SlothfulCobra posted:

Honestly I haven't actually seen many articles going into the details of how the uighurs have been radicalizing, or what any of their stated causes may be, so I really don't know much on that front. If anyone has some details they want to explain about that, I'd be willing to listen.

Although obviously you can't suppress and punish the entire population, ethnicity, and religion for the crimes of individuals. That's just insane and cruel. I am less inclined to sympathize with China's side of the grievance from the absurdity of their response even if I'd be interested to hear it. (and possibly there's a thing going on where this is an expression of the state pushing further for Han Nationalism)

There are a lot of countries that have dealt with terrorism and hostile political movements without doing a genocide.

Mr Hootington posted:

Fake edit: here is a paper I haven't had to read past the abstract in what it says. I have it bookmarked.
https://brill.com/view/journals/ic/21/4/article-p415_415.xml?language=en

Mr Hootington posted:

Did the mass incarceration and re-education cause the radicalization or was the policy in response to the radicalization and terrorist attacks at home and abroad caused by China born Uyghurs?

Why are you bringing up the American concentration camps to deflect? I asked a question about China and Chinese policies.

Again I ask what was to be done about radiclization of a populatipn? Do you allow it to fester? Do you crackdown? Targeted arrests? Does that stop the spread of the ideas and ideology that is causing the radicalization?

Somaen posted:

What the gently caress is this? Jesus christ

Imagine if Europe was opening rape and beatings camps for Muslims and this was posted in defence

Alchenar posted:

It's literally the exact justification of Apartheid resurrected after 30 years.

Alchenar posted:

I read the paper quickly, in a nutshell the solution is linked to the cause of the radicalisation, ie China should decolonise and withdraw from Xinjiang, or at a minimum grant it autonomy in recognition of the fact that the people living there don't want to be ruled by the CCP (or at least that was true before Uyghur birth rates were suppressed and Han Chinese immigration encouraged to the point where the population ratio tipped).

Somaen posted:

What gets me is there will never be enough first hand account evidence of wrongdoing to wake up any empathy for innocent people to consider that my sports team authoritarian state might be evil. They can just release a statement saying "actually there is no genocide. And it's the US that's bad and doing genocides" and that's what you'll see repeated constantly by useful idiots

quote:

XINJIANG, China (AP) — The razor wire that once ringed public buildings in China’s far northwestern Xinjiang region is nearly all gone.

Gone, too, are the middle school uniforms in military camouflage and the armored personnel carriers rumbling around the homeland of the Uyghurs. Gone are many of the surveillance cameras that once glared down like birds from overhead poles, and the eerie eternal wail of sirens in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar.

Uyghur teenage boys, once a rare sight, now flirt with girls over pounding dance music at rollerblading rinks. One cab driver blasted Shakira as she raced through the streets.

Four years after Beijing launched a brutal crackdown that swept up to a million or more Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities into detention camps and prisons, its control of Xinjiang has entered a new era. Chinese authorities have scaled back many of the most draconian and visible aspects of the region’s high-tech police state. The panic that gripped the region a few years ago has subsided considerably, and a sense of normality is creeping back in.

But there is no doubt about who rules, and evidence of the terror of the last four years is everywhere.

It’s seen in Xinjiang’s cities, where many historic centers have been bulldozed and the Islamic call to prayer no longer rings out. It’s seen in Kashgar, where one mosque was converted into a café, and a section of another has been turned into a tourist toilet. It’s seen deep in the countryside, where Han Chinese officials run villages.

And it’s seen in the fear that was ever-present, just below the surface, on two rare trips to Xinjiang I made for The Associated Press, one on a state-guided tour for the foreign press.

A bike seller’s eyes widened in alarm when he learned I was a foreigner. He picked up his phone and began dialing the police.

A convenience store cashier chatted idly about declining sales – then was visited by the shadowy men tailing us. When we dropped by again, she didn’t say a word, instead making a zipping motion across her mouth, pushing past us and running out of the store.

At one point, I was tailed by a convoy of a dozen cars, an eerie procession through the silent streets of Aksu at 4 in the morning. Anytime I tried to chat with someone, the minders would draw in close, straining to hear every word.

It’s hard to know why Chinese authorities have shifted to subtler methods of controlling the region. It may be that searing criticism from the West, along with punishing political and commercial sanctions, have pushed authorities to lighten up. Or it may simply be that China judges it has come far enough in its goal of subduing the Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities to relax its grip.

