Hacker News Reader

Comment by dustinmoris | Hacker News Reader

I am astonished by how many people claim that China has forcibly steralised women. It might very well be, but I have not seen any evidence yet.

Don't we learn anything from our past mistakes? Still waiting for anyone to find mass destruction weapons in Iran.

Standing up for human rights is great, but there is a fine line between being a good activist and being ignorant, uninformed and imperialist. A private US company cannot decide for the rest of the world if China has violated humans rights if there is no evidence for it.

View on HN

https://jamestown.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Zenz-Intern...

> I am astonished by how many people claim that China has forcibly steralised women. It might very well be, but I have not seen any evidence yet.

While yes, it's true it's very difficult to get solid data out of remote and tightly-locked-down regions of totalitarian states...

Let's be honest: if you wanted to Tweet something that convinced the world you were sterilizing Uighurs, this is what you would Tweet. "Pay no attention to that marked change in birth rate, that's just because our women are so happy now!" Yikes.

If I was an evil authoritarian leader secretly steralising women then I'd not tweet anything and tell all my other minions to not tweet anything that would raise questions.

But irrespective of what I would do myself, this tweet does neither prove for or against such actions and therefore it's not Twitter's role to silence it. Let our governments and independent investigative journalists do their work and give us a counter view if they disagree with that tweet. There was no need for Twitter to get involved. I think they did that to balance their editorial decision on Trump and to please both, the democratic party as well as the republican because social media companies fear that new legislation could harm them and so they try to appeal to everyone now.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/01/china-documents-uighur-...

There are primary sources available that are the basis of this report.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com