Report on forced organ harvesting in China
chinatribunal.com
chinatribunal.com
The tribunal was setup, for what it is worth, by a campaign group called: "International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China"[1]
Thanks!
What can we do?
Suddenly now the concentration camps are the lesser evil of stealing organs from political enemies.
OTOH, I think the only reason they were hated was due to being popular and somehow offending or scaring someone in power. They were tolerated or even supported for a long time and then suddenly The Enemy.
The Falun Gong repression is probably one of the greatest examples of evil in the world today.
The idea of not being the highest authority to the people is the scariest thing to any authoritarian power.
That's why they are closing churches, jailing pastors, and rewriting scripture in China as Christianity’s popularity grows[1].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-christia...
So you had people literally dying from abandoning their medication in favor of Falun Gong exercises while the leader collected fees from giving seminars/selling books on his system.
Remove the context of this taking place in the evil country that is China, and all you have left is just another cult leader selling snake oil.
Do I agree with all of Falun Dafa's beliefs? No, I do not.
Should they be chopped up and their organs harvested? NO.
The U.S. doesn't really care about human rights, or its own abuse of them, (was any top official prosecuted for Iraq?), so you'd be voting for posturing.
It’s just not a valid argument. It serves only to change the topic and justify nationalism.
It's possible to hold both of these positions i.e. being against the Iraq war and not believing that the U.S. really believes in the propaganda they're putting out on it does not mean you had to like Saddam.
Feel free to keep shining the light on those abuses, we need to remember them and learn from them.
Now, what about China?
That sounds suspiciously like "changing myself is hard, so I'll try to force my neighbor to change instead".
China would certainly be a high-impact change on the global human rights situation (so would the US be), but on the other hand the probability of change seems somewhat low (especially because you are right: they are close enough to the US in strength that they can't be bullied around that easily). Moonshots are nice and certainly valid as side bets, but not as the primary strategy. Let's work on Turkey and the Saudis, they are "allies", somewhat dependent on Western support (Saudis) and money (Turkey) and nudging them into the right direction can make a huge difference. Reward them generously if they do, and you may see it spread. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
It would have the nice side-effect that we'd clean up our back yard a bit, too. Credibility does matter on these things where people will question your motives.
They did it with Afghanistan , later with Iraq.
OTOH the are silent about other places like SA or many other dictatorships in the world. Hypocrisy and blatant lies about human rights. And yes, the Chinese government is really fucked up. No one can deny that.
Analogy: Joe and Paul are gangsters with a nasty reputation. Paul is in hiding because the police department have declared him public enemy number 1, while Joe was a guest of honor at the last police benevolent society dinner. Are you not at least the tiniest bit skeptical about whether the police chief is really trying to fight crime?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia%E2%80%93United_St...
This is not fair, but politics is not primarily about fairness. It’s about reaching you goals (here: establish human rights world wide).
On one hand, they have dealt with Joe for a long time and, while the relationship is far from perfect, they and Joe have a sort of understanding and Joe takes their opinions into account, in part with all the opinions of other stakeholders, when they're very insistent about it.
On the other hand, Paul in recent memory has committed truly unspeakable atrocities against masses of even his nominal stakeholders--and this hypothetical person may not even have the 'favor' of being one. Paul is obviously much more hostile to his stakeholders (Great Leap Forward, June 4/Tiananmen, Xinjiang concentration camps, Falun Gong genocide, ubiquitous hyper surveillance, etc. etc.). Paul has recently become much more rich and powerful, and has started asserting that power in ways that would totally violate the understanding between our person and Joe. At the same time, Paul has been asserting his power in other person-gangster relationships, dictating terms and helping those gangsters better oppress their own stakeholders.
Are you even the tiniest bit skeptical about whether our person's interests best lie in a maximally adversarial relationship with Paul vs. with Joe? Our person may very much want a better relationship with Joe. If they see Paul as a bigger threat, though, then it makes perfect sense to focus on confronting Paul.
It's not a valid argument for the Chinese to justify their practices, you are right in that.
It is a valid argument for critics that are (collectively) guilty of similar abuses, however. In this case: why make China's abuses the issue of your vote instead of your government's abuses? The US government has limited power over the Chinese (and so your vote has even less), but it has full power over itself. Pledging your vote to somebody that will not create new wars sounds more reasonable to me than pledging your vote to someone that promises to be "tough on China". The horrors in Libya that the Obama administration is responsible for are arguably worse than China's human rights abuses in their Gulag system.
