I am an Uighur who faced China’s concentration camps

The CCP already went unpunished with the Tibetans. Very few people in the west cared and it was before China became member of the WTO. The current administration tried to impose tariffs on China which were deemed illegal by the WTO. Maybe the west should have cared BEFORE welcoming China in the WTO.

Avoiding Chinese made products isn't a practical solution. Contract manufacturing needs to move elsewhere.

The CCP gains legitimacy from brining prosperity to the Chinese people. This prosperity is off the back of human rights violations, bullying other countries and corporate espionage. It is time we boycotted China. The whole world must turn its back on China to show this behaviour is not acceptable. It may hurt in the short term, but will benefit all of humanity in the long term.

The US is heading into a pretty contentious election, nobody is sure whether or not we're on the brink of a recession, international diplomatic relationships are in tatters. If the CCP took Taiwan right now, I don't see the US lifting a finger.

That revolution will be messy, but it's needed.

The Chinese & Vietnamese operate from the same torture book.

It's right there. They are Han Chinese and don't consider the Uighurs as their citizens or blood-brothers.

Check out the history of Brown Moses, and Bellingcat:

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

"Higgins' analyses of Syrian weapons, which began as a hobby out of his home in his spare time, are frequently cited by the press and human rights groups and have led to parliamentary discussion."

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

"Bellingcat (stylized as bell¿ngcat) is an investigative journalism website that specializes in fact-checking and open-source intelligence (OSINT). It was founded by British journalist and former blogger Eliot Higgins in July 2014. Bellingcat publishes the findings of both professional and citizen journalist investigations into war zones, human rights abuses, and the criminal underworld. The site's contributors also publish guides to their techniques, as well as case studies."

Check out some of the work being done peering into North Korea as well for ideas e.g.: "North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Center: Flood Damage Repairs Underway" https://www.38north.org/2020/10/yongbyon201022/

There is probably a lot to be learned from constructing various elements of an open-source intelligence pipeline that uses software to aggregate information from dissidents, analyze satellite imagery to identify concentration camps, provide encryption, translation, etc.

> I mean this seriously but as a lowly computer programmer is there any way we can help these poor people other than offer our sympathy?

You are not a lowly computer programmer, but a person near the top of income vertical for as long as salaried people go.

The two most potent political instruments ever are the money, and firearms. You may not have the second, but certainly have first.

Saying this, people have to ask a question not who are the bigger enemies to the civilised mankind, but who are the biggest threat. Are they are the people who perpetrate genocides in parts of the world where the light doesn't shine, or the people who cover for them in the West, while living a comfy life, and enjoying all benefits of life in a civil state.

Without any hesitation I will say that while Xis, Putins, and Sisis are the biggest enemies of the civilised mankind, but the biggest threat to civil state as we know it comes from people in the West who made their ascension to power possible.

I believe the majority opinion of WW2 historians is that the war was very well preventable, or it was possible to nip it at the bud if the West wasn't stalled in its tracks by internal political sabotage by people who were not much dissimilar to those Western politicians who now flirt with rouge regimes, and sometimes directly facilitating them.

A very good reason to think to all of HN readers who were fortunate to be born in the free world.

From my lifelong misfortune with politics, I can affirm the saying that it's much, much, much more hard to "create" new power, than it is to take, or receive existing power from somebody else.

My advise, join all major political parties, and fight, fight, fight, until you can do something real, and the money you have can help you in this a lot.

> Contact your Senators to urge them to co-sponsor the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act [0]

> Endorse the global campaign for fashion brands to end complicity in Uyghur forced labour [1]

And several other things including signing petitions you can find on their website: https://uhrp.org/what-you-can-do

[0] https://wilberforce.salsalabs.org/preventforcedlabor/index.h... [1] https://enduyghurforcedlabour.org/

I'm surprised at your surprise.

Aren't there stories about improper arrest and torture quite often?

Heck, a friend of mine was improperly arrested recently (the cops lied about what he was doing) and I actually met a guy who had been tortured (soon before I met him) by a state secret police.

I also knew a Holocaust survivor. I can't be the only person who thinks states behaving badly is more the norm than the exception?

This normalizes decorum over inconvenient truths.

@dang shadowbanned me for accurately discussing the propaganda warfare happening in US vs China relations, and the way current neo-Marxist riots tie into a long history of subversive movements.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/18/914465793/ice-a-whistleblower...

All because I said China should be regarded by the West as an enemy/hostile state. Hell, it's the one thing I can side with the current administration on.

To me China is not much different than pre-WWII Germany: over-the-top authoritarian, has ambitions to influence the direction of things at the world stage, and is currently scapegoating an ethnic minority and putting them in concentration camps.

