Live data from Hacker News

The persecution of the Uyghurs is a crime against humanity

economist.com

261–270 of 323 posts

Re: The persecution of the Uyghurs is a crime against humanity

#261

It's incredibly sad that the world is not doing anything about it. Even if half of the things they say are true - putting anyone in camps for sporting a beard or praying in public, forced prison labour, physical torture, separating new borns and kids from parents in camp, sending kids to brainwashing schools, sexual abuse, organ harvesting etc - it's enough to make anyone feel disgusted at this state of affairs. But…

What can the world realistically do? China right now has enormous power over the rest of the world (by means of economical dependency), and I don't see that decreasing. To be clear, I certainly support human rights, but I personally see the situation as so bad, that I'm worried about how China's influence will extend to the West.

> but I personally see the situation as so bad, that I'm worried about how China's influence will extend to the West.

Yes but I fear it’s even worse. Their influence has already extended into the west and has for at least a decade now. Not only are consumers dependent on cheap crap, but Western corporations are dependent on China’s massive market. And politicians are dependent on Western corporations...

Re: The persecution of the Uyghurs is a crime against humanity

#262
post #239

The world has enough Islamic countries. Most of them are not open, industrialized first world countries. Where you have Islam and a non islamic population, you have trouble. Be it the Philippines, Armenia, Myanmar, nigeria, russia, ethiopia, you name it. China is not a non-interacting gap country like most (all?) Islamic countries. And as a westerner living happily in China, I am actually glad that China does not acc…

I assume it is the same crowd that screams for women rights, gay rights, freedom of speech that thinks we need most moslemic Staates

Re: The persecution of the Uyghurs is a crime against humanity

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nativist anti-immigration demands in Europe or North America are generally criticized as hyperbole because immigration will not actually lead to demographic replacement in the near future, in spite of those activists’ claims. The US is steering towards Majority Minority, is it not? > Furthermore, in Europe the immigrants invariably assimilate linguistically to their host country – by the second or third generation,…

> The US is steering towards Majority Minority, is it not? It is not, at least not in the context of the present discussion. While whites are set to lose their majority, one of the minorities overtaking them are African-Americans, who cannot reasonably be called immigrants, because they were brought to the US against their will long ago, and they came before the late 19th-century and early 20th-century influx of Euro…

That's a lot of goal post moving, and for Europe I think you're fundamentally mistaken. Needless to say that this doesn't convince me, why you'd treat the same policy completely different in a moral judgement. Principles that don't hold when transported to new circumstances aren't principles.

Re: The persecution of the Uyghurs is a crime against humanity

#264
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be acknowledged that this strategy ultimately ended up with the Taliban and our 20+ year occupation of Afghanistan and various massacres throughout central america. > The presidency of Ronald Reagan in the United States was marked by multiple scandals, resulting in the investigation, indictment, or conviction of over 138 administration officials Which was (still is?) The most for any president.

And the freeing of half of Europe from tyranny. The reduction in threat of nuclear annihilation of the world. The opening up of huge amounts of the world to free trade and prosperity.

> The reduction in threat of nuclear annihilation of the world

He also walked away from what would have been the most monumental nuclear reductions agreement, including the elimination of all ICBMs and possibly all strategic nuclear weapons in both countries, because he refused to give up the pipe dream of the Star Wars program. [1]

> the freeing of half of Europe from tyranny.

While Reagan’s foreign policy did play a part, the fall of the USSR was more a culmination of decades of economic stagnation, decades of costly arms race military spending, and an incredibly costly and unpopular war in Afghanistan (that sounds familiar). Also Mikhail Gorbachev and his radical policy shifts with Glasnost and Perestroika played a massive part in setting the stage for the collapse. It could also be argued that Bush Sr’s policy shift to a lighter touch in Europe to allow for the revolutions to proceed organically, as opposed to Reagan pushing them with American support, allowed Gorbachev to avoid coups and stay in power to oversee a peaceful collapse, rather than a violent last spasm that many hardliners wanted. Reagan absolutely had a part to play, but he was by no means the architect of the end of the USSR.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/ronald-...

Re: The persecution of the Uyghurs is a crime against humanity

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many time per decade does a border change in a post UN world. How many times in an average decade did borders change before the UN? Reading this thread has made me depressed. I guess lessons have expiration dates. We're going to have to relearn this one.

I don't think border changes are a good measure of conflict. Iraq's border hasn't changed since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and it's had plenty of well known conflict since then. > I guess lessons have expiration dates. We're going to have to relearn this one. Which lesson are you talking about? The lessons we should have learned after the League of Nations collapsed?

Border changes aren't a measure of conflict, and preventing conflict is not the ultimate goal. Preventing total/nuclear war between major power is the goal. Border changes are (were) the way conflicts escalated into the great wars.

This why "aggression," the one international "law" that is taken seriously basically means border violations. The few non voluntary border changes since the late 40s (eg crimea, the west bank) are (despite generations) not recognized by the UN.

All the low power UN institutions cloud people's understanding of the core. The core is the UNSC, non aggression and a few other principle/institutions designed to prevent (basically) the US and Russia/USSR from destroying the world and the cold war cold.

