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UN says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps

reuters.com

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Re: UN says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps

#31

Post by dragonwriter »

oh_sigh wrote: post #3
394549 wrote: post #2

> A U.N. human rights panel said on Friday that it had received many credible reports that 1 million ethnic Uighurs in China are held in what resembles a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy”. > Gay McDougall, a member of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, cited estimates that another 2 million Uighurs and Muslim minorities are forced into so-called “political camps for in…

A million people probably have at least 10x more relatives and friends on the outside. Ways of breaching the great firewall are well known even within China. Shouldn't there be...numerous reports of missing persons if this is the case?

> A million people probably have at least 10x more relatives and friends on the outside.

An ethnically targeted detention would very likely involve entire family and social circles.

> Ways of breaching the great firewall are well known even within China. Shouldn't there be...numerous reports of missing persons if this is the case?

Retribution against those piercing the firewall with politically inconvenient information to the regime are also known, even inside of China; oppressive control of information is not just a technical issue.

Plus, there are reports. That's the whole issue.

Re: UN says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps

#32

Post by skybrian »

Steltek wrote: post #21
skybrian wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that by using this analogy that you're making a fairness argument that China should be criticized more, because they're worse, and Western governments shouldn't be criticized, because they're innocent. But that doesn't make sense. In the US, for example, when injustice happens, it's possible to fight it in court. No guarantees, but it can be quite effective. Getting attention in the press is sometimes useful…

That's not how I read that comment at all. RcouF1uZ4gsC is saying that companies are cowards. Speaking out only when it's safe or beneficial for them to do so. "Heartfelt beliefs" as marketing tools.

"Speaking out only when it's safe or beneficial for them to do so."

You say that like it was a bad thing.

I'm not sure what "coward" even means when applied to a large organization that has a duty to keep its employees safe. Is hiring someone else to take the risk brave?

Re: UN says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps

#33

Post by rgbrenner »

abrowne wrote: post #30
rgbrenner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, not bigger than boston or antwerp. The rohinga camp has 1m people: https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/5a259aa13dbef48d0e8b9... Edit: I've updated the image to a more recent one.

1M is bigger than Boston proper, but not the metro area (looks like close to 5M).

I interpreted as land area.. since the thread is about "hiding it from satellites". The rohinga camp in the picture is only about 3 miles x 2 miles.

Re: UN says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps

#34

Post by darpa_escapee »

hnaccy wrote: post #25

Wonder which camp Rose Pak's kidney came from.

As of 2016, there were 4,080 registered organ donors in China, that number was less than 100 ten years prior. Yet, for going on two decades, tens of thousands of organ transplant operations are performed in China each year. Many of the operations were performed on foreigners, as China could come up with cheap organs at a faster pace than waiting for a compatible match with someone on a list.

China has a history of harvesting organs from religious and political prisoners[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplantation_in_China

Re: UN says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps

#35

Post by anoncoward111 »

394549 wrote: post #11
anoncoward111 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I was thinking too. Westerners visit Xinjiang province with cameras. If 1m people disappeared, I'm sure someone would come up to a Westerner to tell their story. 40,000 people were disappeared en masse in Chile by Pinochet. That story made it out very quickly, and only a few photographs exist of it

> That's what I was thinking too. Westerners visit Xinjiang province with cameras. If 1m people disappeared, I'm sure someone would come up to a Westerner to tell their story. China isn't a western country, and I don't think you can count on being granted western-levels of freedom of movement there, especially in "sensitive" areas. For instance, I understand you need a special permit to visit Tibet, which is another…

Go on youtube and instagram and check out all of the normal white dudes posting content from Xinjiang.

Re: UN says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps

#36

Post by 394549 »

oh_sigh wrote: post #27
394549 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's what I was thinking too. Westerners visit Xinjiang province with cameras. If 1m people disappeared, I'm sure someone would come up to a Westerner to tell their story. China isn't a western country, and I don't think you can count on being granted western-levels of freedom of movement there, especially in "sensitive" areas. For instance, I understand you need a special permit to visit Tibet, which is another…

I was in Tibet in 2007 and a lot of locals came up and talked to me, asking America to do something about the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Our hired driver had no problem showing us his picture of the Dalai Lama(which was(still is?) illegal to possess).

