Uyghur kids detail abuse at China's boarding schools in Xinjiang

Nobody is clean. Everybody must judge.

Not only is it possible for an American to condemn abuse of children, they have a moral duty to do so. It is also a requirement that China hold America to account for what America and Americans have done, in the past and today.

But any news outlet has not only a right but a duty to denounce human rights abuses everywhere.

I stopped eating Chinese food. That'll show 'em!

No but seriously -- whether someone pops in with a serious change, or absolutely zero changes, what does that tell us about Uyghur oppression? What are you getting at?

Why not?

I mean, it's immoral, but looking at history, forced assimilation has succeeded many times - it's just that it takes a lot of time (century+, certainly more than any individual's lifetime) and when it does, we now think of the assimilated people as an inherent part of the assimilating nation. The currently visible examples are just exceptions, either the ones where it has failed as the "assimilating empire" became weak and assimilation stopped/reversed, or the cases where it's recent and ongoing and won't succeed until after I'm dead (but that doesn't mean it won't succeed).

OP is asking if we're actually willing to personally sacrifice in order to pressure China into not violating human rights. Or if we're all talk and no bite. And it's a fair question. Has anyone here even written to their senator?

The only way the leadership of our country (I'm assuming most of us are in the US) is going to impose real sanctions and penalties on China is if we, as a people, vehemently demand it.

Personally, I am attempting to persuade those within my company that we restrict our business with China. This does not typically go over well, because 1) there's a lot of money in China, and 2) there are many Chinese nationals in our employ who very much do not like people pointing out the human rights violations of their country.

> In quiet, polite voices, Aysu and Lütfullah Kuçar describe the nearly 20 months they spent in state boarding schools in China's western region of Xinjiang, forcibly separated from their family.

> Under the watchful gaze of their father, the two ethnically Uyghur children say that their heads were shaved and that class monitors and teachers frequently hit them, locked them in dark rooms and forced them to hold stress positions as punishment for perceived transgressions.

> By the time they were able to return home to Turkey in December 2019, they had become malnourished and traumatized. They had also forgotten how to speak their mother tongues, Uyghur and Turkish. (The children were being raised in Turkey but got forcibly sent to boarding school during a family visit to China.)

Holy shit, that's horrifying. Literally the state just kidnapping kids and brainwashing and abusing them. It's like China's government is going out of their way to maximize evil.