Forced labour takes different forms, which includes forced paid work and by some definitions penal work.
Slavery is when a person is treated as a property of another person. Being a slave may or may not involve forced labour.
In addition, calling Uyghur work “slavery” in fact undermines the cause, allowing CCP defenders to legitimately call out “fake news”. Precision matters.
Extrapolation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...
https://www.saveuighur.org/the-economics-of-chinas-organ-har...
https://theircc.org/organharvesting/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/surgeon-cla...
> But when Tohti arrived at the destination, he was shocked to find at least 10 prisoners had been shot in a field by a firing squad.
> Armed police waved the surgeon and his medical team over and directed them to a man lying unconscious on blood-soaked ground.
> Tohti said: “He’d been shot in the right-hand side of the chest but was still alive.
> “I told my chief surgeon he wasn’t dead but he ordered me to remove the man’s liver and kidneys there and then – and to be quick about it. I was ordered not to give the man any anaesthetic.”
This also seems to describe prison labor that occurs in the US, which, putting problems and criticisms aside, is definitely different from slavery. I don't think the imprecision in language is helpful, it hurts the cause in the same way people constantly referring to modern political leaders as literal Nazis hurts their credibility.
Some members from both houses of Congress have recently proposed a constitutional amendment to change this:
https://www.merkley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/The%20Abolition...
I don’t think it’s helpful to compare which atrocity is worse.
There are many societies that have had lots of norms or laws protecting slaves from various forms of harm. That’s of course not to say slavery was acceptable in those societies on any level, but many slaves lived more comfortable lives than those who eventually died of malnutrition at Auchwitz-II.
What is reported to be happening to Muslims now in Xinjang, with reeducation camps and all, is not the same as treating a human as another piece of personal property. It is both not as bad, and yet at the same time somehow even worse, as this time a whole culture is being systematically eliminated.
The Constitution refers to it directly as slavery. The 13th says "except as punishment for a crime." Folks may want to mince words about it because prisoners are technically paid (pennies per hour), if they are even getting paid in the first place. It was major news that prisoners were sent to fight fires in California for little to no pay. Plus, prisoners are on the hook financially for a lot of their sentence, so that money is basically spent before they even get it.
Just to make sure nobody is confused by this, because the subject comes up a lot - prisoner firefighers are volunteers.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/07/20/538062911/wh... [What's It Really Like To Work In A Prison Goat Milk Farm? We Asked Inmates]
But what do the workers themselves think?
I find Jeremiah Pate in the milking barn, attaching milking machines to the goats' udders.
"This job, how do you feel about it?" I ask him. "A bad thing? Good thing?"
"It's a great thing," Pate tells me. "It beats the alternative. Rather than sitting in your tiny little cell, you get to come out here."
Every man I meet echoes that thought. They aren't thinking about what was fair on the outside. They were just thinking about their options in prison, and in that perspective, the farm looked pretty good.
You're making the case that it is involuntary. "Do this or we shall do to you something worse against your will" is textbook coercion.
It's not like they're forced to work; and if they take the option, they're still under punishment doled by the justice system. So it's not immoral forced labor as long as neither the work or the jail cell constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment".
Well, I would say, the lines get blurry. And when you have private prisons, where the owners have a incentive to exploit prison labour, while also keeping their costs low - you end up in something, too close to slavery for my taste.
I think it's reasonable to hold the belief that the punishment, especially in today's prison system, is not just.
By your logic, the Uighurs are experiencing "just" punishment under the laws of the People's Republic of China.
Since the Uighurs have committed "crimes" (as defined by the government under which they live) against the state, they are subject to whatever punishment is prescribed by the law.
This is, of course, ridiculous on its face. And is just as ridiculous anywhere else.
There are valid reasons to separate some folks from the rest of society (think John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, etc.), as they've shown themselves to be unable/unwilling to respect the rights of others within that society.
Incarceration as a tool of punishment, while widely used, often poses more risk of harming society than any benefit from "punishing" offenders.
It's a complex issue, and simplifying it to "Law and order! Lock 'em up!" is reductive and often detrimental to the societies it's supposed to improve.
I was aware of that when responding. In fact, when I said:
"There are valid reasons to separate some folks from the rest of society (think John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, etc.), as they've shown themselves to be unable/unwilling to respect the rights of others within that society.
Incarceration as a tool of punishment, while widely used, often poses more risk of harming society than any benefit from "punishing" offenders.
