Uyghur kids detail abuse at China's boarding schools in Xinjiang
npr.org
npr.org
No but seriously -- whether someone pops in with a serious change, or absolutely zero changes, what does that tell us about Uyghur oppression? What are you getting at?
The only way the leadership of our country (I'm assuming most of us are in the US) is going to impose real sanctions and penalties on China is if we, as a people, vehemently demand it.
Personally, I am attempting to persuade those within my company that we restrict our business with China. This does not typically go over well, because 1) there's a lot of money in China, and 2) there are many Chinese nationals in our employ who very much do not like people pointing out the human rights violations of their country.
Can anyone point to a change or sacrifice a senator has made to their beliefs after receiving a letter? I'm guessing a check would be more persuasive.
Iirc, 8 people in total contacted a particular state rep (well, their office), and that law was given the time of day because turns out, _very very_ few people ever try to get in contact with them.
Now, this was a state senator, not a US senator, but still, it only takes a very small (but very vocal!) minority to at least signal concern. China is obviously a much bigger issue and there are greater powers pushing back against any kind of real action. But it does send a message.
Advisory votes are non-binding and ignored.
When people write in and the rep pays attention, they were going to pay attention anyway and just use the write in things to pander to their constituents and pretend as if it mattered.
Yes, you should, because if there has been abuses of political power to engage in fraud, it should be investigated, and until then she should recuse herself from anything that may cast a doubt on her actions.
Who knew that in fact, it would work, work big, get bigger and bigger and now thousands of super smart, unknown desk jockeys are nosing into your details, while there is sliding s** social problems right now? Who knew? not you or I.. I dont hate them for being super filthy rich in their 80s, and I dont disagree with many things they have done. She and her husband are personally very smart, have done kind things, have colleagues that did not succeed that they care about.. Its messy. I didnt build that business, I did not have the credit, focus or insight. I was getting high at a PJ Harvey concert when no one knew about her, or something. I get to decide what is right now and change it? entertaining writing by me, but one letter from me to her office is not the snowball that starts the avalanche, this is a serious heavy systems problem.
Except in the case of vacancies, every US citizen has either 0 (because they are not a citizen of a state despite being a citizen of the U.S.) or 2 (because every state has two, and they are elected at-large not by-district, unlike Representatives) U.S. Senators; if one of yours is Dianne Feinstein, the other is Alex Padilla, whose spouse did not personally create the China-shipping-products pipeline.
You also have a U.S. Representative, as well.
So yes, if the olympics is a failure because people boycott it then it hurts their pride because they have built their pride around such events.
I was recently pleasantly surprised to see that the M1 iMac was made in Thailand.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u... ("Apple is lobbying against a bill aimed at stopping forced labor in China")
After going to Thailand and seeing the situation there first hand, I’ve decided to never buy a Thai product ever again.
Thailand is the place where I felt like I could be arrested for being slightly out of line and had to tread very carefully. People in China had no problem complaining about their government, and there aren't portraits of their dear leader plastered everywhere like in Thailand.
I also never saw people openly using drugged up and sedated kids as a begging tool in China, but I sure did in Thailand.
The perception of the countries always feels astonishingly backwards to me.
2. Going to fund the development (since I can't do this myself) of a browser plugin to help people find non-China goods on Amazon easily. Just two features: Remove Chinese origin items from the search list, and display a warning on the item page when it's made in China.
3. Support Tibetans by buying things they make, visiting their businesses etc.
I also do 3 whenever I get a chance, which is rare btw.
I've managed to spread this habit to a few of friends of mine but for the most part most don't seem to care. Often the reason being it's just cheaper to buy Chinese made.
Human greed knows no bounds. Most people seem happy to put their head in the sand. I feel with time this type of movement can grow stronger though.
Good point about browser fingerprinting.
I published 'Country of Origin : India' browser extension a year ago[1][2] which whitelists made in India products on Amazon(.in) by hiding others. As a research to find if people are really willing to put money where their mouth is, But the latest trade data shows that in-spite of anti-China sentiment being all time high; People are not reflecting it in their purchases[3].