Uyghur activists abroad accuse the Chinese government of genocide, pointing to plunging birthrates and the mass detentions. The authorities say their goal is not to eliminate Uyghurs but to integrate them, and that harsh measures are necessary to curb extremism.

Regardless of intent, one thing is clear: Many of the practices that made the Uyghur culture a living thing – raucous gatherings, strict Islamic habits, heated debate – have been restricted or banned. In their place, the authorities have crafted a sterilized version, one ripe for commercialization.

Xinjiang officials took us on a tour to the Grand Bazaar in the center of Urumqi, which has been rebuilt for tourists, like many other cities in Xinjiang. Here, there are giant plastic bearded Uyghur men and a giant plastic Uyghur instrument. A nearby museum for traditional naan bread sells tiny plastic naan keychains, Uyghur hats and fridge magnets. Crowds of Han Chinese snap selfies.

James Leibold, a prominent scholar of Xinjiang ethnic policy, calls it the “museumification” of Uyghur culture. Chinese officials call it progress.

China has long struggled to integrate the Uyghurs, a historically Muslim group of 13 million people with close linguistic, ethnic and cultural ties to Turkey. Since the Communist Party took control of Xinjiang in 1949, Beijing’s leaders have debated whether stricter or softer measures are more effective in absorbing the vast territory, half the size of India.

For decades, policy in Xinjiang swung back and forth. Even as the state granted special benefits to minorities, such as hiring quotas and extra points on entrance exams, glass ceilings, racism, and restrictions on religion alienated and angered many Uyghurs.

The harder the government tried to control the Uyghurs, the more stubbornly many clung to their identity. A few resorted to violence, carrying out bombings and knifings against a state they believed would never accord them genuine respect. Hundreds of innocent civilians, both Han Chinese and Uyghur, perished in increasingly deadly attacks.

The debate ended soon after President Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2012. The state chose forced assimilation, detaining Uyghurs and other minorities indiscriminately by the thousands and branding them as suspected “terrorists.”

Today, many checkpoints and police stations are gone and the bombings have stopped, but the racial divide remains clear.

Uyghurs live trapped in an invisible system that restricts their every move. It’s near impossible for them to get passports, and on planes to and from Xinjiang, most passengers are from China’s Han Chinese majority.

Uyghurs who live outside Xinjiang must register with local police and report to an officer on a regular basis, their moves tracked and monitored. Many Uyghurs living in Xinjiang aren’t allowed to leave the region.

Information on Xinjiang within China is heavily censored, and state media now promotes the region as a safe, exotic tourist destination. As a result, Han Chinese outside Xinjiang remain largely unaware of the restrictions that Uyghurs face, one of a number of reasons why many in China are supportive of Beijing’s crackdown.

Within Xinjiang, Han Chinese and Uyghurs live side by side, an unspoken but palpable gulf between them. In the suburbs of Kashgar, a Han woman at a tailor shop tells my colleague that most Uyghurs weren’t allowed to go far from their homes.

“Isn’t that so? You can’t leave this shop?” the woman said to a Uyghur seamstress.

Down the street from the tailor shop, I spot Lunar New Year banners with slogans in Chinese characters like “The Chinese Communist Party is good” plastered on every storefront. An elderly Han Chinese shopkeeper tells me that local officials printed the banners by the hundreds, handed them out and ordered them put up, although Uyghurs traditionally celebrate Islamic holidays rather than the Lunar New Year.

She approved of the strict measures. Xinjiang was much safer now, she said, than when she had first moved there with her son, a soldier with the Bingtuan, Xinjiang’s paramilitary corps.

The Uyghurs “don’t dare do anything around here anymore,” she told me.

City centers now bustle with life again, with Uyghur and Han children screeching as they chase each other across streets. Some Uyghurs even approach me and ask for my contact — something that never happened on previous visits.

But in rural villages and quiet suburbs, many houses sit empty and padlocked. In one Kashgar neighborhood, the words “Empty House” is spray-painted on every third or fourth residence. In a village an hour’s drive away, I spot dozens of “Empty House” notices on a half-hour walk, red lettering on yellow slips fluttering in the wind on door upon door.

Control is also tighter deep in the countryside, away from the bazaars that the government is eager for visitors to see.

In one village we stop in, an elderly Uyghur man in a square skullcap answers just one question – “We don’t have the coronavirus here, everything is good” – before a local Han Chinese cadre demands to know what we are doing.

