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Comment by Cthulhu_ | Hacker News Reader

And ATM in the US they're called detention camps for enemy combatants.

There are 40 enemy combatants held at Guantanamo. They have public legal representation and visitation rights.

China has removed all human rights for over ten million Uyghur Muslims. Including freedom of movement, freedom of religion, tight restrictions on behavior, tracking of all communication and movement, restrictions on who you can meet or talk to, tracking of all Urghar family members in China or abroad, non-existent freedoms around speech and expression, total lockdown on press investigation or discussion, forced re-education.

And then for at least a million Uyghur Muslims, they're outright physically and mentally torturing them in camps through forced programs to destroy their culture and beliefs.

Please enlighten me as to how that compares to what the US is currently doing with Guantanamo. I believe the detainment facility at Guantanamo should not exist and should have never existed. There's an important on-going debate there. There's no reasonable comparison to be had between Guantanamo and Xinjiang, whether in scale, intent, or context.

> There are 40 enemy combatants held at Guantanamo. They have public legal representation and visitation rights.

They are being held there without a trial. They have not been tried before being sent there.

> Please enlighten me as to how that compares to what the US is currently doing with Guantanamo.

Because the basic human rights of these prisoners are not respected. Some have been jailed there for more than 10 years without any form of trial or justice. If they committed a crime they belong to a US prison, not some shady oversea jail ran by US. And let's not get started on how they were brought there. US just delegated torture to people like Egyptian or Turkish authorities. Black sites are not a legend.

While it doesn't excuse what China is doing, let's not pretend that there is nothing wrong with the situation in Guantanamo.

Your "whataboutism" comment is an obvious troll and is unwelcome. No one is pretending there is nothing wrong with Guantanamo, so please stop throwing up strawmen to derail this topic.

Nitpick: I think "please enlighten me" cheapens your otherwise fine comment, makes it personally combative where the tone of the rest of it is more factual. Just erasing the first sentence of the last paragraph would I think improve its tone. Just my opinion.

Guantanamo is just one place we are detaining a group of Muslims. We’ve also got tens of millions at the barrel of a gun in Iraq and Afghanistan.

My high school physics teacher escaped from the region fearing for her children's safety and future. I have to disappoint you that the story is not about a Uygur woman escaping from the horrible CCP re-education camp, it is the complete opposite - my high school physics teacher is a talented Han Chinese woman who escaped from endless Uygur terrorist bombings on Han Chinese civilians.

She told me that a full bus of students from her school were killed in a Uygur terrorist attack. Sadly, they didn't have access to any guns to defend for themselves. There was no government intervention under the banner of autonomy. For people like my physics teacher, the only viable choice was to leave the region and reallocate the whole family to Han majority places.

To be frankly honest with you, CCP has probably 95% support from we Han Chinese on those re-education camps - the other 5% are probably asking for even tougher policies. You can paint Muslim as a peaceful religion or whatever you want, Han Chinese don't buy political correctness. Your attack on the Chinese government on matters like those re-education camps are being considered as the proof that CCP is working its ass off protecting the interests of all those non-Muslim Chinese citizens.

Thank you for honestly sharing your perspective. Unfortunately a fear-based approach reliably creates what it fears. If the proponents of a culture want others to do adopt their culture, they may do so by inspiring others through their compassion, generosity and self-sacrifice. This is the trust-based approach. Unfortunately it is rarely done because it is counter-intuitive and requires systematically setting aside all anger, forgiving when forgiveness is not deserved and making oneself vulnerable. Both approaches often result in casualties, but while one results in people dying attempting to enforce their will on others, the other involves people dying in an attempt to show compassion. The latter is profoundly persuasive in favour of the giver of compassion while the former incites profound hatred.

Except it’s not a fear based approach. The re-education camp are - like it’s name - for re-education. The Chinese government want these Muslim extremists to learn enough skills to live a normal life. If they can make a living like everyone else, they’ll be much likely to become a terrorist. It’s a better outcome for everyone

To be fair the people you’re talking about are Muslim extremists - they are not too different from people causing terrorism in Middle East and they are what the Chinese government need to deal with.

There are also tons of regular Xinjiang Muslims living peacefully, both in Xinjiang and major cities in the east. There are also tons of Muslim restaurants everywhere in China, and they are quite popular

> China has removed all human rights for over ten million Uyghur Muslims.

That can’t be more false

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