Perhaps it would be different in a country with higher purchasing power, There are other extensions which labels USA, UK etc. which might deserve your funding. But there might not be an extension which blacklists a particular country and wouldn't be surprised if it's against ToS.
[1] Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/country-of-or...
[2] Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/country-of-origin-...
[3] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/foreign-tr...
But, as we have witnessed so far, sometimes the money spigot is too good and you just make motions and pretensions --like LeBron James and Tim Cook.
2) I regularly speak out on CGTN (their global propaganda network that post on websites regular Chinese citizens don't have a right to access) on their social media pages using my personal account with my real identity. This has probably cut me off from the country and jobs that do lots of business there.
3) I talk politics with family and friends. I never bring up politics at the table, except for this subject. I know I probably lost a handful of "friends" because of that. Never mind. People often ask/brag about what they would have done during WW2 to fight Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire, I always point out what they are doing right now with China.
Did you vote to boycott China? That is what matters for these things.
If there is indeed a violation of international treaties, escapees should be able to sue China in Brussels or NYC at the International Criminal Court.
This is the proper way to deal with such issues: by shining a bright light and not engaging in "feel good" actions that will be at best futile, at worst increase anti-Chinese racism.
The last time a sanction actually worked was with Iran's nuclear program, which completely crushed their economy. That also required the most sophisticated cyberattack in history. Sanctions alone did nothing to stop Russia's annexation of Crimea, and that also caused Europe to suffer from expensive gas prices. China has a much large economy, so any equivalent sanction would be the largest drag on the economy since WWII.
Also, keep in mind that any sanction use for humanitarian leverage is one less that we can use for geopolitical or economic leverage. The likelyhood that politicians would vote for meaningful sanctions to help Xinjiang is about as likely as voting for offering China $1 trillion to shut down their reeducation camps.
> Under the watchful gaze of their father, the two ethnically Uyghur children say that their heads were shaved and that class monitors and teachers frequently hit them, locked them in dark rooms and forced them to hold stress positions as punishment for perceived transgressions.
> By the time they were able to return home to Turkey in December 2019, they had become malnourished and traumatized. They had also forgotten how to speak their mother tongues, Uyghur and Turkish. (The children were being raised in Turkey but got forcibly sent to boarding school during a family visit to China.)
Holy shit, that's horrifying. Literally the state just kidnapping kids and brainwashing and abusing them. It's like China's government is going out of their way to maximize evil.
I wasn't aware the US or Canadian governments had institutionalized these kinds of punishment (or similar) to specifically indigenous people in a peaceful period. Was this really the case and were could I read more about it?
In any case I don't think it's fair to compare present crimes of a country with past crimes of another, if anything, it would be fair to compare present crimes of both countries. It's hard to find a country a century ago that didn't behave like an absolute savage.
> It's hard to find a country a century ago that didn't behave like an absolute savage.
Behaving like a "savage" has very little to do with time but where countries are in their development. Reality is countries who has capability to address restive minorities until they're merely marginalized or managable, will. That's prerequisite to internal security and domestic serenity. And there's no non-savage way of doing it, pretending we live in an enlightened age doesn't make the underlying tensions and security dilemmas go away. Just about the "best" we can expect is less bloody systems of integration (cultural genocide), that's what's happening in XJ, plenty of carrots along with the sticks. It's how most of PRC was harmonized, now it's simply XJ's turn (and other previously unreachable restive populations) because PRC has the resources to reach that far. The upside is CCP doesn't half ass these things, chances are Uyghurs will be sinicized and more integrated in PRC society before Canada solves it's Indigenous issues or US/EU their minority issues. It's the alternative to platitudes like "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice". And that scares people.
Native American population jumps to largest size in modern history [0]
Tribal sovereignty in the United States [1]
Native American Day – September 23, 2022 [2]
Whatever the crime is you're referring to, it's not comparable, are Uighurs given autonomous zones, allowed to celebrate custom holidays and are at their historical population peak?
When you say Native American are undergoing a cultural erasure comparable to the one in China, where Uighurs are in concentration camps to force them lose their culture and identity, I think you'll have to bring more proof than some "ongoing controversies".
[0] https://www.axios.com/census-native-american-alaska-populati...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_sovereignty_in_the_Un...
