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Comment by HunOL | Hacker News Reader

Because clearly only West is allowed to decide who is terrorist and who is not.

Yes, the CCP hit the nail on the head by putting over a million muslims in concentration camps. Oh and Falun Gong practitioners + Tibetan monks were simply sleeper agents.

Now, that I think of it - yes. You're right. I can't trust the Chinese government at all. To the CCP, anyone who criticizes the government is a potential terrorist.

What is Edward Snowden, then? Will he be greeted with open arms when returning to the USA, or immediately end up in a black site? He criticized the real government of the USA, not the sham you see on news media.

Edward Snowden is newsworthy because he is one person; he is the exception.

The CCP categorizing tens of thousands of its own citizens in Hong Kong as terrorists and a million plus in the western part of the country as potential terrorists isn't even remotely the same thing.

https://theintercept.com/2014/07/23/blacklisted/

What about the 1-3 million people in Chinese concentration camps (excuse me, "re-education camps")?

1-3 million? That seems like a pretty big range of uncertainty. What are your sources?

This estimate gives 1.5 million [1], this gives 1-3 million. [2][3]

[1] http://www.jpolrisk.com/brainwashing-police-guards-and-coerc...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-concentrationca...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/world/asia/trump-china-ui...

For perspective on that number, there are 2.2 million African Americans in prison camps.

First, that number is simply incorrect. It is about 1/4 of that number.

Second, while America has a serious prison issue (the highest incarceration rate in the world? really??), the current state of affairs of African-Americans isn't really comparable to the treatment of Uighurs, Tibetans and Falun Gong practioners.

Fighting whataboutism with whataboutism. Nice.

He also leaked a lot of documents that he wasn't supposed to. He didn't just criticize the government in isolation either.

So did Daniel Ellsberg with the Pentagon papers.

> > > What is Edward Snowden, then? Will he be greeted with open arms when returning to the USA, or immediately end up in a black site?

> > He also leaked a lot of documents that he wasn't supposed to.

> So did Daniel Ellsberg with the Pentagon papers.

Daniel Ellsberg wasn't a contractor at the NSA either, though he "was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 along with other charges of theft and conspiracy, carrying a total maximum sentence of 115 years."[0]

I doubt Snowden will be so lucky as to share Ellsberg's fate of all charges being dismissed "[d]ue to governmental misconduct and illegal evidence-gathering"[0].

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg

Ellsberg himself has specifically defended Snowden, saying Snowden "made the right call" in fleeing the country [0] and "would not get a fair trial" if he returned [1].

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-nsa-...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/30/daniel...

> Ellsberg himself has specifically defended Snowden, saying Snowden "made the right call" in fleeing the country [0] and "would not get a fair trial" if he returned [1].

Hence my assertion of:

> I doubt Snowden will be so lucky as to share Ellsberg's fate ...

Yes, I'm agreeing with you and providing additional substantiation as to why a reader should believe you that Snowden would be unlikely to share Ellsberg's fate.

Edward Snowden is not currently listed as a terrorist or belonging to a terrorist group according to the US government. Here is the official list - https://www.state.gov/foreign-terrorist-organizations/

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