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Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps

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Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps

#121
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Travel in Xinjiang isn't restricted for foreigners at least a year ago. There are a lot of security checkpoints, but they will just ignore you if you're not brown.

> but they will just ignore you if you're not brown. Is that true? Based on Vice's reports last year, journalists and tourists where forced to show their phone to border agents and to install some surveillance app: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/7/3/20681258/china-u...

> but they will just ignore you if you're not brown.

It's not Xinjiang, but, as an obviously foreign Westerner, I was waved through the security checkpoints around Tiananmen Square. The setup was geared towards Chinese National ID cards, and the guards didn't want to bother with my passport. The main reason for that was probably laziness, but maybe a secondary reason was the goal of the security was mainly to control the domestic population for political reasons, and foreigners don't figure into that goal.

Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps

#122

There is a Canadian named Jerry Grey, who went on a bicycle ride in China. He literally rode hundreds of kilometers in Xinjiang, away from mainstream tourist attractions, to remote places he himself is interested in. He was able to do that without government supervision; all the government checkpoints let him pass without much scrutiny. What he reports on is very different from mainstream media reports. One of his bl…

Because he doesn't work for the open technology fund/radio free asia/CIA. Or Adrian Zenz, referenced here, one of the only 2 primary sources they started the whole Xinjiang media episode in the first place. The other one being another NED/CIA shop like this article.

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/china-detaining-millions-...

Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps

#123
post #8

Speaking of maps, I've always wondered what's in that huge, mostly-unlabeled region that is more than half of Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Russia It looks like it could comfortably fit a few countries and then some. Even when watching history documentaries there's a period where Russia is basically a thin strip at the western edge of its current territory, before suddenly and inexplicably blowin…

Taiga. And yes, that's where USSR internment camps and gulags used to be, for same out-of-sight reasons as they are in China.

Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps

#124
post #95

There is a Canadian named Jerry Grey, who went on a bicycle ride in China. He literally rode hundreds of kilometers in Xinjiang, away from mainstream tourist attractions, to remote places he himself is interested in. He was able to do that without government supervision; all the government checkpoints let him pass without much scrutiny. What he reports on is very different from mainstream media reports. One of his bl…

How to compare that with this experience then? https://youtu.be/v7AYyUqrMuQ Also, it's interesting that on Twitter of sharing related articles you'll have Asian people with accounts commenting with very short messages simply saying "you're stupid" or similar without explaining themselves nor actually engaging with the comments - their replies getting 4+ Likes from near bot-looking accounts. It seems the CCP is workin…

I think no one is doubting that, but I have yet to see any tweets from these bots are having any effect at all to turn the topic around (usually it's very one-sided against China). Do you have any examples that it might corrupt the discussion?

Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know why the above post gets downvoted, even though it's only inquiring people for opinions, and not even presenting its own opinion? What have I done wrong, and what should I have done differently?

Because it's presenting a very blatant false dilemma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma It could have not been on purpose, but it doesn't come off as a good faith desire to find out what people believe. I'm not sure how you can really, effectively figure out what specifically people think on this forum, especially because it very well could be the case that most people reading and commenting on this article…

Re false dilemma: You mean I got downvoted for not providing an option "E: other, please describe"? And just by lacking such an option, it comes over as bad faith?

That seems rather excessive and cynical. Why is it so hard for people to just post a comment describing their opinion, rather than hitting downvote?

Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps

#126

There are various levels of reporting in about what's happening in Xinjiang. I'm curious which ones of the following people here on HN believe are true. A. There is forced re-education, forced de-radicalization, and forced political assimilation (to fight separatism). Some camps are indeed for voluntary vocational education, others are for forced re-education. The number of people who are forced into camps, are a lot…

Too simplistic. Based on the generally available reports, and based on prior probabilities given the way this stuff has tended to work all over the world, I tentatively believe something close to this:

There is forced re-education, forced de-radicalization, and forced political (and cultural) assimilation. One major motivation is probably to fight a (largely illusory) danger of widespread separatist violence. In fact, the policy will probably eventually provoke or exacerbate such violence from at least a significant minority. That in turn will confirm in the leader's minds that the entire populace is dangerous, leading to a heavier crackdown. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Some voluntary vocational education is available, not necessarily in "camps", but probably in somewhat less restricted residential settings as well as on an "outpatient" basis. This "education" has a significant political component, which is largely unnoticed by the people who create the curriculum. Failure to absorb the political component is failure to absorb the lessons, and is treated as such.

Some unknown, but probably not very large, number of people accept this on a truly voluntary basis. Another unknown, but probably larger, number accept it "voluntarily", because they expect full-on involuntary internment if they do not. Both of these "voluntary" groups probably do get privileges like the possibility to occasionally get a pass to leave the camp (or other facility). Neither group is probably as large as the outright involuntary group, but it's hard to tell.

Unless you can put on a good show of actually qualifying to "graduate", guitting the "voluntary" group probably has a better than even chance of getting you put into the "involuntary" group. On the other hand, if you're genuinely an enthusiastic member of the "voluntary" group, and you manage to prove it, that's a great thing and you'll get all kinds of rewards.

No genocide is intended; assimilation is intended. The goal is not so much to erase any existing cultural identity as to make it subordinate to "Chinese" identity. That includes accepting a healthy helping of Han, but the people defining the goals don't see that, and think of it as accepting "universal values and pro-social habits". The intended assimilation would have the long-term effect of erasure and might meet the UN definition of "genocide"... but that's not really the purpose.