He tells the villagers in Uyghur, “If he asks you anything, just say you don’t know anything.”

Behind him, a drunk Uyghur man was yelling. Alcohol is forbidden for practicing Muslims, especially in the holy month of Ramadan.

“I’ve been drinking alcohol, I’m a little drunk, but that’s no problem. We can drink as we want now!” he shouted. “We can do what we want! Things are great now!”

At a nearby store, I notice liquor bottles lining the shelves. In another town, my colleague and I encounter a drunk Uyghur man, passed out by a trash bin in broad daylight. Though many Uyghurs in big cities like Urumqi have long indulged in drinking, such sights were once unimaginable in the pious rural areas of southern Xinjiang.

On a government sponsored tour, officials took us to meet Mamatjan Ahat, a truck driver, who declared he was back to drinking and smoking because he had recanted religion and extremism after a stint at one of Xinjiang’s infamous “training centers”.

“It made me more open-minded,” Ahat told reporters, as officials listened in.

Xinjiang officials say they aren’t forcing atheism on the Uyghurs, but rather defending freedom of belief against creeping extremism. “Not all Uyghurs are Muslim,” is a common refrain.

Controls on religious activity have slackened, but remain tightly bound by the state. For example, the authorities have allowed some mosques to reopen, though hours are strictly limited. Small groups of elderly worshippers trickle in and out.

Xinjiang’s unique brand of state-controlled Islam is most on display at the Xinjiang Islamic Institute, a government school for imams.

Here, young Uyghur men chant verses from the Quran and pray five times a day. They get scholarships and opportunities to study in Egypt, officials say as they walk us around. Tens of thousands have graduated, and recently they’ve opened a new campus – albeit one with a police station installed at the entrance.

“Religious freedom is enshrined in China’s constitution,” said a student, Omar Adilabdulla, as officials watch him speak. “It’s totally free.”

As he speaks, I crack open a textbook on another student’s desk. A good Chinese Muslim has to learn Mandarin, it says, China’s main language.

“Arabic is not the only language that compiles Allah’s classics,” the lesson said. “To learn Chinese is our responsibility and obligation, because we are all Chinese.”

As I flip through the book, I spot other lessons.

“We must be grateful to the Party and the government for creating peace,” reads one chapter.

“We must strive to build a socialist Xinjiang with Chinese characteristics,” says another. “Amen!”

Uyghur is still spoken everywhere, but its use in public spaces is slowly fading. In some cities, entire blocks, freshly constructed, have signs only in Chinese, not Uyghur.

In bookstores, Uyghur language tomes are relegated to sections labeled “ethnic minority language books”. The government boasts that nearly a thousand Uyghur titles are published a year, but none are by Perhat Tursun, a lyrical modernist author, or Yalqun Rozi, a textbook editor and firebrand commentator. They, like most prominent Uyghur intellectuals, have been imprisoned.

On the shelves instead: Xi Jinping thought, biographies of Mao, lectures on socialist values, and Mandarin-Uyghur dictionaries.

Many Uyghurs still struggle with Mandarin, from young men to elderly grandmothers. In recent years, the government has made Mandarin the mandatory standard in schools.

On the state tour, a headmaster tells us that the Uyghur language continues to be protected, pointing to their minority language classes. But all other classes are in Chinese, and a sign at one school urges students to “Speak Mandarin, use standard writing.”

The most heavily criticized aspect of Xinjiang’s crackdown has been its so-called “training centers”, which leaked documents show are actually extrajudicial indoctrination camps.

After global outcry, Chinese officials declared the camps shuttered in 2019. Many indeed appear to be closed.

On the state-led tour in April, they took us to what they said was once a “training center”, now a regular vocational school in Peyzawat County. A mere fence marks the campus boundaries — a stark contrast from the barbed wire, high watchtowers and police at the entrance we saw three years ago. On our own, we see at least three other sites which once appeared to be camps and are now apartments or office complexes.

But in their place, permanent detention facilities have been built, in an apparent move from makeshift camps to a long-lasting system of mass incarceration. We encountered one massive facility driving along a country road, its walls rising from the fields, men visible in high guard towers. At a second, we were blocked by two men wearing epidemic-prevention gear. A third ranks among the largest detention facilities on earth. Many are tucked away behind forests or dunes deep in the countryside, far from tourists and city centers.

