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Owlspiracy posted:ok, provide some specific differences in their treatment of the uyghur people and the nazis treatment of jews prior to '41, particularly jews that lived in germany and austria by the way the actual distinction here is less of a policy of assimilation and more one of exclusion, btw, but you don't seem to know the actual details of nazi policies prior to extermination
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Apr 6, 2021 18:12
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Mr Luxury Yacht posted:I mean you could compare it to the treatment of North American indigenous people (residential schools, etc...) which is still pretty genocidey. As a descendent of people who were forced into indigenous schools it was defiantly geocide.
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Apr 6, 2021 18:12
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Owlspiracy posted:Do you know the distinction between a "concentration camp" and a "death camp"? Yeah, the Nazis were underway with a lot of their programs to destroy the jews, roma, and their other designated undesirables since the 30s, and they had been rounding up polish people since the invasion in 1939, but the death camps themselves only started in 1942. That's way late in the process, so extremely obviously if you're looking at comparisons to Nazi Germany as some kind of barometer for if there's a genocide, the existence of dedicated death camps is way too late in the process and after way too many people have died. Dante80 posted:Come on guys, CCPs ideological stance towards Uyghurs is not akin to historic Nazi ideological stance towards Jews. They don't have the elaborate bullshit race science front so far as I know, but the general principle is similar enough. I guess it has more similarities do other countries' modern anti-muslim sentiment or even to the Turkish genocide of Armenians that they tried to put up some kind of veneer of "self defense" on the grounds that the Armenians were going to rebel. The reason people keep on going to the Nazis specifically isn't just that it's the most well-known and grandest scale genocide that's ever been, it's because that was the one specifically that people swore "never again" in reference to, so it makes sense why the comparison keeps coming up when an ethnic group is being suppressed with the apparent overall goal of eliminating the ethnic group as a political/social/genetic/religious entity.
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Apr 6, 2021 18:16
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China, by it's own words, has been trying to fight off Islamic terrorists in East Turkistan since at least 2003. Their self-published actions in 'combating terror' have all the hallmark of pre-death camp German treatment of Jews. Just replace terrorist with Uyghur and suddenly there's a very stark comparison. e: I want to note that America's own statements and actions against 'Islamic terror' hosed up the world to an extreme degree.
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Apr 6, 2021 18:17
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Owlspiracy posted:ok, provide some specific differences in their treatment of the uyghur people and the nazis treatment of jews prior to '41, particularly jews that lived in germany and austria Nazi German policy towards the Jews didn't really switch over to all-out extermination before 41/42, which is probably what you're thinking of here, before the war the aim was mostly to strip German and Austrian Jews of civil rights to force them to emigrate, concentration camps were mostly for political opponents and the organized killing that was beginning in its infancy was mostly of the mentally and physically handicapped. What's going on now is closer to the forced assimilation of native populations in many countries in the 19th and 20th century and the Soviets' pursuit of turning Central Asian people, like the Kazakhs, into "modern nationalities", though without massive loss of life through famine. The end result of all of these was cultural genocide and along the way to that resettlement, colonization and land seizure and horrific abuses. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Apr 6, 2021 |
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Apr 6, 2021 18:18
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Owlspiracy posted:by the way the actual distinction here is less of a policy of assimilation and more one of exclusion, btw, but you don't seem to know the actual details of nazi policies prior to extermination Had edited my previous post with the answer, since the page changed you might have missed it. Dante80 posted:Most of this doesn't exist in this circumstance.
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Apr 6, 2021 18:19
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Again, the barometer for genocide is not "how many people did they or will they kill." It's whether in 20, 50, or 100 years anyone in Xinjiang still speaks the Uyghur language or practices their cultural traditions. And is there anyone who can say that this isn't a possible or even likely outcome of China's current actions?
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Apr 6, 2021 18:24
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It would be extremely weird for someone to posit that what is happening right now is not at least a methodical, state enacted cultural genocide of the Uyghur people. The whole idea is to completely pacify and assimilate them into the Han ethos. At least that is what I'm getting so far.
