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'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

theguardian.com

11–20 of 67 posts

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#11
post #2

Every time I read about what China is doing to Uighurs, my heart sinks. Putting people in camps, monitoring their every move, coating it all with bureaucracy and lies. This is what genocide looks like. And nobody has the courage to stand up to China. Not even to publicly denounce them. Isn't this what the UN is for? To impose economic sanctions on flagrant human rights abusers? (Please, no whataboutism replies, what…

The UN has done nothing about atrocities in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and North Korea, among so many more, so don't expect any change here.

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#12
post #5
post #2

Every time I read about what China is doing to Uighurs, my heart sinks. Putting people in camps, monitoring their every move, coating it all with bureaucracy and lies. This is what genocide looks like. And nobody has the courage to stand up to China. Not even to publicly denounce them. Isn't this what the UN is for? To impose economic sanctions on flagrant human rights abusers? (Please, no whataboutism replies, what…

Why should someone stood up to China in the first place ? The UN is not a world government nor a international court, and Human Rights are a series of agreements between states. China is not compelled to agree to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Indeed, China was not compelled to agree to the Declaration of Human Rights, they signed on to it voluntarily.

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#13
post #2

Every time I read about what China is doing to Uighurs, my heart sinks. Putting people in camps, monitoring their every move, coating it all with bureaucracy and lies. This is what genocide looks like. And nobody has the courage to stand up to China. Not even to publicly denounce them. Isn't this what the UN is for? To impose economic sanctions on flagrant human rights abusers? (Please, no whataboutism replies, what…

The US is actually trying to raise some noise about this, but few are willing to join the fray. But for now, forget UN and forget the West. Even the Islamic World and it's biggest representative, the OIC, is reluctant to even make a comment about it! Totally appalling!

> The US is actually trying to raise some noise about this, but few are willing to join the fray.

'Soft power' such as https://nypost.com/2018/03/15/inside-the-shady-private-equit... might help explain US/global unwillingness to be too noisy. tldr: "In short, the Chinese government was literally funding a business that it co-owned along with the sons of two of America’s most powerful decision makers."

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#14
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, it's possible to combat terrorism without criminalizing an entire ethnicity.

Such as a proposed ban on Muslim immigrants? I agree with you. I'm not making a value judgement but merely stating relevant facts.

A religion is an ethnicity too. Many Muslims are peaceful. To lump them all together is broad-strokes-painting with deadly consequences.

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#15
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should someone stood up to China in the first place ? The UN is not a world government nor a international court, and Human Rights are a series of agreements between states. China is not compelled to agree to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Indeed, China was not compelled to agree to the Declaration of Human Rights, they signed on to it voluntarily.

It was the Republic of China that signed on to it.

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#16
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such as a proposed ban on Muslim immigrants? I agree with you. I'm not making a value judgement but merely stating relevant facts.

A religion is an ethnicity too. Many Muslims are peaceful. To lump them all together is broad-strokes-painting with deadly consequences.

I agree. I was referring to the US President's proposed ban on Muslim immigrants. I'm curious, what would be your solution to terrorist activity in western China?

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#17
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A religion is an ethnicity too. Many Muslims are peaceful. To lump them all together is broad-strokes-painting with deadly consequences.

I agree. I was referring to the US President's proposed ban on Muslim immigrants. I'm curious, what would be your solution to terrorist activity in western China?

As I'm neither an experienced state official nor a military commander, I can't pretend to have a solution. But I'd start by reversing any policies that are harming more people than the terrorism itself.

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#18
How would the Uighurs run a country where they were the majority? Sadly, we have two governments, one(the Uighurs) believes in a warlike state where religion is the authority and another warlike one (China) where the secular state is the authority and China is larger. These states that blend state and religious power all seem headed towards religious oligopolies - Iran comes to mind. What happens when the states of Europe become majority Islamic? Will Islam undergo a gradual reformation or will the islamic governments insist on forced conversion?, as they have done in the past. I do not know why they insist on control over others. Whatever end game follows, will be 100 years to fruition...

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#19
The other day the Guardian was inviting us to feel terrible about historic Uighur mosques being bulldozed: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/07/bulldo...

...so I went and did a little research. It turns out that one of these mosques is a shrine to a certain Imam Asim, a charming fellow that played an important part in the purposeful destruction in the 10/11th centuries of the Buddhist Khotan kingdom that once occupied the area, during which destruction apparently 'there were years of battles where "blood flows like the Oxus", "heads litter the battlefield like stones" until the "infidels" were defeated'. Unsurprisingly this violence also included the razing of countless Buddhist temples in the area.

Thus the Guardian, apparently with a straight face, asks us to mourn the destruction of a shrine to a warlord when said warlord was part of a deliberate and concerted programme of ethnic cleansing and cultural destruction including destruction of the temples of an earlier culture. At this point my irony meter is off the scale.

Re: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam

#20
post #18

How would the Uighurs run a country where they were the majority? Sadly, we have two governments, one(the Uighurs) believes in a warlike state where religion is the authority and another warlike one (China) where the secular state is the authority and China is larger. These states that blend state and religious power all seem headed towards religious oligopolies - Iran comes to mind. What happens when the states of E…

Attaching agreed-upon bad things like authoritarianism and terrorism and oppression onto arbitrary symbols like Islam and secularism is fallacious. Those superficial symbols make for terrible indicators of actual evil, and rhetoric like the above only serves to increase the injustice done to innocent people. See the recent Christchurch attack.
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