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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

#221

Post by Miner49er »

partiallypro wrote: post #180

I'm still baffled that some people, even here, think this is all made up propaganda from the West. Despite tons and tons of evidence. Kind of reminds me of how it must have been with people in denial about the early Nazi concentration camps, and Holodomor. I'm not saying this is as brutal as what the Nazis did (at least as far as we know,) just drawing parallels to the pure denialism or marking it up as pure exaggera…

I think people are skeptical, because a lot of the people talking about these camps clearly don't care about the people in them. They only care about making China look bad. Many politicians in the US are using this as an example of why China is bad, while simultaneously pushing for similar here with our prison system or with ICE.

Plus, even if they aren't being hypocrital, it is in the United States' interest to make China look bad, even if that means making things up or exaggerating.

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

#222

Post by dirtyid »

mbar84 wrote: post #145

Can these findings be used to put some bounds on the number of prisoners?

I'm surprised it hasn't been. Some initial reporting measured expansion of the camps by floor space which can be used to estimate internment numbers. One of the researcher is a licensed architect, this is 101 stuff in terms of occupancy/building use estimation. Source some commercial satellite service to take pictures and start counting.

That said, if the intention of the system is to indoctrinate then we can expect most of the 11M Uyghurs to be imprisoned at some time. Really the question is concurrent numbers which makes for grabbing headlines. My personal guess is if competent geospatial analysis was conducted the actual detention capacity would be far lower than the commonly cited 1-3 million Zenz estimated extrapolated from his claims of 1,200 detention centres. This study, alleged to be comprehensive, found 260 (edit 315) camps in the entire region. At least it's a good start.

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

#223

Post by dragonwriter »

warbaker wrote: post #215
fqye wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because history told us that public consensus and official conclusion could be lies. Remember the reason that the US invaded Iraq?

Not sure how you can equate these two. Iraq invasion was driven by faulty intelligence gathered in secret by a spy organization. Here, we have millions of eye witnesses and tons of corroborating evidence.

> Iraq invasion was driven by faulty intelligence gathered in secret by a spy organization.

No, it was driven by politically motivated lies that the governments knew were fabrications. It wasn't intelligence driving policy, but preconceived policy driving intelligence to support the arguments that were already decided. And this was fairly evident and evidence for it fairly widely reported, though also widely of ignored, during the drive to war.

The Uighurs camps situation doesn't appear the same, but of course it's abstractly possible that the lies are just better covered and laundered through external organizations. But I don't think that's the Occam's Razor answer.

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

#225

Post by dirtyid »

tosh wrote: post #13

interesting related read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...

Kind of frustrating the reporting didn't compensate the pins on the map to adjust for this. Most of the dots currently point to nothing useful. I hope the data set gets released with real + compensated coordinates so people can conduct followup analysis.

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

#226

Post by sagarm »

thefounder wrote: post #190
aminecodes wrote: post #17

The least the EU and US could do is sanction and ban Baidu and other Chinese tech companies responsible for covering up this genocide.

US could stop putting mexican kids in cages and treat them like garbage. That would be a start towards rehabilitation.

Whataboutism.

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

#227

Post by grugagag »

kube-system wrote: post #188
abj wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah that makes sense, thanks. I was wondering how other western youtubers had channels full of interviews.

A couple of the western Chinese vloggers I used to watch a lot recently fled China after they caught wind that the authorities were looking for them for 'illegal journalism'

This vlogger, his youtube channel is Serpentza lived in China for more than 10 years now had no choice but to leave, otherwise he wouldn’ve been inprisoned or even worse:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nWgqdfAomVI

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

#228

Post by systemvoltage »

aluminum96 wrote: post #220
jandrese wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's social media army is out in force on that Twitter thread. Deflect, Deny, Discredit.

It is truly remarkable how many replies in that thread consist of bad analogies, denials of clear third party reporting, and whatabout-ism.

Same thing happens here btw on HN. Since I just said something against HN, I guarantee this comment will get downvoted into oblivion.

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

#229

Post by partiallypro »

Miner49er wrote: post #221
partiallypro wrote: post #180

I'm still baffled that some people, even here, think this is all made up propaganda from the West. Despite tons and tons of evidence. Kind of reminds me of how it must have been with people in denial about the early Nazi concentration camps, and Holodomor. I'm not saying this is as brutal as what the Nazis did (at least as far as we know,) just drawing parallels to the pure denialism or marking it up as pure exaggera…

I think people are skeptical, because a lot of the people talking about these camps clearly don't care about the people in them. They only care about making China look bad. Many politicians in the US are using this as an example of why China is bad, while simultaneously pushing for similar here with our prison system or with ICE. Plus, even if they aren't being hypocrital, it is in the United States' interest to make…

There is definitely a distinction between immigration policy of people coming into your country vs rounding up your own citizens.

So, we now just have to believe everything China says because the US isn't perfect? Germany and many European countries have camps for refugees from the Syrian war, but that's not even remotely the same as taking your own citizens into camps and harvesting their organs, hair, etc. Not even close. I am so tired of that comparison, it's lazy whataboutism without even thinking about the context or extent.

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

#230

Post by James_Henry »

free_rms wrote: post #218
James_Henry wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to ask, do you pretty much believe your option A? If so, what do you think of the Buzzfeed News investigation and reporting? Also, do you thing the re-education of Uighurs and others is the right thing for the Communist Party to be doing? I understand you may not want to comment publicly here, so if you want, feel free to email me (my profile has my email).

All of the reporting just indicates buildings exist. I'm not sure what to believe, lots of things are in range given the evidence, but I don't take "look, a building" to mean much of anything.

Some of the buildings are very clearly used as detention centers. They've been confirmed by journalists, for instance. Not all are proven to be camps and just look like they could be. (I don't know why China would need so many guarded prison looking areas with thick concrete walls, but I'm sure someone could come up with a reason.)

I was talking about the other two articles by Buzzfeed. They interviewed quite a few people who were arrested and then released from these centers.

Also, there is no question (meaning China has admitted it) that China has a re-education and de-radicalization program for which they are detaining Uighurs (and others) against their will. It is part of their larger plans to sinicize Islam from what I understand. What are your thoughts on this?

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