“Genocide” is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang • Hacker News Board

Re: “Genocide” is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang

#61

Post by dfilppi » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

skissane wrote: post #36

> Calling it genocide depends on a definition rooted in a UN convention which suggests that one need not actually kill anyone to commit it This article is ignoring the history of the word "genocide". It was coined by the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, during the Second World War, to describe what the Nazis were doing to his own people (and to others too). However, Lemkin himself never defined it so narrowly as…

Then the word should be retired. The suffix -cide means to kill. Any other meaning makes the word itself a lie.

Re: “Genocide” is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang

#62

Post by orange_joe » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

Synaesthesia wrote: post #54

Genocide is a bit much. Then we should also call what Israel is doing in Gaza "genocide".

As someone whose studied both situations pretty extensively I disagree. Israel practices something more akin to apartheid. There is no eugenic component as far as I’m aware, Gaza has a significantly higher birth rate than israel. In Xinjiang, forced sterilization is a systemic aspect of the campaign thereby fitting into the UN definition of genocide.

Re: “Genocide” is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang

#63

Post by Svip » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

skissane wrote: post #36

> Calling it genocide depends on a definition rooted in a UN convention which suggests that one need not actually kill anyone to commit it This article is ignoring the history of the word "genocide". It was coined by the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, during the Second World War, to describe what the Nazis were doing to his own people (and to others too). However, Lemkin himself never defined it so narrowly as…

I thought Lemkin coined the word with the Armenian genocide in mind. In 1943, the scale of the Holocaust was unknown among the public, and even Western intelligence to some extend. Lemkin was in the US by then, so the information available to him about the scale of Nazi atrocities in Eastern Europe would be largely unavailable to him.

Re: “Genocide” is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang

#64

Post by draklor40 » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

eecc wrote: post #49

draklor40 wrote: post #14

By the common understanding of the word, it is not. Just as “homicide” means killing a person and “suicide” means killing yourself, “genocide” means killing a people. China’s persecution of the Uyghurs is horrific: it has locked up perhaps 1m of them in prison camps, which it naturally mislabels “vocational training centres”. It has forcibly sterilised some Uyghur women. But it is not slaughtering them. - Yes, Guardi…

Dude, take a deep breath and chill. Your "Red Rage" led you to confuse the Economist - always a stalwart champion of British Liberal Capitalism - with The Guardian, a somewhat leftish newspaper from the UK.

What do you mean by `Red Rage` ?

Re: “Genocide” is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang

#65

Post by skissane » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

dfilppi wrote: post #61

skissane wrote: post #36

> Calling it genocide depends on a definition rooted in a UN convention which suggests that one need not actually kill anyone to commit it This article is ignoring the history of the word "genocide". It was coined by the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, during the Second World War, to describe what the Nazis were doing to his own people (and to others too). However, Lemkin himself never defined it so narrowly as…

Then the word should be retired. The suffix -cide means to kill. Any other meaning makes the word itself a lie.

In geno-cide, it is the group you are killing (the genos), not necessarily its individual members. Sterilise them all and you will have successfully killed the group when its last member dies of old age, even though you never killed any individual member of it.

Re: “Genocide” is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang

#66

Post by loudmax » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

skissane wrote: post #36

> Calling it genocide depends on a definition rooted in a UN convention which suggests that one need not actually kill anyone to commit it This article is ignoring the history of the word "genocide". It was coined by the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, during the Second World War, to describe what the Nazis were doing to his own people (and to others too). However, Lemkin himself never defined it so narrowly as…

The difficulty is that we need to have different terms for different levels of atrocities. Forced sterilization of an ethnic group is an atrocity. Mass murder of an ethnic group is also an atrocity. But they're on different levels. Both of these are crimes against humanity. Both are deplorable. But they're not equally deplorable. Both are bad, but they're not equally bad. Clearly, mass murder is worse than mass sterilization. It's a crime that should be treated differently, just as we treat rape and murder differently.

If we call what the Chinese Communist Party is doing to the Uyghurs a genocide, then we should come up for another word to describe what the Nazis did to the Jews. Or, heaven forbid, if they really do start murdering Uyghur families in mass.

Re: “Genocide” is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang

#67

Post by yorwba » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #15

[deleted]

Some unknown but probably large number of people is executed in China every year. Some of them are Uyghurs.

For organ transplantation, a corpse is a corpse, whether they died in a traffic accident or were executed doesn't matter (except probably execution by poison as practiced in the US).

So yes, executed Uyghurs are used as organ donors in China, but the causality is inverted: they're not killed for organ harvesting, they have their organs harvested because they were killed.

Re: “Genocide” is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang

#68

Post by viktorcode » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

The whole idea behind labour camps in Xinjiang is to strip Uyghurs living in China from their independent identity. Take away their history by destroying ancestral graveyards. Rid them of Islam by prohibiting religious practice and "educating" them with communist ideas through loudspeakers. And even end them as an ethnicity, by sterilising some women and raping others to produce Han offsprings.

Genocide describes that perfectly.

P.S. Though better of journalism quality of The Economist.

Re: “Genocide” is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang

#69

Post by skissane » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

Svip wrote: post #63

skissane wrote: post #36

> Calling it genocide depends on a definition rooted in a UN convention which suggests that one need not actually kill anyone to commit it This article is ignoring the history of the word "genocide". It was coined by the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, during the Second World War, to describe what the Nazis were doing to his own people (and to others too). However, Lemkin himself never defined it so narrowly as…

I thought Lemkin coined the word with the Armenian genocide in mind. In 1943, the scale of the Holocaust was unknown among the public, and even Western intelligence to some extend. Lemkin was in the US by then, so the information available to him about the scale of Nazi atrocities in Eastern Europe would be largely unavailable to him.

It was both - the Armenian genocide, and the Nazi crimes, which Lemkin was dedicated to documenting as they occurred, including in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. He might not have been fully aware of the scale of the Nazi crimes, but he was already viewing them through the framework of “genocide”

Re: “Genocide” is the wrong word for the horrors of Xinjiang

#70

Post by emptysongglass » Fri, Feb 12, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #53

emptysongglass wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was one center by one doctor who is being investigated. This was not the machinations of federal or state.

There's strong evidence of the one doctor and concerns that it might be more widespread. Were there people that knew about it and didn't stop it? And it very much is a failure of government if an individual is systematically abusing people that are in government custody.

Who are you asking this question? Let's stick to the facts of the investigation, please, and not cast about beyond what we know.

A failure of government ≠ intent, which is what I indicated with my use of the word machinations.