First take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye and all that.
It is absolutely vital that we do improve what we can and start with ourselves but we should not get carried away with that idea to a ridiculous degree. Someone who has committed crimes can and should still speak out if someone is committing something absolutely abhorrent in plain view instead of remaining silent.
Note that I'm not suggesting ignorance and passivity. I prefer this route: 1) get your house in order before you try to fix the world 2) start with small, achievable improvements 3) be just in your judgement.
> Someone who has committed crimes can and should still speak out if someone is committing something absolutely abhorrent in plain view instead of remaining silent.
Absolutely. Yet he may have to answer why his own abhorrent acts should be ignored, especially when they aren't from the distant past and he hasn't shown to be a changed man. The lion telling the tiger he should go vegetarian for moral reasons ...
That's true, though I have a feeling the "guests" at the US black sites would've preferred to be transferred to Chinese Gulags. Were Libya, Iraq or Syria drunk driving accidents? I suppose we might disagree here.
Everybody always claims they do the terrible things they commit to make the world a better place tomorrow. Who you support in their doings and who you call a villain is up to you. I suppose if HN was created in China and majority Chinese, most here would argue differently.
Not saying the US shouldn't address and improve their own record of human rights abuses, and indeed address those that are currently ongoing (such as the detention of immigrants without a trial), but claiming that they have no business criticizing the ongoing, orders of magnitude larger Chinese human rights abuses is going to make the world a worse place.
My problem with the way you paint Libya, Syria and Iraq (there was some overreach, but by and large, they were working with the locals) is that this shifts responsibility away from those that attacked. They removed the state and the stable equilibrium of powers and installed ... nothing. As expected, the territories degenerated into a tribalistic civil war with all kinds of horrible things (which, and how many, of these groups were created/led/funded by the CIA, we'll likely know at some point in the future). ISIS/ISIL are a direct consequence of this policy, and so are slave markets in Libya. Certainly these weren't declared goals, but I don't believe the top officials to be stupid, they were well aware of what happens when you remove the dictator of a country that is only held together by his iron first - especially when they did it over and over, allegedly expecting different results.
> Not saying the US shouldn't address and improve their own record of human rights abuses, and indeed address those that are currently ongoing (such as the detention of immigrants without a trial), but claiming that they have no business criticizing the ongoing, orders of magnitude larger Chinese human rights abuses is going to make the world a worse place.
But this wasn't stated anywhere, was it? The OP said that focusing on China would be a major factor in his voting decision. He was asked whether he'd ignore US abuses. As I tried to clumsily state elsewhere: it's much easier to change your own behavior than that of others, so if it's "I want less abuse in the world" that you want, start with your own and make "end the abuse" the top priority in your decision who to elect into the office of the president and commander in chief of the most powerful offensive military in the world. No Iraq, Libya, Syria and a million or two wouldn't be dead, with many millions more displaced and on the run. My feeling is that China, with all the terrible things they do, still has to stretch a lot to come close to that.
Tangibly, sure, but not really. Iran followed the nuclear agreement, the U.S. violated it and has been openly escalating ever since. This does not mean Iran is an angel, but it does mean the U.S. is the aggressor here.
As an European, China, Iran etc. do not hold the moral high ground in world affairs in my opinion, but that's kind of expected, few think they do. What seems to be the case is that somehow the U.S. thinks it still holds that ground, where I find it not to be true not only internationally, but increasingly domestically too.
And because U.S. citizens have the most power over their own government, I think holding it to account should be of the highest priority when voting.
The KSA needs to face severe repercussions too, but repression, censorship, and extralegal assassinations are all in a day's work for the PRC.
Is this actually proven?
> It holds hundreds of thousands of minorities in concentration camps in Xinjiang.
KSA outright levels cities with minorities in them, so am not sure how they're better.
> repression, censorship, and extralegal assassinations are all in a day's work for the PRC
As far as I know, China does not repress women anywhere near the level that KSA does, nor does it require 'guardians', nor does it perform public beheading, prosecute people for 'witchcraft etc. so while am not claiming China is great, I am fairly certain it's less repressive than the KSA overall.
The PRC could easily dismiss this by providing transparency into its organ donor procurement system, but it takes a hard line on limiting all information about it.
Numerous eyewitness accounts also testify to the forced organ donation, though I find first person accounts less compelling than actual statistics and observing how the government actually behaves.
Cite on the KSA leveling cities? Or is this just a weird way to reference the (terrible) war in Yemen?
> Is this actually proven?
