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Former Xinjiang prisoner arrives in U.S. as key witness to abuses

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Re: Former Xinjiang prisoner arrives in U.S. as key witness to abuses

#161

Post by ATsch »

adventured wrote: post #138
fps_doug wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you deliberately placed the goal posts as such that they exactly put the US on the moral high ground.

The US did have the moral high ground, which is a remarkable thing given what we're talking about: that's how horrific what China is doing is. Were the Japanese released from that internment? Yes. Were they genocided? No. Were they stripped of their culture, heritage, social lives, and tortured for decades due to their beliefs? No. Does the US today recognize the Japanese internment as a moral crime? Yes. That last o…

> In China today you can't even discuss what's going on in Xinjiang

You absolutely can, they openly put it on their own government websites and everything even. These measures are written into public law. All of this is behind some misleading language of course, but chinese people aren't stupid. People, especially in Xinjiang, being aware of what's going on is in fact beneficial to the government, as it serves as a warning to anyone who might resist in the future.

Re: Former Xinjiang prisoner arrives in U.S. as key witness to abuses

#162

Post by zthrowaway »

shkkmo wrote: post #97
DigitalSea wrote: post #65

Quoted post unavailable.

I am absolutely sick of this attitude. People disagreeing with you does not make them a Russian bot or a Chinese shill. Making that accusation baselessly degrades the conversation while contributing nothing.

Everyone has successfully turned this thread into a discussion about the West. Purposeful distraction.

Re: Former Xinjiang prisoner arrives in U.S. as key witness to abuses

#163

Post by tablespoon »

RalfWausE wrote: post #156
lr4444lr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recall any US prison in the last 70+ years where people on the order of a million people, largely from a single region or ethnicity, were imprisoned on suspicion of mere affiliation. Every country probably has a signature few cases of prosecution that may provoke our indignation. That's not the same as putting people into prison because their religious beliefs make them enemies of the state.

cough internment of japanese cough

>> I don't recall any US prison in the last 70+ years where people on the order of a million people, largely from a single region or ethnicity, were imprisoned on suspicion of mere affiliation.

> coughinternment of japanesecough

cough2022-70=1952cough

That was also like three generations ago: there are a lot of things that happened in the US at that time that the US itself now roundly condemns.

You may return with this comparison when the PRC makes a formal apology to the Uyghurs, pays reparations, and teaches about the Xinjiang camps in schools as a shameful event of Chinese history.

Re: Former Xinjiang prisoner arrives in U.S. as key witness to abuses

#164

Post by aranazo »

lui8906 wrote: post #55
Bancakes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the alternative? Someone commits a felony, and then you...?

> What's the alternative? Someone commits a felony, and then you...? The US is the OECD country with the highest per capita % of incarcerated individuals. By orders of magnitude. So it seems other countries have found other approaches? > Source: Half of the OECD countries have less than 100 people in prison per 100 000 inhabitants. Thirteen have between 100 and 200. Two countries exceed this – Poland with 230 and the…

Russia's incarceration rate seems to have fallen dramatically in the last decade, 356 per 100 000 in 2020.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1022927/russia-annual-in...

Re: Former Xinjiang prisoner arrives in U.S. as key witness to abuses

#165

Post by throwaway4good »

plouffy wrote: post #8

Holly molly, the whatsaboutism in these comments.

The hypocrisy can be ignored.

The problem is that these allegations and institutions are not trustworthy.

Institutions that are controlled by the west and are applied only against the enemies of the west. Immigrants who speak out against their motherland under the promise of a better life in the west. Groups that once were terrorists, and killed by our military en masse, are now freedom fighters with a just cause.

Just ten years ago, the US was bombing Uyghurs in Afghanistan based on Chinese intelligence.

Now this issue is used to ban Chinese clothing and solar cells.

Re: Former Xinjiang prisoner arrives in U.S. as key witness to abuses

#166

Post by lr4444lr »

fps_doug wrote: post #127
lr4444lr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I didn't pick "70" randomly.

Sure, you deliberately placed the goal posts as such that they exactly put the US on the moral high ground.

Hey, I could have cited the untold millions who perished under Mao in that same range, but I didn't, because it's not relevant to the point: no one who made the decisions today at Guantanamo was also responsible for Japanese internment, and I'm happy to exonerate the CCP leadership today of Mao's misdeeds by benefit of the doubt. The length of time matters.

Re: Former Xinjiang prisoner arrives in U.S. as key witness to abuses

#167

Post by panick21_ »

BobbyJo wrote: post #44
lenkite wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terrible. But I felt terrible about Guantanamo Bay too. Still open by the way.

Do you think the camps in Xinjiang are as bad, or worse than Guantanamo? I think they are worse because: 1) You are put there for your ethnicity and religion, (no suspected crimes are needed for detainment), despite being a Chinese citizen. 2) Freedom of press in the US means we found out bad things were happening in Guantanamo, and the prison has since been mostly wound down. I think Guantanamo is good example of wh…

Freedom of the press doesn't prevent the majority of Americans getting served whole distorted picture of what happened in Iraq and the Middle East in general or just flat out misinformation, or simply no reporting at all.

