It is clear that many people (sometimes with good intentions) would bring this logic to any discussion about this matter.
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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.<p>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.<p>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.
The thing that confuses me is that China's muslim neighbours(ish) like Saudis, Pakistan or Kazakhstan support China in what they are doing.<p>There is greater incentive for those 3 countries to care what China is doing to fellow Muslims and they don't oppose it.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps</a>
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.
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.