That wasn't the first time I tried bringing those things up in a group setting. In other occasions I was only met with awkward silence too. Feels like there's some subtle but insane denial going on.

(Why was this statement made? This is a country that does not like criticism, and the routinely will try to stop it.)

After assuming goodwill, and a genuine screwup on the part of US "visa lottery," the most simple, and making sense reason is the communist infiltration of US government.

You could instead not purchase goods from companies (not countries) that actively support China in exploiting these people. (like apple) https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-forced-uighur-labor-ip...

Nayirah was propaganda.

Omir Bekali is in the unfortunate situation where when someone is abused, they will receive more help the worse their abuse which incentivizes exaggeration when people are at their worst.

But on a forum like HN where people simply don't understand the world even at a base level it's hard to know how to deal with these situations.

China needs to be stopped, so do you let these lies continue?

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

Of course, it's Wikipedia, so you'll have to dig through its references.

Also it's pretty clear that they don't care about eliminating the people - they want to eliminate the culture.

As to the larger question, most genocides stop short of literally just shooting everyone. That doesn't mean the goal still isn't eradication of a culture.

China does care about legitimacy internationally, and simply shooting millions of people into roadside ditches would be a step too far. But this process of concentration camps under the banner of combating terrorism is enough of a fig leaf, and enough of a slow progression, it doesn't generate the same sort of immediate opposition abroad. As we see here sadly.

But specifically in the case of Uighurs - you can eliminate a culture by erasing its identity, without killing the people. That seems to be what China is doing - they are not straight up killing them, just putting them in camps for "reeducation" so they behave and think like model Chinese citizens, with harsh punishments for following their original culture. That way, "Uighurs" as a group will be wiped out without necessarily killing them all.

In this context it seems to mean that it's politically easier to "re-educate" the Uighar away than straight out kill the Uighars. If some die during the process China doesn't care but it can't be accused of genocide which would raise more concern globally.

He currently lives in Netherlands while his wife and child are in Turkey.

> Keep in mind the United States likely killed and harmed much more innocent bystanders with its' own allergic immune response to 9/11. It just didn't happen on our soil. We've crossed the line in the past as well.

Crossing the line while fighting terrorism was not an acceptable action by the USA but I think it's a false equivalency to compare it to forced internment, torture, and reeducation of an entire population.

At least the USA pretended to be discerning about who they went after.

The number of “missing” Uighurs is over a million.

That was the start of Chinese persecution of the Uyghurs, but the current leadership in China has adopted a broad policy of persecuting racial minorities. I'm not sure what their ultimate motivations are but they are targeting many, if not most, of China's non-Han ethnic groups without regard to whether they pose a terrorism risk or not.

Wow, the balls on that question.

And please tell me your imagined design to "quell all terrorism" uses a blockchain. If so, do tell-- really, no detail is too small.

B.) Ozil is just a shit team player. Never attends practice, instead vacationing on Arsenal's dime. Even Arsene Wenger, one of the greatest coaches, had issues with him.

C.) Ozil is also a huge fan of Erdogan, somebody who's currently sending troops to massacre Armenia, while also genociding Turkish Kurds. There is a 5 year old conflict that began ever since he came to power

D.) What's the last country? Iran? Russia? India? Because all of those countries and some more engage in trolling activities in online forums (including HN)

Uyghurs tick all three, tibet only two. There's a reason Uyghurs are being interned en masse, where Tibet only gets heavy grid surveillance and policing. There were hundreds of terrorist attacks over the years causing thousands of death by Uyghur extremist in China, including one TianAnMen. Terrorism is by far the largest factor because the baseline guarantee by the state should be safety, so Beijing grossly overreacts, with full support of the masses. Not just the Han mind you, no one likes their planes hijacked or train stations knived.

>Money

The issue is you can't pay people to secularize. You have to brainwash. XJ is just repeat classic CCP political work + indoctorination + work camps. The dirty secret being that on balance, they work. Last I read China sunk 2.1 Trillion RMB / 300 Billion USD for the entire "security apparatus" in the region over the last few years. I mean I guess they could just cut every Uyghur a 200,000RMB / 30,000USD check and tell them to renounce Islam. Maybe you'll get some takers, but not the extremist, the primary group of concern, at the cost of pissing off 99.2% of the country. So we have education and vocational training and a little gitmo for recalcitrants.

People often repeat that idiocy, not understanding that the Chinese government is willing to put in prison every single Muslim in China if they started doing terrorist attacks on Chinese soil. The CCP doesn't have to care about the rule of law or human rights in their fights against "separatism" or "terrorism".

This is how the CCP crushed the Tibetan rebellion, a people already long forgotten by westerners who now act offended about the treatment of Uighur, like the republic of China was never a bloody dictatorship to begin with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24890813