Sadly yes.
At least it is proven behind all reasonable doubt that they are killing prisoners for organs (proven by the simple fact that there seemed to be an endless supply of matching organs with next to no waiting).
There's also eye witness testimony from at least one doctor as well as recordings where transplantation clinics go far in describing how they use the finest organs from people who have lived a very healthy life - and if I remember correctly - actually sometimes going as far as saying falun gong.
As scarmig I'm a little less convinced by the eyewitness testimony (hiring a few actors would be an excellent way to hurt your enemies && people might have other reasons for portraying the place they left behind as evil) but still, all taken together my guess is that is not what is happening here.
Especially considering they were running a transplant industry that was big enough to cover rich western people as well.
If you run the numbers it becomes very clear that something odd was/is(?) going on, and it is something that - for what I know - might easily compete with a number of genocides for a place on the top 20 most evil things that have happened the last 100 years.
I don't consider getting our drone bombed out of the sky and backing down from a missile strike a 'provocation'. It's much better than our previous administration's idea, which is to give them money to go away and hope they don't use it on nuclear weapons against us.
"The U.S. doesn't really care about human rights, or its own abuse of them"
Sure it does. There are stories every month about people in our military getting prosecuted for abuses. I don't think I've heard one story about this happening in China or Saudi Arabia.
"so you'd be voting for posturing"
It's not all or nothing. Nothing the US is doing even compares to the horrors of China. It's good to have a candidate against this.
I seriously doubt this will ever happen. Trump is the only president that would even broach the idea of punishing China. If a Democrat gets into office in 2020, it will be business as usual and the problems will be kicked down the road, like they have been with Iran.
There are many potential human rights issues, abroad and at home at stake, so the question why the topic of China takes priority is a valid one.
Except I didn't claim that anywhere. All I claim is that any U.S. stance such as the OP would like to see is likely not principled, so actually voting on this issue is not a good idea, in my opinion anyway.
https://chinatribunal.com/about-etac/
Susie Hughes Executive Director, Co-Founder
https://www.linkedin.com/in/susie-hughes-904288119/?original...
> "I started cutting down the middle and then he started struggling and I knew then that he was still alive, but he was too weak to resist me, " Tohti told The Telegraph.
What the actual fuck.
It got 206 points in 2 hours, which is a lot better than most front page articles...
After years of propaganda, I don't believe there still are so many Falun Gong followers in Mainland, let alone to have their organs harvested. Yes, most of us Chinese Mainlanders are fucking Atheists. And even if most of us more or less believe in karma and reincarnation and other forms of buddaism, Falun Gong is vastly different, especially as I know it, it's not compatible with going to buddist temples.
[1]https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c... [2]https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
This should give people at least sympathy, if not agreement, with gun rights advocates. While private guns can't stop a powerful government from having their way with us, they can at least make it more expensive. Would China be able to do this as quietly and without civil war if the Chinese people had the same number of private guns per capita as the US?
Many of us quite reasonably believe that gun rights aren't worth the huge number of gun crimes in this country. Others of us fear state actors even more than individual criminals and feel that the high cost of gun crimes is worth the price. Even if you disagree, stories like this should give you empathy for their argument.
If you think it can't happen here, did you think that this country would move in the political direction that it has in the last few years? I didn't. Uncertainty about the social future should translate into humility about the quality of our prognostications ... and fear about how bad it could get, and how fast.
(Note this is not an argument against gun ownership, just an argument for better education and having more children.)
Since time out of mind, the ultimate, unpayable, debt.
"I owe you my life."
Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people who have received life-saving organs owe their lives, their very lives, to their donors.
"I owe you my life."
While stopping short of concluding that the killing and
forced organ removal of these peoples constitutes genocide in
its legal definition (due to a lack of proof of actual intent
to commit genocide), the panel nonetheless condemned the forced
organ removals as a crime against humanity and an act of
"unmatched wickedness".
How did China get away with this for so long?
Because no other nation(s) is willing and able to engage in military conflict with China to stop it.
I feel like our politicians have maybe decided that voters are too smart for a sudden switch to “China bad, Chinese people bad, hate them, cut ties with them” rhetoric (as has usually historically happened in the run-up to a declaration of war), so instead they’ve just dropped the specific context of who is supposed to be bad, and are kind of vague-polemic-ing about all foreigners instead, in the hopes that that’ll stir up at least some of the same effects that historical politicians were taking advantage of.
In short, money. Voters and corporations tend to get upset when their supply of cheap material goods (and landfills) is cut off.