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Apr 6, 2021 18:26
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Dante80 posted:Here is a more interesting question for the thread imo. They should be, but they almost certainly won't be in any meaningful way, for many of the same reasons that the US is pretty much never pressured by the international community in a meaningful way.
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Apr 6, 2021 19:17
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Again, the barometer for genocide is not "how many people did they or will they kill." It's whether in 20, 50, or 100 years anyone in Xinjiang still speaks the Uyghur language or practices their cultural traditions. And is there anyone who can say that this isn't a possible or even likely outcome of China's current actions? yeah the UN is pretty clear that genocide includes not only death but the destruction of culture, forced birth control and sterilization, and removal of kids from families. quote:Article II i suspect the chinese government is aware of the international definition, given that they have signed and ratified the Convention
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Apr 6, 2021 19:36
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CCP officers based in in Australia (embassy staff etc) have been very publicly harassing Xiuzhong Xu for her reporting on Xinjiang, probably because it's a lot harder to pretend she's making it all up due to racism when she's Chinese herself. https://www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs-sale
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Apr 6, 2021 20:08
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It should be pointed out that China has many minority groups that are very well treated, allowed to practice their indigenous religions and teach indigenous languages in schools. These are seen as the "good ones" while Uyghurs and to a lesser extent Tibetans are seen as the "bad ones" specifically because they have separatist movements. China sees anyone that advocates independence as a terrorist. The camps, cultural assimilation, oppression and abuse are all a means of ensuring territorial integrity, that is, preserving the Chinese empire. These are colonized peoples (go read the new Qing historians) and what's happening in Xinjiang specifically is a tragedy of astonishing scale. It's very sad to see a lot of people try to play it down. Anybody trying to play down abuses or solely criticize the US instead of criticizing China on this particular issue is essentially supporting imperialist ideology.
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Apr 6, 2021 23:45
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E: you know what, this is just a white noise post sorry. But jesus gently caress
America Inc. fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Apr 7, 2021 |
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Apr 7, 2021 00:18
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Rabelais D posted:It should be pointed out that China has many minority groups that are very well treated, allowed to practice their indigenous religions and teach indigenous languages in schools. These are seen as the "good ones" while Uyghurs and to a lesser extent Tibetans are seen as the "bad ones" specifically because they have separatist movements. China sees anyone that advocates independence as a terrorist. The camps, cultural assimilation, oppression and abuse are all a means of ensuring territorial integrity, that is, preserving the Chinese empire. IIRC these supposedly "well treated" minorities don't really get to practice a separate cultural and ethnic identity, I think I've heard some describe it as "being allowed to dance in colourful clothes" but not much else?
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Apr 7, 2021 00:57
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Nah, I work with indigenous ritual practitioners in Yunnan and Sichuan. They can perform rituals (and even blood sacrifice of pigs and chickens etc), and native languages/scripts are taught in schools and universities in the region (although in the school system such lessons are primarily extra-curricular). There's also a lot of minority language textbooks and literary works published in minority languages and scripts. Traditional scripts are undergoing something of a resurgence thanks to a lot of money (publishing grants, cultural projects) allocated by the state. While you could argue that native cultures have been commodified and tailored towards the tourist industry that's not really the whole picture. There are the expected tensions between the traditional and the modern, between the Han and the non-Han, but the cultural life of the ethnic minorities viewed as "unproblematic" is a lot deeper and more nuanced than the "song and dance" variety you see in the annual spring festival gala etc.
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Apr 7, 2021 01:25
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karthun posted:As a descendent of people who were forced into indigenous schools it was defiantly geocide. This. Not genocide-ey, straightforward all-the-way genocide. Also, I would point out that the Indigenous Schools was basically the fallback option over the impracticality of genocide by more direct means — massacre, headhunting bounty, and displacement via murder — once sufficient numbers of displaced first nations had been penned and made wards of the state. The only thing that prevented boosterism from jamming millions upon millions of native americans into concentration camps that slowly turn to death camps along the consistent patterns of acceleration ... was a matter of geographical and scale complication.
