> It's exaggerations and propaganda for theatre.
What do you believe is being exaggerated? Do you think the 1st-hand accounts we have are lies?
There's a difference between a semantic argument that says "we agree on everything except the word for this" (ie, the State department's disagreement that sparked this thread in the first place) and an argument that says "China isn't doing the things you say it is."
Which argument are you making?
> That can't be handwaved away into China is genociding for lulz, nor dismissing the plurality opinion as not in good faith.
But it's not in good faith. Unless you want to seriously argue right now that the accounts we have of official-condoned systematic rape and abortion are lies, then an endorsement of this system or an attempt to say that it's not a serious human rights violation is in bad faith. You can't have your cake and eat it, you can't say that there's a good faith argument that China is just responding to an insurgency threat unless you're also willing to dig in and actually say what that argument is.
Do you agree that systematic torture, forced abortions, forced labor of ethnic minorities, reeducation camps for those minorities, and a coordinated effort to eliminate their culture are a crime against humanity?
And on the note of 9/11, what is the good faith argument that the response so far (nothing) is comparable to forcibly changing a regime based on fake information? We're not talking about forcibly changing China's government. I do not care whether or not China is a Communist country, I don't care if it becomes a global leader in manufacturing. Good for it if it does. But it can't do it with forced labor from an ethnic minority.
We have had zero real response to China committing cultural genocide, and people are arguing that's too much response? That's not a good faith argument, I'm not going to pretend it is.
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> There's no credibility to human right lectures from wealthy, safe countries that atrocitied their way to wealth and secure borders.
What you're arguing here is effectively that no one is ever allowed to call out any other country on human rights issues because we all have sins. And on one level you're right -- the US is a country built on atrocities, and the US is currently engaged in human rights abuses within its own country. The US has sins.
But the answer to that can not be nihilism. I have no sympathy for this argument, go tell an Uighur that they don't get help because we want to grapple with our white guilt first. People who are being oppressed do not care about the logistics or appearance of how they're helped, they want allies. The Uighur population does not exist to be an object lesson to the West, and the solution to noticing hypocrisy is to improve conditions across the board, not to nihilistically throw up our hands and decide to do nothing.
The US should sanction China and the US should address its own history and ongoing failures with racism, colonialism, and oppression. Feeling bad about US history is not an excuse to stick our heads in the sand. There's a difference between recognizing hypocrisy and trying to correct it, and using hypocrisy as an excuse to lower standards for everyone even further.
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You argue that if advocates for Uighur rights were honest, they'd be trying to:
> Use XJ as opportunity to formalize conventions and punishments for crimes against humanity and cultural genocide.
> start sanctioning Canada for self professed cultural genocide.
But this is literally what advocates are trying to do right now when they argue that the current legal definition of genocide is interpreted too narrowly. What you're arguing advocates should do is what they are currently doing -- campaigning for the recognition of cultural genocide as a human rights violation with concrete consequences.
If you want the US/Canada held to more account, and if you genuinely believe that these nations are engaged in cultural genocide, then you should be on board with this campaign -- a formal definition of cultural genocide can be used across the board to try and address some of the hypocrisy that you're very sincerely worried about. If you genuinely believe that the US prison system is a bigger issue, then why aren't you trying to expand the definitions so that the US prison system can be addressed? The EU is already leaning towards an interpretation of US imprisonment as cruel and unusual punishment in certain situations. Increased scrutiny in that area would only be helpful.
This is not the slam-dunk argument you think it is; I would love to get rid of forced labor in US prisons, and I (and other activists on the ground campaigning for prisoner rights) would all love to see more international pressure in that direction. It would be appreciated, please get on it.
But most of the international criticism about the term "cultural genocide" is not really coming from a position of wanting to raise standards across the board, it's coming from a position that argues that any attempt to raise standards at all is illegitimate and unfair. If there actually was a coordinated effort by any of these critics to formalize and broaden consequences for more general human rights violations, I would be on board with it. But there's not, which does leave me questioning what their goals actually are.