> I was in Tibet in 2007 and a lot of locals came up and talked to me, asking America to do something about the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Our hired driver had no problem showing us his picture of the Dalai Lama(which was(still is?) illegal to possess).

2007 was a different era, a lot has changed politically in the meantime.

I posted this elsewhere in the thread, but maybe you didn't see it:

China’s mass indoctrination camps evoke Cultural Revolution (https://apnews.com/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b):

> At first, Bekali did not want the AP to publish his account for fear that his sister and mother in China would be detained and sent to re-education.

> But on March 10, back in China, the police took his sister, Adila Bekali. A week later, on March 19, they took his mother, Amina Sadik. And on April 24, his father, Ebrayem.

> Bekali changed his mind and said he wanted to tell his story, no matter the consequences.

> “Things have already come this far,” he said. “I have nothing left to lose.”

Re: UN says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps

#38

Post by 394549 »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #35
394549 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's what I was thinking too. Westerners visit Xinjiang province with cameras. If 1m people disappeared, I'm sure someone would come up to a Westerner to tell their story. China isn't a western country, and I don't think you can count on being granted western-levels of freedom of movement there, especially in "sensitive" areas. For instance, I understand you need a special permit to visit Tibet, which is another…

Go on youtube and instagram and check out all of the normal white dudes posting content from Xinjiang.

> Go on youtube and instagram and check out all of the normal white dudes posting content from Xinjiang.

Are they poking around, looking for evidence of mass detentions? Or are they complaining about how they "spent more time being frustrated, bored, and whinging about lost funds than actually enjoying ourselves" (https://www.lostwithpurpose.com/why-we-didnt-like-traveling-...)?

Re: UN says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps

#39

Post by eeeuo »

eyeareque wrote: post #12

I met someone who was from China say that these people in these camps are being “harmonized”. It’s interesting how things can be perceived when the government controls the media.

From a purely Orwellian standpoint, I think the Russian model of government/media interaction is more effective.

There is "freedom of press" in Russia, and there are opposition media groups, but they are toothless. Journalists that publish scoops on high-level Russian government figure are in serious danger. Therefore, the opposition media produces watered down, safer takes. This allows state media to refute the opposition points step by step, so that the next time the argument is made, the viewer feels that it has already been addressed.

Contrast this with media blackouts like in North Korea. While NK's propaganda is extremely effective at training their population not to believe foreign accounts, they have a serious problem when it comes to South Korean movies/TV/music. NK citizens are fed the narrative about dire conditions in SK their entire lives. When they begin watching smuggled SK media, they realize that SK is in a much better economic place than them. This results in a serious erosion of trust towards the NK government, which is evident in the number of NK refugees who point at SK entertainment as being the impetus for their escape. This seems ridiculous on the face of it, but makes sense in light of how it results in a breakdown of belief towards the NK government.

If, instead, the NK government accurately portrayed what life looks like in SK, but provided reasons and justifications for the difference, they would not have this problem. There would not be the cold water shock when citizens saw a SK movie for the first time and realized that their world was a lie.

You also see this type of thing with $POLITICAL_PARTY's big social media personalities. They take a watered-down, strawman version of the other side's argument and refute it. When their followers see the real version of the argument elsewhere, they are primed to disregard it, and they roll their eyes and laugh and move on. Whereas, if they saw the argument and it was novel to them, they would be much more inclined to read and consider it on merit.

I've worked with Chinese students who are studying abroad who slowly begin to lose belief in their government when living outside of China. It is not the hardcore, biting Western anti-Chinese propaganda that makes them lose their trust, but the day-to-day life of living in a place where there is substantially less corruption, genuine freedom of the press, and information is much more open.

Re: UN says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps

#40

Post by shiburizu »

I really do think in a few years this will be in the history books as the next chapter of the history of internment camps established by despots throughout the years, next to south America and eastern Europe.

I really fear for what we may find out about 10 years after it's said and done and we'll all reflect on how surely this wasn't so crazy when we heard about it in the press.

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