There is no intentional genocide in the sense of planned mass extermination. Nobody is killed outright unless they resist with violence. They are, of course provoked to so resist, but that's not really intentional. Of course anything that looks like participation in or aid to rebellion counts as violent resistance.

If things escalate enough there may be more dehumanization, and a perceived need for a "final solution", but that's not what the bosses want to do, and they are probably not thinking in those terms at this point.

The intent with regard to religion is to tame it, and those in charge feel they're enlightened and lenient for not outright suppressing it. The "taming" includes bringing the practice under state supervision and control, and removing any doctrinal elements that the regime finds threatening or that might in any way tend to undermine the regime's own doctrines. Some of the altered elements are probably important to the religion as it exists and as it is presently seen by its practitioners. It's very hard to create a recognizable "socialist Islam".

The re-educators, for their part, cannot understand why anybody would be unwilling to accept the "obviously reasonable" changes they're asking for, and see any resistance as vicious intransigence.

The brutality, in or out of the camps, is neither policy nor incidental. It's just what happens when you round people up and tell your troops that they're recalcitrant and anti-social and need to be "re-educated". But Those In Charge are predisposed not to see the brutality as what it is. It's simply tough love for the recalcitrant, with the occasional rare aberration. If a guard manages to make the bosses see something as brutal, that guard is probably punished with extreme severity.

Artefacts, buildings or whatever aren't an issue unless they become rallying points or are seen as likely to be rallying points. However, "not an issue" also includes "not very important to preserve". Which may make them into rallying points.

The goal is to have everybody in the camps re-educated (or brainwashed, as we crazy outsiders would have it), and released. It's a regrettable reality that certain elements resist this reasonable re-education, and therefore must be detained for very long periods, maybe even for life. It wouldn't be appropriate to release anybody who hadn't actually been reformed. After all, it's for their own good, and don't doubt that the people at the top of this believe that it's for their own good. Of course, if somebody resists "criminally" and becomes an enemy of the state, they may be imprisoned, or, justifiably, executed judicially, or killed as imminent threats to the safety of the state, the state's agents, or the social order.

How many people they actually manage to release is hard to tell. Exactly how hard they try, or what they accept as adequate evidence of having been re-educated, is also hard to tell. It probably varies.

It's also a regrettable reality that there are many unregenerate elements in the populace. Whether it gets to a million, I don't know.

So sort of C with elements of A, but it's more complicated than that.

You would think they'd have learned about some of this from the Cultural Revolution, but apparently not.

Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps

#127

There is a Canadian named Jerry Grey, who went on a bicycle ride in China. He literally rode hundreds of kilometers in Xinjiang, away from mainstream tourist attractions, to remote places he himself is interested in. He was able to do that without government supervision; all the government checkpoints let him pass without much scrutiny. What he reports on is very different from mainstream media reports. One of his bl…

Because he was a schmuck on a bicycle exploring a region more than twice the size of Texas, and not an actual journalist? Seriously, the OP was from freaking buzzfeed and it still listed the research team. These are not equally valuable accounts.

Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps

#129
post #96

There is a Canadian named Jerry Grey, who went on a bicycle ride in China. He literally rode hundreds of kilometers in Xinjiang, away from mainstream tourist attractions, to remote places he himself is interested in. He was able to do that without government supervision; all the government checkpoints let him pass without much scrutiny. What he reports on is very different from mainstream media reports. One of his bl…

The section on separatism is unadulterated pro-authoritarianism. Examples of regions that have peacefully seceded from a nation abound. Norway from Sweden, Greenland and Iceland from Denmark, multiple states from the former Soviet Union. Scotland had a referendum on independence recently and though they chose to stay part of the UK, there was no threat or chance of violence. Freedom to seceded, or coerced union are b…

>The fact that the US has indivisibility in it's constitution is a weird historical wrinkle, and one I find hard to reconcile given that they chose to separate from Britain. How they didn't recognise a general right for self determination is beyond me. But then I am a Brit.

This is incorrect. The US Constitution doesn't mention indivisibility [1]. The Tenth amendment provides some Rights to self determination:

> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

---

So while the constitution doesn't address succession by a state, the historical context of our Civil War, and court cases in its aftermath ended most of the debate on if and how states could succeed from the Union.

From Texas v. White [2]:

>When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.

That establishes that succession must have the consent of the States, which is a similar bar to amending the Constitution. But its interesting that the case cited pre-constitutional law, i.e. the Articles of Confederation.

[1] https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/United_States...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._White

Re: Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps

#130

There is a Canadian named Jerry Grey, who went on a bicycle ride in China. He literally rode hundreds of kilometers in Xinjiang, away from mainstream tourist attractions, to remote places he himself is interested in. He was able to do that without government supervision; all the government checkpoints let him pass without much scrutiny. What he reports on is very different from mainstream media reports. One of his bl…

>You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies? I trust journalists more than some rando for starters. But even besides that, I have a much harder time believing statements made on a blog by someone with very obvious opinions over direct visual evidence of a clear ramping up of detention centers.

You're twisting my point. I could as well turn it around and ask you these:

You really think everybody who's not a journalist and reports on China, must be a liar, and cannot possibly be genuine?

You think all journalists are unbiased and truthful?

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