China is working to silence critics of its prisonlike re-education camps | Hacker News Reader

China is working to silence critics of its prisonlike re-education camps

world.wng.org

110 pointstomohawk21 comments

how is this news? China has a sophisticated government-social process to silence everything within minutes.

Media surpression was one of the ruling party's long term commitments.

How is it not news?

The Chinese Communist Party, through actions such as this, shows it has no regard for human rights and will probably stop at nothing to get its way.

The particulars of these incidents are news. What isn't news is the fact that totalitarian regimes have no regard for human rights. That fact is no more novel or surprising than the fact that wolves prey on other animals--though if wolves had the same power and influence as the Chinese government, maybe we'd forget about that, too.

A reminder is valuable.

>"prisonlike re-education camps"

Why the euphemism? Just call them concentration camps for ethnic minorities, which is what they are.

It's funny how much Muslims help trample the human rights of other Muslims. Whether it's the Saudis or Iranians or the Yemenis... or the Central Asians. In the West we have achieved the fabled brotherhood of the Ummah through humanism where as in most Muslim countries are out for other Muslims' blood often using Islam as a justification.

Sorry, but I'm struggling to understand what this means, or how it relates to the article?

Kazakhstan a Muslim-majority country is helping China suppress the human rights of Muslim minorities.

I don't know, it's the second biggest world religion, so you'd expect some people who were born into it to trample someone else's human rights. We're talking about 1.8 billion people.

Religious flamewar will get you banned here. Please do not post like this again.

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

Edit: we've already had to warn you about using HN for nationalistic and ideological flamewar in the past. If you keep posting like this, we will ban the account.

I have difficulty believing the objectivity of a magazine whose editors have such a clear religious bias (and pushed compassionate conservatism, to boot).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(magazine)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Olasky

Is the South China Morning Post objective enough for you?[1] Even domestically, many people are recognizing the inhumane conditions a vast majority of Uyghurs are facing right now.

[1] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/2171990/sec...

Nobody is objective and everyone is biased. Once you accept that, you can start to price that in somewhat. If anything, it’s counter-biased for evangelical Protestants to have strong concerns for the welfare of Muslim Uyghurs.

It is perfectly understandable for christians to be concerned about the welfare of all people.

Sure, but if these particular Christians are driven by the "bias" of being concerned about the welfare of all people...that's not really a bias anymore, is it?

Where is the nerdy connection? The other anti-China thread on the front page at least is about social media [1] but this one has no connection to tech at all or science or whatever. It's purely political, and the particular issue of religious minorities suppression in Xinjiang has already been on hacker news in form of an excellent NYT a piece a few weeks back [2].

The ASML story from yesterday was beautifully on-topic for example [3].

I get it, the Chinese government is authoritarian and mean and much worse at that than the US government was in the last 30 years. But why repeat this message over and over?

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19712564

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19570594

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19703909

Uh, the surveillance state imposed in Xinjiang?

Articles on HN do not need a "nerdy connection". What's on topic is stated at the beginning of the site guidelines: anything that gratifies intellectual curiosity.

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

There always seems to be a pro-China backlash in the comments of HN articles critical of China. I'm slowly coming around to the idea that this looks like an organized effort to control the narrative. What gets me most is the universal weakness of the points made in the pro-China posts. You would not have had to think very long to realize this is a reasonable submission for this site, but here you are anyway.

It wouldn't stand out so much on reddit but here this stuff really sticks out like a sore thumb.

Everyone with an interest in technology and freedom would be wise to pay attention to what is going on in China right now. With the opportunities presented by our rapidly changing technology, they are pioneering new and disturbing means of oppression that should be of great concern to anyone accustomed to a free society.

I'm not assuming bad faith on your part, but I am asserting flatly that your post is indistinguishable from it. If you are not a part of a coordinated effort to minimize discussion of such things than I suggest you try harder to understand why other people care about them.

> There always seems to be a pro-China backlash

Please, read my comment. I'm not pro-Chinese oppression. I hope I made it very clear that the ASML story was on topic and that it was very good to cover it, etc. This thinking of "either you are my friend and agree 100% with me or you are my enemy" is dangerous and I recommend you try to change the general thought pattern. You'll be a better person afterwards. There is nuance in the world!

> Everyone with an interest in technology and freedom would be wise to pay attention to what is going on in China right now.

I definitely do pay attention but the anti-China posts are literally everywhere by now. Every one of my news sources is constantly running anti-China pieces. As I've pointed out there is already a anti-China story on the frontpage. Isn't one enough? There have been anti-China pieces on this page constantly. Is hn the Chinese revolution headquarters?

Your idea of a coordinated effort to push an agenda might not be wrong, after all Russia has been doing this so why not China, but note that your argument works in the other direction as well: maybe the reason for all of these anti-Chinese news stories is because of the US-Chinese trade war. It's well known that the USA doesn't care much about human rights in countries that do what the USA wants. Instead, the big "let's gift them freedom" idea mainly comes up when they happen to be unaligned with Washington foreign policy. The US mass media has, let's put it mildly, always been patriotic and supported that pattern with suiting news stories. This old alliance works greatly, even despite the war between Trump and the media. This particular story is just part of that pattern. Just wait, by when US-Chinese relations improve, these stories will disappear from the frontpage and other news outlets again.

Again, I fully agree that the Chinese government is a big threat to freedom and democracy. I've said so in multiple comments on this page.

> As I've pointed out there is already a anti-China story on the frontpage. Isn't one enough?

Two different posts about unrelated subjects concerning China is one too many to you? Do you think there is a quota or something? We share and upvote things we find interesting. If there were ten posts on the front page covering ten different anti-Chinese-government subjects that would still in no way support your claim that these posts are the result of a US trade war conspiracy. It speaks more to the breadth of startling activities being performed by the Chinese government than anything else.

I also find it interesting that you call discussion of oppressive actions undertaken by the Chinese -government- to be "anti-China." A subtle but meaningful distinction. I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt but you are making it difficult.

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