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Apr 7, 2021 01:28
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just in case it needs to be clarified, genocide denial is a bannable offense in dnd "actually it's not an extermination program, it's just cultural genocide in reeducation camps" is not, strictly speaking, forbidden, and indeed is factually correct... but be very careful, because it's a tiny hop from there to "it's not genocide" whereupon i will incinerate you on a brighter note i really appreciate the input from people with actual familiarity with china Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Apr 7, 2021 |
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Apr 7, 2021 01:51
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GreyjoyBastard posted:just in case it needs to be clarified, genocide denial is a bannable offense in dnd Aren't you a water type though? Drown them for the Drowned God on the Seastone Chair 
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Apr 7, 2021 02:12
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Raenir Salazar posted:Aren't you a water type though? but then they might return from the drowning to post again nah, i'm being practical here
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Apr 7, 2021 02:17
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Raenir Salazar posted:IIRC these supposedly "well treated" minorities don't really get to practice a separate cultural and ethnic identity, I think I've heard some describe it as "being allowed to dance in colourful clothes" but not much else? no, this isn’t really true. ethnic minorities in china are allowed to speak their own languages, many of the schools teach primarily in these languages, even han kids growing up in these areas are either instructed in said languages or are required to take classes in them. local cultural practices and religions are allowed and many of them get some autonomy in their own local governments, kind of like a tribal reservation in america in a way the biggest danger most of these groups face is probably the same as it is generally around the world: there’s a lot more money to be made if you learn mandarin and move to a big city and that type of economic pressure will erode cultural diversity over time fart simpson fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Apr 7, 2021 |
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Apr 7, 2021 02:43
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fart simpson posted:no, this isn’t really true. ethnic minorities in china are allowed to speak their own languages, many of the schools teach primarily in these languages, even han kids growing up in these areas are either instructed in said languages or are required to take classes in them. local cultural practices and religions are allowed and many of them get some autonomy in their own local governments, kind of like a tribal reservation in america in a way There's a sign this may be changing, though. In Inner Mongolia last year, the government announced that the language of instruction in schools would be Mandarin instead of Mongol. There was also a change in policy a few years back with the Kaifeng Jews. For those who don't know, the city of Kaifeng in Henan has/had a small Jewish population, probably descended from merchants on the Silk Road. They've pretty much all assimilated now and don't consider themselves Jewish...there are probably about 400 left who identify themselves as Jews. Back in 2016, though, the government stepped up an "anti-foreign" and "anti-unapproved religion campaign", and the government's policy, which before then had been neutral or slightly positive turned negative. Jewish groups and researchers from outside China were kicked out, a community center was shut down, and the government destroyed a memorial stone for the old synagogue and a well that was the only surviving remnant of it, and a lot of Kaifeng Jews figured they were placed under security surveilance.
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Apr 7, 2021 03:09
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I would say "many of the schools teach primarily in these languages" is a simplification (and I think it only happens in Tibetn and Mongolian regions, but I'm not an expert on this, and even then only a minority of schools have native language instruction at the core of their curriculum); it does seem, as Epicurius points out, that the trend is definitely toward teaching primarily in mandarin but allowing native language classes as supplementary form of instruction. The picture is different depending on what region of China you are talking about. The rituals in southwest China I was talking about are preserved by the state tacitly as cultural performances (even though the participants are usually devout practitioners) and if you are writing a book about it you generally need to mention that it's all imaginary nonsense like a good Marxist in the preface.