You can't touch big countries, US, China, Russia can do whatever they want, who will dare to start something?
You can get away with shit as a small country to as long as a big country has no economic or military interest in your area, we all notice that all recent wars are fought in areas of strategic importance even if genocides happen in other areas too.
There's a busy "organ transplant tourism" going on, from Japan, Korea and Western countries to China. You can be certain that's it's not the poor, powerless from these countries that profit from the murder-for-organ-harvesting schemes the Chinese run in their prisons.
Skepticism and complacency.
Also, they're still getting away with it.
This was formally condemned by Congress three years ago. Falun Gong do demonstrations at the Whole Foods store down the street.
Most people aren't monsters. (I would imagine that even most of the organ recipients don't connect the dots and don't know where their new organ came from. The medical staff that know what they're doing are another story, it's dismal that so many psychotic monsters could be found or made.)
Something as horrifying as this causes cognitive dissonance and, in order to return to a lower energy state, the mind rejects it. At least until there is enough incontrovertible proof.
It also doesn't help that any sane and healthy response to this maddening, sickening, horrifying crime must be massive, total, and sustained.
Massive because the evil is massive; total because there can be no compromise with this evil; and sustained because the temptation will remain until we have solved human tissue regeneration.
If you're a US citizen and you care about this please contact your representatives and let them know.
Don't be shy about bringing this up.
> The United States House of Representatives unanimously passed an unprecedented resolution Monday [3 years ago], condemning forced organ removal from Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience in China. House Resolution 343 (full text) was co-sponsored by 185 Democrat and Republican members. Among other actions, it demands that the Chinese government immediately end the practice of forced organ removal and stop the persecution of Falun Gong, and calls on the U.S. State Department to provide more detailed analysis of the topic in its annual human rights report.
https://faluninfo.net/u-s-congress-condemns-forced-organ-har...
It's going to be hellish getting them to stop formally, let alone the black market. Niven called it:
> Organlegging is the name of a fictional crime in the Known Space universe created by Larry Niven. It is the illicit trade of black market human organs for transplant. The term organlegging is a portmanteau combining the words "organ" and "bootlegging", literally the piracy[1][2] and smuggling of organs.[3]
I would encourage people to take the time to watch this.
My only hope is this news spreads like wildfire within its boundaries and citizens of China wake up.
Tiananmen Square protest death toll was 10,000:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42465516
>"Students linked arms but were mown down including soldiers. APCs then ran over bodies time and time again to make 'pie' and remains collected by bulldozer. Remains incinerated and then hosed down drains. "Four wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted."
This is literally the plot (but on another planet).
Oddly enough Falun Gong enjoyed approval from the Chinese Government in the early 90s:
> According to David Ownby, Professor of History and Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the Université de Montréal, Li became an "instant star of the qigong movement",[119] and Falun Gong was embraced by the government as an effective means of lowering health care costs, promoting Chinese culture, and improving public morality. In December 1992, for instance, Li and several Falun Gong students participated in the Asian Health Expo in Beijing, where he reportedly "received the most praise [of any qigong school] at the fair, and achieved very good therapeutic results", according to the fair's organizer.[15] The event helped cement Li's popularity, and journalistic reports of Falun Gong's healing powers spread.[15][20] In 1993, a publication of the Ministry of Public Security praised Li for "promoting the traditional crime-fighting virtues of the Chinese people, in safeguarding social order and security, and in promoting rectitude in society."
That changed when the organization refused to become more closely aligned with the regime:
> In 1995, Chinese authorities began looking to Falun Gong to solidify its organizational structure and ties to the party-state.[53] Li was approached by the Chinese National Sports Committee, Ministry of Public Health, and China Qigong Science Research Association (CQRS) to jointly establish a Falun Gong association. Li declined the offer. The same year, the CQRS issued a new regulation mandating that all qigong denominations establish a Communist Party branch. Li again refused.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-china-45474277/uigh...
I recommend getting information from sources like the BBC over sources like the "China Tribunal".
That is not utilitarianism, it's just tribalism and xenophobia.
I'm not trying to defend China here, but it's futile to condemn an action if you have not made a good-faith effort to understand the rationale. China is a collectivist society - the rights of the individual are always secondary to the rights of the whole. We believe that people have a fundamental right to cause trouble, even if that's detrimental to social order; the Chinese Communist Party don't and a substantial proportion of their population agree wholeheartedly.