It's not even designed to do last minute conflict resolution. It is designed to take the motive/gain out of war. The lesson is how major war has been avoided for 75 years largely because we can't go from pretence (China's terrible crimes in Xianjing) to war. Pretence will always exist. Major wars are preventable.

Re: The persecution of the Uyghurs is a crime against humanity

#266
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is absurd. As a brown immigrant Muslim looking person, not only do I feel safer in the US than I would in China, I feel safer here than in France. Do muslim looking persons in muslim countries feel equally well protected from America? > Americans aren’t frothing at the mouth to ban Islamic religious clothing while schoolgirls in France have to remove their headscarves. That sounds like more progressive. Do wom…

Every Muslim woman I know (hundreds) who wear hijab wear it without the threat of violence from their family. It's extremely common amongst the people I know for some women in the family to wear hijab and some to not. It's not as big of a deal as non Muslims seem to think, and it's frankly offensive that you assume that people would only make that choice due to threats of violence.

In moderate Muslim countries, and in the west, wearing hijab is intermediate in voluntariness. Like wearing ankle-length skirts in the 1950s in the US. In Bangladesh, where I’m from, it went from pretty much non-existent to being very common, as the export of middle eastern culture happens throughout the Islamic world. Nobody will send you to jail for not wearing it, but there is a lot of cultural pressure. I don’t like it, because I’d rather see Bangladesh lean into its Anglo heritage than its Islamic one, but that doesn’t justify making it illegal in a developed country. Even among conservatives in the US, the vast majority oppose banning hijab.

Re: The persecution of the Uyghurs is a crime against humanity

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collectivism can find a justification for almost any atrocity. Collectivist ideologies (which includes Nazism) have a pretty well-worn track record of inciting mass murder and Chinese communism was a clear example long before the oppression of the Uighurs. Hearing about the reality of enforcing the one-child policy was enough for me to make up my mind on the CCP.

The problem isn't collectivism but tribalism. The Han majority in this case don't extend their sympathy to the Uighurs or the Tibetans or the Mongols. The self-described Aryans didn't extend their sympathy to the Jews or the slavs or the Romany. There are plenty of individualists in the US who are indifferent or hostile to other "tribes", blacks or hispanics or native Americans or simply city dwellers, while being ve…

Yes, tribalism is at the root of all group-on-group conflict. There are two governing ideologies to deal with this: collectivism and individualism. Collectivism attempts to unite the tribes, so to speak, while individualism seeks to shrink each tribe to a party of one. Obviously tribal warfare happens no matter what, but I think the historical record is pretty clear about which one has done a better job of minimizing it.

Re: The persecution of the Uyghurs is a crime against humanity

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They haven't committed crimes on the scale of the invasions of Vietnam and Iraq in the last 50 years.

Yea the cultural revolution where the Red Guard roved the country murdering millions of innocent people was 52 years ago so you are technically right. Get this: they even engaged in cannibalism as an ideological purity test! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre

I'm not gonna deny that happened. What's interesting is how the US downplayed Chinese violations of human rights, which were way worse than Soviet violations at the time (70's) for political reasons. The Soviets were the chief enemy back then.

Re: The persecution of the Uyghurs is a crime against humanity

#269

When does something become a crime against humanity? Is terrorism, like handful of men and women just stabbing random people with kitchen knives on a train station, is that a crime against humanity? What do you do, when a group of people constantly advocate for such crimes?

By that logic, what should the world do if a country is violating basic human rights of over a million people?

Re: The persecution of the Uyghurs is a crime against humanity

#270
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has concentration camps for blacks, native americans and immigrants, where they reeducate you to follow a tyrannical political system? Are they tracked through a social credit system where you can't get a train out of your town if it's bad? Where journalists repeteadly disappear? Where a treaty with the UK is ripped up and a city is invaded? Yeah. Accurate.

When is it called a "prison" and when is it called a "concentration camp"?

When the people did not break the law and were seeking legal asylum and when the President openly admits that imprisoning them and forcibly separating the children was to punish and discourage the completely legal asylum seekers. That’s the difference.

> the children at a facility in Clint, Texas, were sleeping on concrete floors and being denied soap and toothpaste. They described “children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears … caring for infants they’ve just met.” A visiting doctor called the detention centers “torture facilities.” At least seven children have died in U.S. custody in the past year, compared with none in the 10 years prior. More than 11,000* children are now being held by the U.S. government on any given day.

> Chris Rickerd, a policy counsel at the ACLU. “But this all-encompassing skepticism of asylum seekers fleeing violence—justifying cruel treatment, justifying changes in the law, and justifying overcrowding to the point of unsafe and deadly conditions—[is] of a scale and a type that we haven’t seen before.”

> The Trump administration has previously deliberately inflicted suffering on children to deter illegal immigration, with its use of family separation. It has altered immigration policy and the asylum process so as to force the authorities to hold migrants, whether they have properly sought asylum at a port of entry or crossed illegally [1]

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/border-fac...

Post reply on HN