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Apr 7, 2021 03:54
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Dante80 posted:Here is a more interesting question for the thread imo. I think they should be pressured, especially by the EU as member states are growing more economically dependent on China by the year. If we look at the track record of other countries with spotty trends on rule of law, democracy and human rights abuses, like say Hungary, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and India the signs are very clear. You have to condition continued or increased relationships on acceptance and adherence to human rights. Every time the international community gives a state a free pass (lol the US) to do whatever because they're of the economic or security importance that has only led to one thing. A continued and increased policy of human rights abuses. You can't bargain when you're not willing to risk your relationship. After the last decades I don't think anyone still doubts how utterly self-defeating military interventions or state destabilization are when it comes to authoritarian states who aren't directing their abuses outwards. Sanctions aren't by any means a silver-bullet but viewed from that perspective they are the best tool we got. So cut favorable trade agreements, stop businesses from making deals, stop investment deals, annul debt agreements, sanction political leaders and steadily dial back all relationships. Continued or expanded relations will only reveal that you're not willing to risk what you have, rendering you unable to bargain. Isolate and punish with a constant reminder that the option of returning to normal relations are completely in their hand. Complete isolation never works, but bargaining can accomplish a lot.
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Apr 7, 2021 06:17
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This video goes over a few of the pitfalls of language preservation in China, even such a large and historically influential group like the Manchu has lost their language. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHr1f5V2hzA
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Apr 7, 2021 08:00
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imo the gap between 'languages are dying out in china' and 'minority groups are facing systematic genocides' is pretty big languages and cultures are dying at a massive rate everywhere (scottish gaelic being one obvious example) without people seriously positing globalisation as a genocidal force even though it arguably is
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Apr 7, 2021 09:36
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V. Illych L. posted:languages and cultures are dying at a massive rate everywhere (scottish gaelic being one obvious example) without people seriously positing globalisation as a genocidal force even though it arguably is Pretty sure people have been posting that for a long time now
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Apr 7, 2021 11:31
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ok, let me rephrase: the consequence of having that sort of attitude to genocide is that we're in the middle of a whole swathe of ongoing genocides which seem to be nowhere on the agenda. the specific situation wrt the uighurs seems to warrant interest independently of whether it formally qualifies as a genocide by such criteria, as well as the PRC's general policy towards national minorities which, though possibly also in this sense genocidal nonetheless seems meaningfully distinct from what's going on in xinjiang
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Apr 7, 2021 11:36
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V. Illych L. posted:ok, let me rephrase: the consequence of having that sort of attitude to genocide is that we're in the middle of a whole swathe of ongoing genocides which seem to be nowhere on the agenda. the specific situation wrt the uighurs seems to warrant interest independently of whether it formally qualifies as a genocide by such criteria, as well as the PRC's general policy towards national minorities which, though possibly also in this sense genocidal nonetheless seems meaningfully distinct from what's going on in xinjiang I mean, sure, but this is the China thread. China-based atrocities are inevitably going to draw more discussion here than the manifold atrocities of globalisation beyond China's borders.
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Apr 7, 2021 12:12
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Xinjiang reveals former official's crimes of separatism, terrorismquote:URUMQI, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Court authorities of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have revealed crimes committed by Shirzat Bawudun, a former government official who had conspired with a terrorist organization and carried out separatist activities under cover of his identity as an official. Illegal religious activities at a wedding. Another article posted earlier about how the director of education in Xinjiang managed to indoctrinate schoolkids for 13 years: quote:URUMQI, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Authorities in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Tuesday revealed that they had busted a separatist criminal group in the educational sector. Those crafty minorities using official schoolbooks against the state! and for 13 years. Shame on them. Shame!
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Apr 7, 2021 13:47
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Bensa posted:This video goes over a few of the pitfalls of language preservation in China, even such a large and historically influential group like the Manchu has lost their language. The Manchus lost their language while they were ruling China
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Apr 7, 2021 13:57
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V. Illych L. posted:imo the gap between 'languages are dying out in china' and 'minority groups are facing systematic genocides' is pretty big No, genocide requires intent. Just because languages and cultures are being lost as a result of globalization does not mean globalization is a "genocidal force." If globalization was forcing Scots into  re-education centers and strongly discouraging or even preventing them from speaking Gaelic, that'd be a different story.