It's a complex issue, and simplifying it to "Law and order! Lock 'em up!" is reductive and often detrimental to the societies it's supposed to improve."
I was specifically referring to my home, the USA.
>> "It's a great thing," Pate tells me. "It beats the alternative. Rather than sitting in your tiny little cell, you get to come out here."
>> They were just thinking about their options in prison, and in that perspective, the farm looked pretty good.
You're making the point of OP. When the only other option is "sitting in your tiny little cell", there's not much choice in it. It's less volunteering, and more escaping a psychologically untenable situation.
Given other options, I doubt many inmates would be willing to 'volunteer' or work for peanuts.
There is no free choice in that question. Just an illusion of one.
Just FYI, most of the non-prisoner firefighters in California are also volunteers. In my district (north Solano county), 90% of firefighters are volunteers. We don't get paid.
Firefighting jobs are the most coveted because you get to leave prison grounds, and as of 2020, can now be employed as a firefighter upon release (in CA).
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/08/20/california...
This distinction seems like us trying to protect our own interests in regards to keeping slavery legal in the United States too.
As others have mentioned, the 13th Amendment explicitly carves out forced labor as a legal form of slavery under a course of punishment. Referring to it as slavery does nothing to diminish the atrocities of chattel slavery.
I don't see this as a reason to cut off the discussion. Trying to distance forced labor from slavery may seem incosiderate to those who had to endure the former.
There's no escaping the inconsideration considerations, so I prefer to discuss the topic at hand without that baggage.
- slavery is allowed explicitly for prison labor,
- there was a concerted effort after the end of slavery to put former slaves and their descendants into things that were almost like slavery, including mass incarceration
It makes no difference, both are the same in being the most exemplary form of class warfare, and are equally terrible.
Trying to draw a line in between them is a very petty attempt to claim that one is somehow less worse, or even somehow more legitimate than other.
It could be interesting would journalists on the Gruniad have to give up using macs then.
"We rely on our suppliers sharing our values and complying with all laws at all times. We expect our business partners to treat people with dignity and respect and not to engage in practices associated with forced labor, even if not illegal in their location"
Doesn't matter. That's a crap argument.
First, because enlarging some things (which necessitates belittling others) can help put an end to them.
Second, because forced labor and slavery are not that far off anyway. Both are depriving a person of their agency and steal their time and effort.
Third, because slavery itself was historically a spectrum. There were "domestic slaves" (sorta like Stephen in Django), cooks, nannys, teachers and "butler" types in charge of estate work in ancient Rome and Greece, etc.) that were treated and worked more or less like modern employees (except from the forced labor), even slaves in management of other slaves, and slaves that were chained, worked to the bone, beaten, raped, etc.
That's called chattel slavery. Just because something isn't chattel slavery doesn't mean it isn't still slavery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery
"Slavery relies heavily on the enslaved person being intimidated either by the threat of violence or some other method of abuse. In chattel slavery, the enslaved person is legally rendered the personal property (chattel) of the slave owner."
‘CCP defenders’ and other apologists will make bad-faith arguments no matter how precise you are.
As near as I can tell the Uighurs' "offense" is being of a different ethnicity and being majority Muslim. What the Chinese are doing here is very close to what the USA did in its first century with African slaves.
However, using the term “slavery” gives CCP ammunition to fight back. They can point out that Uyghurs are paid. They can claim they are free to refuse (we know they will not out of fear of retribution, but I suspect the need for such nuance only hurts the case).
...
> The situation anywhere is such that for anyone it is in fact impossible to decline to do what the state says
FTFY
As long as you have a police force and prisons, you'll never be able to NOT do what the state says.
Now, it's a matter of:
- do you disagree with what the state does?
- do you agree with what the state does?
And all the positions between these 2 extremes.
On one end, you have anarchists (and what the state would call terrorists)
On the other end, you have statists (and what the anarchists would call authoritarians/fascists/wumao)
I just don't want anarchists to be fooled into supporting the warmongering US propaganda.
i.e. do you agree that the state should have the power to do what's described above?
I was leaning to say more "no". I basically used to be more of an anarchist. That was probably (also) because I was disappointed in our cronyist, capitalist, disfunctional governments...
I'm now finding myself as more of a statist, after realizing how much good is being accomplished in China, and how arbitrary and ridiculous are the falsehoods that the US propaganda is pushing.
By refusing to criticize them, you are just doing their work for them and giving them a free pass.
Humans are disappointing, though I am encouraged by the abundance of others calling this out the same.