Ex-Detainee Describes Torture in China's Xinjiang Re-Education Camp | Hacker News Reader

Ex-Detainee Describes Torture in China's Xinjiang Re-Education Camp

npr.org

74 pointssamfriedman29 comments

Would anyone care to comment on the technology that makes the recognition and surveillance possible? If we supply "back doors" to the ChiCom so that they allow our tech to be distributed in China, are we less complicit than the guards?

> he says inmates had to sing songs praising Chinese leader Xi Jinping before being allowed to eat

Hm, that resembles a lot how many people threat their kids even in first world countries. I wonder why that is not considered torture.

What happened to freedom of expression in this comment section?

China (in the guise of the Chinese Communist Party) versus Islam is a bit like the clash of nations, two irreconcilable doctrines which each want to have a total say over the way people live their lives. When China gets its way - as it mostly does in the country - things start to resemble a cross between 'Gatacca' [1], Brave New World [2] and Down and out in the Magic Kingdom [3] (especially the concept of social credit [4]). When Islam gets its way - as it did in parts of Syria and the Levant and as it partly does in places like Saudi-Arabia and Iran - you get a pre-medieval theocracy where you either submit or get killed. When both of them try to get their way you get conflict, as shown by this report and others. In the end one of them will have to give in in some way, either by allowing the CCP to influence their doctrine - as the Roman Catholic church did - or by going underground - like practitoners of Falun Gong did after their practice fell out of grace with the party. The chance of the CCP giving in to any other doctrine is slim and the likeliness of something like that happening without conflict even slimmer. The future does not look promising in this respect, the past is littered with the remnants of such conflicts - Tiananmen square [5] etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_King...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests

It's not ok to use HN for religious and nationalistic and ideological flamewar, which you somehow managed to combine. Please keep such tedious, inflammatory boilerplate off this site.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The article details the results of the conflict between religion and state and in that context my reaction is to the point. Stating that a reaction to such an article is analogous to a 'religious and nationalistic and ideological flamewar' is inane, in that case the article itself should not have been posted or the comment function should have been disabled.

We don't disable comments on articles, we ask commenters to follow the guidelines and use HN as intended: for the gratification of intellectual curiosity, not blaring agendas or pre-existing talking points.

I'm surprised by your insistence on labeling my comment as 'blaring agendas or pre-existing talking', maybe you should read it again? Consider the implications of the clash between the Chinese Communist Party and Islam - because that is what is going on here, both the conflict as well as the party's reaction are comparable to that between the CCP and the practice of Falun Gong - and you'll end up at the same point: one side has to give in and the chance of that being the CCP is slim. The chance of the Uyghurs (whether it be the pan-Islamists of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, the pan-Turkic East Turkestan Liberation Organization, the "Uyghurstan" East Turkestan independence movement or any of the other groups which comprise the non-homogeneous region of Xinjang) submitting to the wills of the CCP is also slim, read up on the history of the region and you'll find a number of recent conflicts with similar roots.

I said talking points. There's a certain class of users, thankfully a small minority, who have passionate pre-existing agendas and show up to argue grand claims about race/nation/religion/etc. with details about the pan-Turkic East Turkestan Liberation Organization or whatever. Your account shows signs of being like that. Please don't on HN. It's both tedious and destructive—quite a double whammy for the rest of us.

I have no idea if you'll read this as the censorship in the discussion thread seems to be heavy - nearly everything is gone by now.

What you call a 'pre-existing agenda' is to me nothing more than the unwillingness to close (or willingness to open) my eyes for certain phenomena. In this case I'm fairly sure you triggered on me mentioning Islam as a factor in this conflict even though in your last message you seem to trigger om my mentioning one of the other parties in the conflict in this region. Not mentioning Islam is, in my opinion, analogous to closing your eyes to a significant part of the origin of this conflict. Insisting on others not mentioning Islam - or any of the other parties involved - eventually leads to the thing you purport to disdain, the rise of a 'class of people' (viz. 'class of users') who do nothing but mention the 'forbidden' subject. History is rife with examples of the rise of extremism due to the suppression of reasonable opposition. Problems don't disappear by ignoring them, wounds don't heal by merely covering them, conflicts don't get solved by gagging the debate. Doing so eventually leads to the solution found in Venezuela to solve the number of children dying due to starvation: they essentially forbade doctors to state starvation as the cause of death [1]. That is extremism, and that is where we don't want to end up. Nor do we want to end up in a situation like that in China, or in Yemen, or Turkey or any of the other places in the world being held by or falling into the hands of extremists. The only way to avoid this is by being open to viewpoints which oppose your own and by being open to discussion.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/world/america...

Are you ok? what type of comparison is this? how does US allowed Muslims to practice their religion in peace without problem?

There are over a billion Muslims in the world. Many of them can and do live peaceably in liberal, secularized societies--but not all, as evidenced by the Boston Marathon bombings, the Fort Hood shooting, the Pulse Nightclub shooting, and the San Bernadino shooting.

The United States faces less Islamist terrorism than Europe or the Middle East, not only because the US has a much smaller Muslim population and significant barriers to immigration, but also because American Muslims (with certain noted exceptions) tend to be more likely to accept liberalized values than Muslims elsewhere in the world.

Two reason the US is different than China. One the US social political structure makes is very hard for religious zealots to gain control. Note how hard the Dominionist Christians have been trying for the last 100 years. Their political wins have failed to deliver completely on a societal basis.

Second reason Muslims in the US generally hate Salafism and Wahhabism.

China on the other hand isn't going to let Saudi Arabia engineer a Wahhabi led revolt in western China.

It's their land, China just took it they don't even speak mandarin or Cantonese they don't look like them let them live their own lives why we should force our views on other nations and remove their tradition because their difference than us?

Are you ok? Where did the parent say anything about the United States?

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