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Apr 7, 2021 14:52
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Bensa posted:This video goes over a few of the pitfalls of language preservation in China, even such a large and historically influential group like the Manchu has lost their language. First comment on the next video after that: quote:And the indigenous peoples of the English speaking Anglo Saxon colonies ( you know who they are) have had their culture either destroyed or completely assimilated. LMBO
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Apr 7, 2021 14:55
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mom! dad! stop fighting!!!!!!!!! what's most important isn't the distinction between whether they're trying to erase a culture or just trying erase any separatist thought through overbearing surveillance, policing, and incarceration what's most important is whether america's arms industry lobbyists can use it to get the liberals in our government to hand them a few more trillions of dollars for ships and lasers and poo poo "China strong now" ain't it "China Hitler now" yeah, that's the stuff ------- Maybe the US Congress shouldn't hand millions of dollars to literal seditionist separatist groups, though, if we're going to base diplomacy on, "the people in west China aren't actually trying to secede from China; the bad CCP is Han supremacist!" https://www.ned.org/uyghur-human-rights-policy-act-builds-on-work-of-ned-grantees/ As someone who only has power over my own elected representatives, I can only think of this in terms of what I can do. I don't want a nuclear war, more foreigners killed by US bombs, or to spend another 50 years in a paranoid cold war hellstate bent on impoverishing its people to build more weapons, so I want my dumb government to not try to start rebellions in other countries. I also don't want my fellow citizens and our representatives to be led by our humanity and empathy into that future. (I also don't want my east Asian-looking friends beaten up on the street.) If there are American businesses in the business of mass incarceration and oppression in China, liquidate them. (Same goes for ones in the business of incarceration and oppression in the USA, btw.) Which is to say, if you're hopping mad and ready to drop bombs about this and not the genocides our allies are doing, think about why that might be.
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Apr 7, 2021 15:14
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Thorn Wishes Talon posted:No, genocide requires intent. Just because languages and cultures are being lost as a result of globalization does not mean globalization is a "genocidal force." does it? how does one divine unstated intent from national policy? surely if a policy has something as a predictable consequence this is inseparable from intent in this context? note that what i'm driving at here isn't xinjiang, but the PRC attitude towards national minorities in general. the policies and incentives in place may very well be strongly han-centric, but that dynamic seems to be around a lot of places and doesn't seem to be what people are upset about wrt xinjiang - as noted, local language education is at least made realistically available with adequate infrastructure for teaching and using it, and there are (exoticised and likely inadequate, but still) measures in place with the stated purpose of preserving regional customs and identities. what i'm getting at here is that if this policy constitutes genocidal activity, then what people are upset about re: xinjiang isn't so much the idea of genocide in itself since that is largely uncontroversial(!) in most other contexts, and so the debate as to whether chinese policy in xinjiang formally qualifies becomes a lot less interesting i tend to think that means that chinese minority policy *as applied on its baseline level in other contexts than e.g. xinjiang* cannot be called genocidal, since a consistent application of that standard seems to rob the term of applicability
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Apr 7, 2021 15:19
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Thorn Wishes Talon posted:No, genocide requires intent. Just because languages and cultures are being lost as a result of globalization does not mean globalization is a "genocidal force." You act like this wasn't a thing that happened in Scotland post invasion of 1297.
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Apr 7, 2021 15:24
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I dunno why you’d type up hundreds of words refuting a claim nobody has made - that China is committing genocide outside of a specific area, or that assimilationist policies are always genocidal - while adding caveats that this doesn’t apply to one area where genocide is happening. I mean, no poo poo? The discussion about other minority groups arose because people were arguing that of course it can’t be genocide because China loves minority groups! And it turns out the only love minority groups as long as they never agitate for sovereignty and by “love” you mean “still pressure them to assimilate”. If you want to quibble about the level of forced assimilation that amounts to genocide go for it, I firmly believe that when people are being arrested and detained based on their ethnicity or belief system that we are way past any quibbling.
