U.S. Accuses China of Detaining Up to 3M Muslims in 'Concentration Camps'

If a comment goes through the Uyghurs, Falun Gong and Tibet on its way to Nazis, I think it's safe to say that intellectual curiosity has fled, making the comment off topic for Hacker News.

Many vitally important topics are off topic for Hacker News. Most of them, in fact. This is a specific kind of website, for smaller, curious topics—the kind that are the first to drown in a political deluge.

Once again, context matters. The context of the sentence:

>"You can't judge China by the same standards as modern, highly educated western democracies"

was one of mass surveillance and the social media crackdown and absolutely does not pertain to any camps of any kind.

You are once again not responding to the strongest plausible interpretation of what I have said, instead choosing to argue against a straw-man and then repeating your point about how Andrew Jackson carried out genocide.

Do you see the problem?

>It's my understanding that the Chinese government has acknowledged and even run television commercials, such as this one[1] about the camps. Chinese officials have also made several comments to Chinese newspapers about the existence of the camps[2, 3] and have commented that the purpose of those camps is "reeducation" and to "reform extremism" through labor. The comments also note the purpose of the camps is to prevent terrorism and "separatists" by forcing them to speak the language of the "homeland" which seems to indicate the camps are predominantly intended for Muslims.

You seem to be under the false impression that I have denied the existence of the camps. I don’t, and nowhere have I done so. I dispute the scale and characterization of the camps. Namely: millions detained, hard labor, torture, organ harvesting. I have yet to see any objective evidence proving any of these allegations.

>Satellite images[4] of the camps indicate the rapid growth of the facilities and the existence of watch towers, redundant high walls, and barbed wire would least most reasonable people to agree these facilities are built to house people against their will.

Ok, so you have now proven that the Chinese government is building a detention facility at best, at worst a prison/concentration camp. Do they have the right to build prisons? Do they have the right to build prisons to house extremists and/or terrorists? We don’t know anything about who they are housing there or why amongst a multitude of other unknown variables. Also, prisons are indeed generally built to house people against their will.

>The Chinese government has also acknowledged as much. For example, the Government has repeatedly pointed to the "Opinions on Several Issues on the Application of Law in Cases of Terrorist Activities and Extremism Crimes"[5] as the legal justification for the imprisonment of "terrorist extremists." However one of the "extremist" activities that can be used to imprison someone is "inciting" people to hold a religious marriage ceremony. The document also allows for "administrative punishment" without a trial or conviction.

The context of that line precedes it (“using extremism to”), and the line is actually more nuanced than that. It mentions the word “masses”.

(5) Using extremism to commit any of the following conduct, is to be convicted and punished in accordance with Criminal Law article 120-4 as the crime of exploiting extremism to undermine the law: 1．Inciting or coercing the masses to hold religious ceremonies in place of marriage or divorce registration, or interfering with marital freedom;

In other words, one cannot force masses of people to hold religious ceremonies against their will, in lieu of official marriage registration. It also says interfering with marital freedom, for example things like arranged child marriages, are illegal. Stopping someone from marrying out of race or out of religion in the name of your religion would be also illegal. These scenarios are quite common and accepted in certain religions and are contrary to the CCP’s long-term goals of population integration (whether this is right or wrong is another argument). Yes, the term extremism is loosely defined and has been used and abused by many countries in recent history to justify certain actions. “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”, etc, etc.

> One analysis of arrests (using data reported by the Chinese government) showed 21% of all 2017 arrests in the country were in the Muslim region of Xinjiang.[6] Given the region accounts for only 1.5% of the total population of China the arrests of ethnic Muslims seems disproportionately high.

CHRD is headquartered in Washington D.C so you’ll excuse me if I have some doubts. Aside from that, from your [6] citation you’ve linked:

“According to Chinese government data, criminal arrests in Xinjiang accounted for an alarming 21% of all arrests in China in 2017, though the population in the XUAR is only about 1.5% of China’s total, based on the 2010 Census. Ethnic minorities account for nearly 60% of Xinjiang’s population, the largest group being ethnic Uyghurs, who account for 46% of the population. Though the government does not provide the data disaggregated by ethnicity, criminal punishment would disproportionately target the Uyghur Muslim group based on their percentage of the population.”

That last line is of particular concern because it proves that the figure of “21% arrested are Uyghur” is purely conjecture. Furthermore, the footnotes to the statistics used in that same article show the following:

>* The Xinjiang People’s Procuratorate (XPP) Annual Work Report 2013 is not available online, so the number of arrests for 2013 is estimated based on the 2014 report figure, which is stated as increasing by 95.7% from 2013. The XPP Annual Work Report 2017 does not provide the number of arrests for 2017, but provides the total for 2013-2017, so the 2017 number is estimated by deducting the totals from other years. * The Supreme People’s Procuratorate Annual Work Report 2017 does not provide the number of arrests for 2017, but provides the total for 2013-2017, so the 2017 number is estimated by deducting the totals for other years.

Again, estimations, projections, deductions abound. Where is the concrete evidence?

> We admittedly don't have exact data on the number of people imprisoned against their will but people have been able to estimate given the number and size of facilities built and by using job postings/factory information available online.

There is decidedly no evidence on the number of people imprisoned against their will, the nature of their crimes, etc. No concrete evidence other than satellite photos of some facilities with barbed wire fences surrounding them. While I personally think it is likely that these are indeed prisons, there are many factories, secure warehouses, secure worker dorms with such fences. What do these satellite images really prove?

> Even if we only looked at the evidence provided by the Chinese government we can objectively conclude that:

     (a) These labor camps exist;

     (b) These camps detain people without a trial or conviction;

     (c) The primary purpose of these camps is to "reform" ethnic Muslims living in the Xinjiang region; and

     (d) At *least* 500,000 people from the region have been sent to these camps.

(a) That has not been disputed, though the nature of the labor may be in dispute.

(b) Not in dispute

(c) The primary purpose is to reform extremist Muslims living in the Xinjiang region. I’m sure a lot of these alleged extremist Muslims happen to be Uighur, but I doubt that their ethnicity is of primary concern.

(d) No concrete evidence of this