>So the claims presented by them are suspect in intent, since it seems so evidently to suit their own world view.<p>While Chinese propaganda is suspect as is any propaganda, much western reporting is also politically informed and therefore suspect.<p>Most reports on this topic going around are not from people on ground, whereas western media including Reuters and BBC surely have people on ground in China, what have we heard from them in actuality?<p>Recently BBC had people sent to such a camp and even filmed it. Surely there is some political indoctrination going on, but nothing like the 'Concentration Camps' as is being claimed in this article.<p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-48667221" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-48667221</a>