Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canada's parliament votes to label China's persecution of Uighurs as genocide

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 191 posts

Re: Canada's parliament votes to label China's persecution of Uighurs as genocide

#101

Post by CogitoCogito »

ygjb wrote: post #62
nickff wrote: post #4

Interesting that the parliament went ahead with a vote, from which the 'leadership' (cabinet) abstained; I wonder what's going on behind the scenes. >"Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and almost all of his cabinet colleagues were absent for the vote. Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau was the only cabinet minister present. When it was his turn, he said he abstained "on behalf of the Government of Canada." "

It's pretty straightforward; from 2012-2015 the previous government, led by Stephen Harper (Prime Minister), and in partnership with Erin O'Toole (at the time Parliamentary Secretary with oversight over International Trade) negotiated a trade agreement with China [1]. Under this treaty, if the Canadian government takes actions that damage or undermine Chinese investment in Canada, then Chinese companies can sue Canad…

After reading that wiki article (i.e. not the actual treaty), it seems like any argument that Canada’s vote harms profitability of Chinese companies could be flipped around just as effectively. China’s restrictions harm Canadian media companies. So I don’t see why Canada should be all that worried about passing this law.

I think it’s more likely just straight politics as usual. Trudeau might very well have done the same thing without the restrictions of the treaty.

Re: Canada's parliament votes to label China's persecution of Uighurs as genocide

#102

Post by duxup »

throw373782 wrote: post #100
duxup wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Uyghurs (mostly on Chinese social media) pushing back against the charge of “genocide” by US politicians and Western media. Some of them are even laughing at the absurdity of it. I see these kind of strange examples posted. Like you posted, and others usually involve travel stories where the person was supposedly in the region and "didn't see anything". The general idea here is that the oppression has reached the le…

> Is "laughing at the absurdity of it" supposed to convince people of something? Look, no one can convince someone of something when they are hellbent on seeing things in a certain light. I’m sure if you look hard enough, you can find some Uyghur somewhere in those videos blinking out “HELP ME” in morse. But if Westerners are hyperventilating over Uyghur genocide while thousands of actual Uyghurs living in Xinjiang a…

>But if Westerners are hyperventilating over Uyghur genocide while thousands of actual Uyghurs living in Xinjiang are making videos laughing at the allegations, don’t you think there’s something wrong with that picture?

This is what I don't get. Such reliance on one off social media examples.

If I found a video that said otherwise ... would that convince you? Why would you think it works the other way?

Such reliance on such heavily anecdotal things (on some social media posts) seems very ... simple / a strange way to choose what to believe or even convince people.

Re: Canada's parliament votes to label China's persecution of Uighurs as genocide

#103

Post by DFHippie »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #24

There is a big danger in labeling it genocide: what are you going to do about it? If you label it genocide, and continue doing business as usual apart from some strongly worded letters, you are in effect saying that "genocide" is not a big deal.

This is false and China obviously considers it so, otherwise they wouldn't apply so much political and economic pressure on countries simply to prevent them from calling their treatment of the Uighurs genocide. And they aren't alone: Turkey behaves the same way.

Re: Canada's parliament votes to label China's persecution of Uighurs as genocide

#104

Post by fakeslimshady5 »

duxup wrote: post #75
throw373782 wrote: post #68

[flagged]

>Uyghurs (mostly on Chinese social media) pushing back against the charge of “genocide” by US politicians and Western media. Some of them are even laughing at the absurdity of it. I see these kind of strange examples posted. Like you posted, and others usually involve travel stories where the person was supposedly in the region and "didn't see anything". The general idea here is that the oppression has reached the le…

[dead]

Re: Canada's parliament votes to label China's persecution of Uighurs as genocide

#105

Post by yorwba »

lixtra wrote: post #42
thesimon wrote: post #15

I am not sure what term is apporopiate for the horrific treatment, but I found the Economist's point quite valid. > 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 “vocati…

The labeling is not arbitrary but based in the UN definition: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: - Killing members of the group; - Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; ... -Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; ... https://…

All three definitely apply to Han Chinese:

- The number of executions is treated as a state secret, but most likely a lot of people are killed every year, including for political "crimes".

- Chinese prisons used to be labor camps by default and many continue to operate as such, including torture and rape by prison guards.

- The one-child policy was all about preventing births and involved sterilizing more than half of all women.