In Urumqi, at an anti-terror exhibition in a vast, modernist complex near glass office towers and freshly-laid highways, the Chinese authorities have rewritten history. Though Xinjiang has cycled in and out of Chinese control, and was independent as recently as the 1700s and also briefly in the last century, the territory’s past is casually dismissed.

“Although there were some kingdoms and khanates in Xinjiang in the past, they were all local regimes within the territory of China,” one display says.

It’s written in English and Chinese. No Uyghur script is seen anywhere in the exhibit. Guns and bombs sit in glass cases, ones the exhibit says were confiscated from extremists.

A prim Uyghur woman in a Chinese traditional qipao suit presents a video depicting Beijing’s vision for Xinjiang’s future, where the sun sets over pagodas and a futuristic skyline. Many scenes look like they could be filmed anywhere in China.

“Our anti-terrorism and de-radicalization struggles have achieved remarkable results,” she says, in crisp Mandarin.

Officials dodge questions about how many Uyghurs were detained, though statistics showed an extraordinary spike in arrests before the government stopped releasing them in 2019. Instead, they tell us during the tour that they’ve engineered the perfect solution to terrorism, protecting Uyghur culture rather than destroying it.

One night, I was seated next to Dou Wangui, the Party Secretary of Aksu Prefecture, as well as Li Xuejun, the vice chairman of the Xinjiang People’s Congress. They are both Han Chinese, like most of Xinjiang’s powerful men.

Over grilled lamb and yogurt, we watched grinning Uyghurs dressed in traditional gowns dance and sing. Dou turns to me.

“See, we can’t have genocide here,” Dou said, gesturing to the performers. “We’re preserving their traditional culture.”

Herstory Begins Now posted:

you should post the ap piece you're referencing there

eSports Chaebol posted:

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-china-health-travel-7a6967f335f97ca868cc618ea84b98b9

The piece is still quite critical of China, not exactly apologism, but it is based on an actual journalist visiting Xinjiang

CaptainACAB posted:

I actually read them and they say that nowhere and.in fact one of the papers is entirely about the importance of evidence and verification. Your claims are completely contradicted by your own "evidence"

And you most certainly are a lib. Or worse, given your dedication to Langley's propaganda.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Mr Hootington posted:

What other countries have dealt with separatist or terroristic radical movements better? The only other response I've seen from other countries seems to be to kill the radicalized or to use the radicalized to kill others. If you can supply a different method from another country I would like to see it so I can read about it.

Mr Hootington posted:

So it calls for the balkanization of China interesting.

SlothfulCobra posted:

With modern day separatist movements, I don't think France or Spain have done anywhere near as much with Corsicans and Catalonians as China has to Uighurs.

Mirello posted:

I live in china, I''ve been to xinjiang. China has much more respect for it's minorities than america. its cultural autonomous regions are governed by minorities, even when han chinese are a majority (like in inner mongolia). going to these autonomous regions, I was immediately struck by how much of the minorities language you see everywhere, especially in publically owned places such as governmental buildings or public transit. within china, xinjiang is a huge tourist spot and uigher culture is celebrated. you could argue it's a bit kitchy or exploitative, but promoting a culture and people is an extremely odd thing to do for a government seemingly intent on "cultural genocide"

Android Blues posted:

Israel does the same thing with the Bedouin; driven from their home en masse in 1948, remanded to "concentration zones" subsequently, and ever since subjected to draconian legislation on how they're allowed to live and where they're allowed to build, the state still peppers the government townships with tourist experiences celebrating "traditional Bedouin culture" where Bedouin entertainers play music and dance and tell stories inside a big rustic tent. Or you can go on a camel trek with real Bedouin guides! This is funded by the government so that tourists can roll on by and say, ah, they're keeping the Bedouin culture alive, how nice.

Meanwhile their land has been stolen, the infrastructure on the government reservations is extremely poor with essentials like running water and refuse disposal remaining limited, and those Bedouin still trying to live in their traditional villages (some of which predate the state of Israel) are refused recognition by the government and routinely subject to legal persecution. The Bedouin townships have the highest infant mortality rate in all of Israel.

Dog-and-pony shows of traditional native culture are amongst the oldest colonial-imperialist tricks in the book. They're cheap, easy, colourful, and entirely compatible with grinding down on the actual people whose culture is supposedly being celebrated. This is not perfectly analogous to the Uighur situation - the ways in which the government is stamping down on them are somewhat different - but in many, many persecuted native cultures you will find their state persecutors funding entertainers to perform traditional dances, wear traditional costumes, sing traditional songs. It's always an intentional obfuscation.