Because there are very few actual journalist on the ground (and even less with any understanding of the local politics), most of the media just gets their information from gov news releases.

Eventually it wide spread abuse in one prison in Iraq came to be known and was downplayed and called isolated. People old enough will remember the prisoner on a dog leash for example. But there were many other prisons as well. And many had even worse control for abuse so we can assume what happens.

And tons of other things the US does in Middle East that are secret or so widely distorted that its hilarious to even call it news. Reliable allies turn into terrorist murderers within one strategic meeting. And terrorist turn into freedom fighters at the drop of a hat.

Re: Former Xinjiang prisoner arrives in U.S. as key witness to abuses

#168

Post by dundarious »

nukemaster wrote: post #142
dundarious wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a major resentment people have when they see these "moral stands" by the US, is that in its literal present day actions, neither US nor China "stand up against oppression in general not just when you can benefit", but also, China does not rhetorically claim to do so -- the US does make that false claim. The easy present day case to back up this claim that the US does not "stand up against oppression..." is Ye…

But we do try to make things right for US citizens (and often foreigners) inside our own borders. What happens inside your borders is way more important than outside. I don't think what we've done in the middle east is remotely good but it's substantially different.

I don't think that matters really. First, I don't see the point in doing moral rankings. If I live in the US and the US does a bad thing, that's what I should care most about (up to a point). Even if I thought, "well, my morality points ranking shows China's worse", that shouldn't affect my political decisions in the US, where I can influence US decisions but not Chinese ones.

But sure, if I have to pick which country to live in, on this metric I'd probably pick the US (we're smoothing over some extremely significant internal problems in the US here, but not directly comparable to Xinjiang, so OK, let's side-step them for the moment).

But that's a pretty selfish view. Good conditions at home don't justify imposing awful conditions abroad. To think so is literally imperial logic. I realize using phrases like "imperial" induces eye-rolling in some, but it's appropriate for the concept we're discussing here. The US's cold calculating cruelty is perhaps less obvious, but it undoubtedly impacts far more lives and deaths. So while I won't weigh in on whether the US is an empire (don't care), if you buy into the logic that "we're only evil abroad, at home we try to be nice", then that is imperial logic.

Re: Former Xinjiang prisoner arrives in U.S. as key witness to abuses

#169

Post by BobbyJo »

lenkite wrote: post #143
BobbyJo wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am sure you are aware that there were no suspected crimes needed for detainment in Gitmo and the US government said: "It Can Indefinitely Detain Anyone — Even U.S. Citizens". My point was that didn't happen. If we were putting people there solely for their religion and ethnicity, it'd be much more than a thousand. It would be millions... like in Xinjiang. > No, not as an individual and I will concede that to you.…

> My point was that didn't happen. If we were putting people there solely for their religion and ethnicity, it'd be much more than a thousand. It would be millions... like in Xinjiang. Tens of thousands passed through Abu Ghraib too in Iraq. A truckload of torture and prisoner abuse done to people of only ONE ethnicity. People lost limbs in prison. No one in the US administration paid for these crimes against humanit…

> Tens of thousands passed through Abu Ghraib too in Iraq. A truckload of torture and prisoner abuse done to people of only ONE ethnicity.

If we put Iraqis in prison because of their religion and ethnicity, there would have been millions locked up. In Xinjiang, people are put in camps because of their religion and ethnicity, that's why millions are locked up. Key word: because

> Some folks in the US govt who were in explicit favour of hard intervention in Iraq and who were deeply influential in igniting the Iraq war are the same ones criticising China now.

Sometimes murderers snitch on murderers. Doesn't mean they shouldn't be arrested. I mean, there is plenty of evidence on what's happening in Xinjiang, it's not like we are talking about taking war-hawks on their word.

Re: Former Xinjiang prisoner arrives in U.S. as key witness to abuses

#170

Post by wefarrell »

blueflow wrote: post #48
mlindner wrote: post #14

I do wonder who pays to have all these comments put on hacker news. This happens a lot on Russia-related threads as well. Or is it just some nationality who learned incorrect history. On the Russia-related threads I would've put it to people from India as there's a big tech group there and they speak English and their country is cozy with Russia, but they wouldn't be defending China.

I'm from Germany, and i don't feel like the US is seeing itself as "equal" as to other countries. The US is one of the most militarily aggressive states, just within my lifetime, they invaded Afghanistan, Iraq and had several weird operations in Syria and Libya. "Normal" values would be zero. I long for the day when US war crimes are treated the same way as war crimes by non-western countries. Instead they pull off s…

Germany invaded Afghanistan.

In all of the other wars you mention the US acted alongside broad coalitions. If you're going to criticize the US you should also criticize Canada, the UK, Spain, Italy, Australia and Germany.

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