Long piece in the New Yorker about “Xinjiang’s Prison State.”
(This seems to match the topic of the thread, but sure has nothing to do with the more recent posts, so maybe it’s off-topic?)
Unfortunately, the article is online interactive nonsense with graphics and press-space-to-see-the-next frame and oh are you trying to read the next paragraph? Sorry, we’ll take you on a sidebar journey that makes you forget what the heck you were reading. Looks like good content that’s rendered almost unreadable (to this old fogey at least) by the format.
If anyone can find a way to just download a darn PDF of the thing, please post. As far as I can tell it’s not part of a weekly issue, for which I can get PDFs relatively easily.
“The Chinese government’s alleged actions in Xinjiang have violated every single provision in the United Nations’ Genocide Convention, according to an independent report by more than 50 global experts in human rights, war crimes and international law.”
So China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman used a prison worker photo from the 20th century and claimed it to be a photo of African slaves, and then claimed that China doesn’t have a forced labor issue, because 40% of the work is mechanized…
If you watch Putin in press conferences, this is exactly the same tack that he takes when asked hard questions. “What about you? You did this. You did that. It wasn’t us doing that”. It’s the same response every time. And it works, because he’s often technically right. But the argument amounts to “you guys do/did bad stuff so it’s OK for us to do it too”.
I wish countries could just find a productive way to hold each other to account for actions happening today, instead of squabbling for the moral high ground … which none of them can legitimately claim.
While H&M’s physical stores in China remain, it is no longer possible to hail a taxi to the shops using an app and consumers can’t shop online. Instead China is championing local brands.
Sometimes people ask me why I criticize the CCP for what they are doing against Muslim minorities when I’m so critical of Islam. Well, I believe in freedom of speech. All ideas should be open to criticism. And I believe in freedom of religion. Because I understand going after one religious group opens up oppression of all other views.
All faiths and beliefs not consistent with party ideology are under attack.
There are numerous reports of the destruction of religious sites that one would think are more in synch with “Chinese” culture. The CCP has it’s own ideas, it seems.
Yes, but most Western countries have done their share to improve the situations in China throughout the 19th and 20th century. Now, China is reaping the benefits of global economy and trying to hijack it by ignoring international rules. If China can shirk off their human rights offences by saying “you used to do it too” then we are pretty doomed.
I would suggest that the West at least has credibility, even if they don’t have the moral high ground. They can tell China, “look, don’t do that: we know how it pans out. 200 years from now you’re going to having be conversations about ‘privilege’, and that’s not where you want to end up”.
This is completely ridiculous, as there have been innumerable redress movements across those nations, where people have demanded justice or other forms of acknowledgement for past wrongs.
The nations where this has “never” happened (as you put it) are not the ones expressing concern now. They are the ones who continue to shrug their shoulders and carry on.
“Hey! They did it too”
terrible comeback to crimes
against human rights
By the way, Chinese dynasties founded by Han Chinese once dominated Asia several times through out history. During which time they enslaved, and committed genocide towards people in Central Asia, Southern China, Western China, Manchuria and here on this very island.
You don’t hear Chinese people talking about apologizing to those peoples. You just hear them brag about how everyone chose to sinicize.