Pharohman777 posted:

So what about the Uighurs who have spoken up about their experiences in Xinjiang? Are they cia crisis actors? And what precisely do you mean by 'intelligence-adjacent'?

Kavros posted:

So Peng Shuai was Disappeared, correct?

What's the standard timetable for her to reappear to be put in front of cameras to apologize for the bourgeoisie lib antiharmoniousness of suggesting a high ranking party member sexually abused her?

quote:

https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/the-story-of-the-february-28-coup-as-never-told-before-34187/amp

During 1980s ‘political Islam’ was named as the new enemy in Turkey when the Islamic Welfare Party won majority vote. This was worrisome for secularist circles. The reformist and revolutionary circles intervened via army generals- Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) forced the elected government to resign under the guise of protecting Kemalism and secularism. The quasi-military coup of 1997 banned the pro-Islamist Welfare and Virtue Parties and imposed severe restrictions on the headscarf, viewing it as a political Islamist symbol.

The hijab ban, one of the most controversial issues in Turkish politics, influenced the lives of millions of women, eliminating them from the public sphere including employment, education and the services sector. Hijabi women were discriminated against and if they were to participate in the public sphere, they were to remove their headscarves first.

Merve Kavakci, a hijabi politician, has been an icon for her stance on the headscarf controversy. Despite being elected as an Istanbul deputy for the Virtue Party (FP) in 1999, Kavakci was debarred from taking her oath in parliament as secularist opponents made a chaotic scene merely because she was wearing a headscarf.

Restrictions on headscarves at universities forced female students to make a choice: either to remove it or drop out of higher education. There were “convincing rooms” if we may say, very much like interrogation rooms, where female students would end up during their registrations to universities. University staff would talk to girls to persuade them to take off their headscarves. “You’re prettier this way” (Boyle Daha Guzelsin) was a common expression of solace the students would receive as they were being stripped of a part of their identities and needed to comfort.

quote:

A Chinese restaurant in Istanbul, owned by a Turkish citizen who employed a Uighur cook, was attacked on July 1 by a group protesting China’s suppression of Uighur Turks living in East Turkestan.

The group walked away from the scene after breaking the windows of the restaurant, Happy China, which was opened six months ago by Cihan Yavuz in the Boğazkesen Street of Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district.

Yavuz said the attack was baseless considering he was a Turk and the restaurant’s chef was an Uighur Turk. Six attackers told them to leave the neighborhood by shouting, “We do not want a Chinese restaurant here,” Yavuz added.

“We oppose the incidents in East Turkestan and the cruelty against Uighur Turks. We are Turks. Our chef is also a Uighur Turk. We are trying to make a living here,” Yavuz added.

He also said he would now close the restaurant, which he had opened with money he had saved working as a tour guide for 25 years.

“Our customers are Indonesian Muslims in general. We work with Far East Asian people. Only a tiny portion of our customers are made up of Chinese customers. We do not serve alcoholic drinks. Although we work with Muslims, an attack like this has occurred,” Yavuz said.

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

I like how this question went completely ignored because the genocide deniers have no response to it.

A big flaming stink posted:

whether or not it's actually is a genocide, as opposed to forced labor camps targeted on ethnic grounds

Alchenar posted:

I read the paper quickly, in a nutshell the solution is linked to the cause of the radicalisation, ie China should decolonise and withdraw from Xinjiang, or at a minimum grant it autonomy in recognition of the fact that the people living there don't want to be ruled by the CCP (or at least that was true before Uyghur birth rates were suppressed and Han Chinese immigration encouraged to the point where the population ratio tipped).

Orange Devil posted:

Is your position that other countries should do the same for any minority which does not want to be ruled by the government?

Orange Devil posted:

Is your position that other countries should do the same for any minority which does not want to be ruled by the government?

Cease to Hope posted:

A big flaming stink posted:

For what its worth, I would honestly like to have a discussion on the nature of the genocide in Xinjiang, up to and including whether or not it's actually is a genocide, as opposed to forced labor camps targeted on ethnic grounds etc, but the mods never got back to me when I asked whether or not this would be tolerated in dnd during the feedback thread, so such is life

Smeef posted:

Do you think any of the PRC activities in Xinjiang are intended to destroy part of the Uyghur people?

Do you think those activities are (at least) causing serious mental harm to Uyghur people?

Orange Devil posted:

Is your position that other countries should do the same for any minority which does not want to be ruled by the government?