I have never read a first-hand account, that is why I am posting this.
Thank you for posting this. More people need to see this is happening in a so-called first world country.
I am an Uighur who faced China’s concentration camps
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Re: I am an Uighur who faced China’s concentration camps
#22In the article he mentions “Their goal is just to exterminate all Uighurs in one way or another”, if that is the case, why not just shoot them all? Why did they let him out?
Obviously, that statement is more about his feelings than about the Chinese government's motivation, since he has no special insight into the latter.
Re: I am an Uighur who faced China’s concentration camps
#23Re: I am an Uighur who faced China’s concentration camps
#24I'm curious why this man was denied a US visa in 2018 despite an invitation from Congress to speak about his experience. [1]
[1]https://apnews.com/article/dc4062529014451e914ab361b3987afd
Re: I am an Uighur who faced China’s concentration camps
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
> cultural purging and crimes against humanity These existed long before the concept of communism, we can debate communisms merits (of which it has some but not many) or we can actually discuss the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by a dual capitalist/communist society regardless of their political theory of choice.
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We aren't talking about magnitude and frequency. If we were I could point out that communist governments tend to be younger and dealing with more domestic strife as a young government may lead to a higher likelihood of crimes being committed by the government regardless of political economic theory.
These phenomenons are not new and arguably were perfected before communism existed. Please don't muddy the waters to make this an attack on a political philosophy when these behaviors are an affront to human life regardless of who perpetrates them.
Re: I am an Uighur who faced China’s concentration camps
#26In the article he mentions “Their goal is just to exterminate all Uighurs in one way or another”, if that is the case, why not just shoot them all? Why did they let him out?
It would have been far easier for Nazis to shoot all "lesser" races too, yet they used to send people to concentration camps first. And yes, people used to be released from those from time to time too. The answer with Nazis was that after arrival at a concentration camp the weak were sent to immediate excution, the rest were kept for labour, and everyone was stripped off their possessions first - which was very convenient because people were told they would be relocated, so they brought valuables with them. That centralized the wealth gathering, execution and labour into a single package, which made a lot more sense than trying to do it on the spot everywhere they went.
But specifically in the case of Uighurs - you can eliminate a culture by erasing its identity, without killing the people. That seems to be what China is doing - they are not straight up killing them, just putting them in camps for "reeducation" so they behave and think like model Chinese citizens, with harsh punishments for following their original culture. That way, "Uighurs" as a group will be wiped out without necessarily killing them all.
Re: I am an Uighur who faced China’s concentration camps
#27[flagged]
> cultural purging and crimes against humanity These existed long before the concept of communism, we can debate communisms merits (of which it has some but not many) or we can actually discuss the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by a dual capitalist/communist society regardless of their political theory of choice.
The problem is that communism centralizes control (obviously of the economy, but in effect many other things) and when control gets centralized, bad things like this are more likely to happen.
The same is true of centralization in democracy, but to a lessor effect due to the distributed nature of power in democracies.
Re: I am an Uighur who faced China’s concentration camps
#28Primary sources have been lacking in coverage of this story; is the Communist party that powerful in controlling first hand accounts?
Re: I am an Uighur who faced China’s concentration camps
#29In the article he mentions “Their goal is just to exterminate all Uighurs in one way or another”, if that is the case, why not just shoot them all? Why did they let him out?
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Re: I am an Uighur who faced China’s concentration camps
#30I'm curious why this man was denied a US visa in 2018 despite an invitation from Congress to speak about his experience. [1] [1] https://apnews.com/article/dc4062529014451e914ab361b3987afd
My guess would be politics. Congress in the US is democratically controlled while the Senate and Presidency are republican controlled. The current administration is fairly anti-Muslim and has ignored the Uighar issues entirely, the current administration likely told the State Department not to issue the visa.