Which makes me wonder why the Canadian declaration is limited to Uighurs instead of also applying to persecuted Han Chinese or members of the fifty-odd other recognized ethnic groups in China. Is it just because Uighurs have gotten comparatively more attention recently?

Re: Canada's parliament votes to label China's persecution of Uighurs as genocide

#107

Post by justicezyx »

jonathannat wrote: post #49
abhinav22 wrote: post #2

Good to see a stand being taken. Hopefully allows for more pressure put on China to be more humane. Also I think there is too much us vs China going around - another war would be terrible, and even without a war, negative consequences could arise. One world should be the dream we aspire for.

[flagged]

Well, now we see the true color of some of the visitors:

None of these points make much sense after some minimal amount of facts and reasoning. But I’ll add more counter points to these items because of typing on iPad.

Why I am doing this? Because I am a CCP buyout!

No, unfortunately, anything important is never that easy. I was indeed called that before, for stating facts as well.

I have to make facts straight, because I am a Chinese immigrant to US. For that I have to clear out the facts. I am not going to let some mental bias and laziness threaten my family’s chance in this wonderful land.

And, US deserves the openness and rationality that made her great! I am not letting it gone without some fight.

Re: Canada's parliament votes to label China's persecution of Uighurs as genocide

#108

Post by breitling »

908B64B197 wrote: post #39
nickff wrote: post #4

Interesting that the parliament went ahead with a vote, from which the 'leadership' (cabinet) abstained; I wonder what's going on behind the scenes. >"Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and almost all of his cabinet colleagues were absent for the vote. Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau was the only cabinet minister present. When it was his turn, he said he abstained "on behalf of the Government of Canada." "

Not surprising. The Trudeau family has always supported dictatorships, such as the Castro regime in Cuba. The son even went as far as calling Fidel "larger than life leader who served his people" [0] [0] https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/27/world/justin-trudeau-castro-e...

Don't forget, Justin said he admires China

Re: Canada's parliament votes to label China's persecution of Uighurs as genocide

#109

Post by abledon »

ygjb wrote: post #62
nickff wrote: post #4

Interesting that the parliament went ahead with a vote, from which the 'leadership' (cabinet) abstained; I wonder what's going on behind the scenes. >"Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and almost all of his cabinet colleagues were absent for the vote. Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau was the only cabinet minister present. When it was his turn, he said he abstained "on behalf of the Government of Canada." "

It's pretty straightforward; from 2012-2015 the previous government, led by Stephen Harper (Prime Minister), and in partnership with Erin O'Toole (at the time Parliamentary Secretary with oversight over International Trade) negotiated a trade agreement with China [1]. Under this treaty, if the Canadian government takes actions that damage or undermine Chinese investment in Canada, then Chinese companies can sue Canad…

Wow, that is nasty, and the article makes no mention of this?

Is there a page on the canadian government website that details this agreement with china?

Re: Canada's parliament votes to label China's persecution of Uighurs as genocide

#110

Post by throw373782 »

duxup wrote: post #102
throw373782 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is "laughing at the absurdity of it" supposed to convince people of something? Look, no one can convince someone of something when they are hellbent on seeing things in a certain light. I’m sure if you look hard enough, you can find some Uyghur somewhere in those videos blinking out “HELP ME” in morse. But if Westerners are hyperventilating over Uyghur genocide while thousands of actual Uyghurs living in Xinjiang a…

>But if Westerners are hyperventilating over Uyghur genocide while thousands of actual Uyghurs living in Xinjiang are making videos laughing at the allegations, don’t you think there’s something wrong with that picture? This is what I don't get. Such reliance on one off social media examples. If I found a video that said otherwise ... would that convince you? Why would you think it works the other way? Such reliance…

It’s no different than how the entire Western media establishment has been relying on one-off style testimonies pushing atrocity propaganda and basing almost their entire genocide thesis off of anecdotal evidence.

You’re acting like it’s my goal or duty to convince you, which is not the case. You can choose to believe what you want to believe.

My simple goal here today is to make the point that the US has a long track record of manufacturing consent to achieve its geopolitical goals and that we all should be aware and on guard for it. This Uyghur genocide story throws up too many red flags for me.

Here’s Lawrence Wilkerson (retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell) being very candid about America’s interest in Xinjiang. Hint: it’s not because they care about Uyghurs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKBTT827b84

Post reply on HN