Saying "the Chinese shouldn't do this because it contravenes human rights" is like them saying "the First Amendment is terrible because it undermines social cohesion". It's an argument that seems nonsensical or in bad faith, because it's grounded in a completely alien conceptualisation of the role of the state and the rights of the individual.
If you want to make a persuasive argument, you need to address that core ideological difference. Why is your right to freedom of religion more valuable than our collective right to freedom from religious conflict? Why is your right to free speech more valuable than our collective right to social cohesion and stable governance? Why is your right to life more valuable than the right to life of the eight people who your organs could save?
Answering those questions is difficult and uncomfortable, but it's fundamentally necessary if you actually want to promote the values of liberal democracy rather than ineffectually condemning a different political culture.
While your argument is presented within a logical/philosophical framework, it can only be made in a hypothesized world. The fallacy is that the "whole" is hardly ever considered. Within Communist system's, the "greater good" is sold as a cake: appealing but no substance.
I would bet that the organs are going to the top 1% of the rich, wealthy, and influential Chinese. I have no proof of this but being born in former USSR and still having connection to that part of the world, I can attest that majority almost never benefit.
> If you want to make a persuasive argument, you need to address that core ideological difference. Why is your right to freedom of religion more valuable than our collective right to freedom from religious conflict? Why is your right to free speech more valuable than our collective right to social cohesion and stable governance? Why is your right to life more valuable than the right to life of the eight people who your organs could save?
This is really tricky statement to make because on the philosophical stage, you are right. You have valid points and in theory, utilitarianism is more good than bad. However, in reality, its very difficult to discount human nature. It's simply too easy to become corrupt. In my opinion, such philosophical arguments are the road to hell, paved with good intention.
On the other hand, if we could build a perfect world, where everyone was altruistic, it would be best. Reconciling such a world with known human traits and action is a different beast all together.
I'm sure there are utilitarian communists out there who would argue that, yes, terrible, terrible, but necessary for the greater good.
If those victims were to die anyway, it does become somewhat of an utilitarian problem.
And if it is, the gaming issue that would bias decisions towards executing the prisoners instead of "lighter" sentences due to the "gains", which creates a vicious feedback loop ; and the fact that overall the gains in that system are not just people surviving, but also captors getting rich ; should point clearly to the vice and undefiable corruption that make it undeniably unethical.
That and the fact that a regular human with any ounce of love or humanity in its blood should feel how wrong and disgusting this all is
People make grand, self-flattering claims about why they were supposedly banned. Strangely, what they never do is supply links so readers can make up their own minds. Why do you suppose that is? Could it be that we don't ban accounts for "posting ethical objections"?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19507288
Oh and what do you know, now that comment appears to have been flagged, too!
Why do we consider it ethical for a state to execute prisoners, but consider harvesting their (now useless) organs to save more lives is ethically abhorrent?
I am much more outraged by the fact that they're killing people for political reasons, the fact that they're harvesting their organs afterwards seems comparatively tame to me.
I realize that harvesting organs from not-quite-dead prisoners, or killing prisoners just to harvest the organs is extremely unethical, but if someone was executed for a different reason, is it so bad to use their organs? They didn't consent to getting killed either, why are we drawing the line at organ harvesting?
Back in the day the British had prisoners move large rocks from one side of the prison yard to the other and then back again. That's brutish but there some logic behind it to keep the state from enjoying the activity.
Doesn't the US have prisoners working for well under a dollar an hour in places?
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
Of course, the death penalty itself is IMO immoral and I do not support it, but these are separate issues. The death penalty being there is one thing but at least nobody is benefiting from it being used. Harvesting organs from its victims changes that.
I don't know if the following moral argument would pursuade most people, but I think it does work if you accept it is ethical for the state to execute people in the first place.
It is wrong because the state now derives a material benefit from harvesting the prisoner's organs. This treats the prisoner as an means rather than an end in themselves. This is a bad thing in itself for someone who subscribes to Immanuel Kant's view of morality (or something like it). But it is, in addition, something of a hazard in providing the government with an incentive beyond justice itself to kill people.
The death penalty is still moral in this framework because it is meted out to people who have themselves murdered others, and thus decided that the law to which they hold themselves permits killing, and it is therefore appropriate for the state to treat them as reasonable beings, which means treating them according to their own moral law. (this is a terrible explanation, but I hope it is a good first step. I can try and reply more later if you ask questions.).
The death penalty is not permissible for whatever crime however, only specific ones.
One thing the U.S. could do would be to end capital punishment in our own country. Bluntly, it would have all the moral leadership of sanctions and none of the economic impact.