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Apr 7, 2021 15:44
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Greg12 posted:mom! dad! stop fighting!!!!!!!!! Who said they’re ready to drop bombs? Last I checked nobody here works for the US state department and conversations about the terrible things China is doing have taken place in this thread (and similar threads) for over a decade at this point. Sometimes things exist independent of the United States.
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Apr 7, 2021 15:46
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Thorn Wishes Talon posted:No, genocide requires intent. Just because languages and cultures are being lost as a result of globalization does not mean globalization is a "genocidal force." lol the only people who speak Scottish Gaelic are like five guys sitting on an island in the Hebrides yes I'm kidding but it's not far off If we're using genocide in the broad sense of 'any concerted effort to marginalise or undermine a particular culture/enforce the idea that one dominant culture is somehow more legitimate than another and should take precedence' than almost every single modern country has engaged in this during its history. The whole idea of a unified nation-state kinda relies on it, because some cultural groups are always going to be more or less hostile to the idea of integration. The Scottish example here is I suppose actually instructive, as traditional highland culture was absolutely crushed between the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellions and the Clearances, as people were turfed off their lands to make way for acres and acres of hunting land for the sport of the Anglo/Lowland elites. After moving to the cities highlanders were generally treated like garbage and were also prohibited from speaking Gaelic and wearing traditional dress etc, though - cynically - the Celtic revival resurrected a lot of this as a hollowed out, romanticised parody of what it used to be, and was exploited ruthlessly to promote tourism. That's clearly a genocide by the broad definition, and if you go over to Ireland it's even more stark. I don't think I could name a single county where this hasn't happened in one form or another. I'm reminded of the Zizek quote where he talks about Israel, and points out that the stuff they are doing in Palestine is no different to the violence enacted in the process of state-creation wherever you go, only for most of us it's far enough in the past that we don't even think about it. They're just doing it right now, and we can see what it actually entails. None of that is meant to legitimise the process of course, it's horrible all round. But it's an interesting way of looking at it. I do think we need to make a firm conceptual distinction between this kind of process however and the targeted, physical eradication of thousands of people for its own sake that we saw in the Holocaust. I suppose the question here is with the idea of racialisation. Jews could do whatever the hell they wanted, Nazis would still want them dead no matter how hard they tried to integrate. In this sense it is similar to black people in the transatlantic slave trade. Their position and inferiority is built into the ideology at an inherent biological level. I'm not quite sure the same can be said of highlanders (for example), who if they learned English and rejected their old culture would mostly be allowed to peacefully integrate.* I suppose it's about understanding the difference between active and passive genocide, perhaps? Where does the average Uyghur sit on this spectrum? I suppose the tl:dr is perhaps we should think about this in the way we think about killing an individual. There are degrees of murder. None are good, but some are markedly worse. Cold-blooded serial killing is not the same thing as someone dying in a fistfight. We should do our very best to prevent either of them happening, but a blanket catch-all definition is quite clearly not sufficient to do the subject justice. *Before anyone yells, NEITHER OF THESE ARE GOOD THINGS, but they are clearly very different things.
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Apr 7, 2021 15:47
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Scotland is a bad example because it's led by an independence party in a devolved government that will likely (hopefully!) see full independence within the next decade, whereas anyone who so much as whispers the word "independence" in Xinjiang immediately gets thrown in a horrible place and tortured. EDIT and evidence seems to show that you don't even need to talk about independence to get thrown into a camp, you just have to pray wrong or have a family member who doesn't live in the country or something
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Apr 7, 2021 15:48
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I think when it reaches the point of physically detaining you to force you to assimilate while removing your children form your care and placing them elsewhere yea were in genocide territory. And China is not denying those things are happening.
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Apr 7, 2021 15:49
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