I’m glad you’re lucky enough to be born in the right place, with the right ethnicity, family name, and religious beliefs. Imagine if you were unlucky enough to get one of those things wrong, and be born to be imprisoned, tortured, and taken apart to be sold for scraps by China.
"...man in need of a kidney..." "...organs are still readily available in China for transplant tourists with very short waiting times."
https://chinatribunal.com/reading-material/
Matching of donor kidneys to immune system of specific recipients is critical to avoiding rejection.
When they say "Worst Fears [...] Were Just confirmed" they are at best misleading.
There has been a notable dearth of reporting by traditional journalistic media about this topic, and so I am still somewhat skeptical. The evidence presented so far is not as conclusive as with the Uyghur suppression.
The practice described in the article would undoubtedly be a crime against Humanity, and among the biggest in history. But I can't tell right now if the process of its discovery is just slow-moving or if there is just nothing that big to discover. I'd appreciate any pointers to more information either way.
The central government has a hard time getting rid of this practice because they aren’t as omnipotent as they appear, there is a lot of vested interests that localities continue the practice.
Given the very low percentage of organ donors in Chinese culture, you’ll know they’ve stopped harvesting organs when their turn around time for organ transplants goes up by a lot.
Also, the particular crime charged here is that not only are organs harvested from prisoners / execution victims, but prisoners are specifically killed in order to harvest their organs, including a pre-execution check for histocompatibility.
There is a distinction to be made between small scale criminal behavior on the part of the hospitals and prisons, and a large-scale state-sanctioned practice of illicit organ harvesting.
What is alleged here is much worse: Prisoners of Conscience (and not drug traffickers or murderers) are particularly selected for their histocompatibility and executed "on demand".
Therefor I think these allegations need further proof. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and that's why I suggest a cautious approach to this story.
One would think that even China has some compunctions about "creating" capital crimes in order to have enough organ donors. One of the problems with the underlying story is that the non-consenting donors must have been killed somewhat "extrajudiciarily", that is, outside of the "normal" way death sentences have been administered in China.
Therefore the allegations point to an industrial scale process of matching living prisoners to organ recipients, and lacking a judicial death sentence.
I am completely against the death penalty, in all circumstances.
I still believe that the allegations against China made here are orders of magnitude worse than "just" harvesting organs from executed donors. That would be mainly a violation of the victims post-mortem rights or dignity.
The alleged practice involves doctors and hospitals cooperating in the preparation and execution of the death penalty. That is a fundamental violation of medical ethics. In the US, doctors are forbidden to participate in executions.
And apparently at least the timing of the executions in China, if not even the decision whether to execute a prisoner or not, seems to be affected by the demand for organs.
It's always hard to make a judgement about what wrong is worse, but I'd say here we have a clear "winner".
When I returned from Xinjiang, I thought about it a lot and the only conclusion I could come to in the end is that human beings in aggregate are for the most part scum and cowards. It's conclusion that gives me no hope in the future but I cannot avoid it.
Taking into account the scale but not the novelty (genocide/ethnic cleansing as a form of statecraft, in fact I am reminded of Japanese experiments on Chinese in WW2, the irony of the oppressed eventually becoming the oppressor). I have to conclude that given the right circumstances, anyone can do just about anything. It takes constant vigilance and self-courage to be a consistently good person, most of us in the developed west have just never been put into a situation where we are compelled to do something real shitty.
I also spent time there, and I don’t think that’s a fair conclusion at all. Most people aren’t cowards and scum, most people follow and focus their energies on their survival and that of their kin. The less they have in terms of wealth the less time and head space they can devote to anything else. We’ve seen here on HN studies that show poverty changes the way you think.
Of the few that lead, there are good and there are bad. However I think the leaders and followers tend to be disjoint sets and it’s unfair to project the morality of one onto the other. It neglects the realities of human behavior. I think you’re inferring some broader mission or value statement that doesn’t exist from largely self serving small scale actions.
I can't do anything but to strongly agree with you on this point.
A lot of discourse for which I run into trouble on HN (and in real life as well...) is me tryint to correct somebody's wrongs, just to see somebody popup with "calm down man", "do not disturb peace", "do not make it a problem", " there is nobody right or wrong"
I can say the West has this problem, and it comes from attitudes of people higher up on social ladder. This unreadiness to be forceful in confronting wrongs is: 1. totally disgusting; 2. errodes things that make society a society; 3. will eventually cost dearly to the West