> it's not comparable,
Full designation of XJ is Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), modelled after Soviet oblasts which grants minority extra autonomy (and other AA privileges) relative to other PRC administrative subdivisions. Uyghurs at historic population peak and growing even with depressed birthrate via enforcement of family planning. Traditional customs are celebrated, it's heavily pushed / virtue signalled in state propaganda. The new securitization layer is reflection of systemic prosecution in North America where some minorities just happen to be disproportionately represented in jail/programs because the laws were tweaked to fit certain interests. It's the same playbook, whereas PRC interest involves actually integrating minorities whereas interests in west continues to be marginalizing them.
>When you say Native American are undergoing a cultural erasure comparable to the one in China
I'm more saying Uyghurs are finally undergoing cultural erasure comparable to Indigenous peoples in North America. PRC is playing catch-up. Uyghur culture was spared from hard colonization due to logistics until recently. Manifest destiny across Taklamakan Desert too difficult until PRC gained wealth, same with Tibetan plateau. Current PRC repression is merely kicking Uyghurs down to where Indigenous North Americans are now at - sinicizing Uyghurs to the same level North American indigenous peoples have already been westernized. The fact that huge percentage of Uyghurs need to be thrown into reeducation centres to learn Chinese, whereas Indigenous peoples in NA's lingua franca is English shows how much PRC still needs to erase/reprogram. Also sinicization =/= become Han, it's Uyghurs with Chinese characteristics, who will follow Islam with Chinese characteristics (WIP), not imported Salafism. They're not making Uyghurs buddhists. Nor Tibetans atheists. But autonomous regions has to at least direct cultural development in ways that mesh with the country as a whole. What US has already successfully done with history of different repression instruments to coerce restive populations into the melting pot. Literally the model PRC wants to emulate vs previous salad bowl / multicultural oblast model with relatively hands off minority policy. What Canada alleges it is but isn't.
PRC is trying to squeeze 100+ years of western cultural genocide in one generation, without the literal genocide. 10 years from now, PRC would be perfectly content with having english speaking Uyghurs practicing historically tame branch of Islam and mope about their loss of culture and marginalization. Aka, become harmless. But since there's 12+ million of them concentrated in a single region, the sights are set a little higher. If they're lucky they'll get a few mid tier southern cities that will remain predominantly Uyghur, Uyghur patronage networks will get rich of resource exploitation, folks with 1/32 Uyghur with use it to get affirmative action perks for entrance exams etc. PRC is straight up copying western model, but with less blood spilled using modern tech and greater state capacity. North America is just further along the process.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_sch...
"During a peaceful period" seems like a bit of a built-in excuse for the US when it was causing conflict with indigenous people by colonizing them and displacing them from their land.
> In any case I don't think it's fair to compare present crimes of a country with past crimes of another.
Why not? If country A committed an atrocity decades ago that largely achieved its objective for the dominant group, and that country still hasn't really atoned for it, it's no surprise that country B would try the same tactics now when they're looking to commit a cultural genocide.
I agree there are similarities in so far both countries committed heinous crimes. However that 150 year hindsight China has is not something that should be overlooked, in fact, given identical crimes, I can't think of a worse aggravator.
The next should be "if we (in the US) think this is horrible, what are we doing to try to make it right with indigenous people in our own country, where we actually have influence over the state's policies?", not "whoops, guess if we acknowledge the US did that too it can't be that bad."
1. I didn't talk about should, I describe the problem with parent comment i.e. immorality of normalization. I have heard such justification before which goes to similar next step. That next step was what the normalizers might say.
2. It's from the point of white washers not the moral stand point that you depicts
3. As a proof, just check the comment in this section by @dirtyid which describe the 'next' I talked about:
> Behaving like a "savage" has very little to do with time but where countries are in their development.
Again, If it wasn't clear originally, What I liked to bring attention to is the white-washing (normalization) of tyrannies. It has been done for Nazis and it's currently being done in western journalists and lobbyist. Look at any sort of authoritarian atrocity and you'll see a white washer in NY or DC normalizing it.
> "If we cried, the 'older brother' made us stand still facing the wall or hit us," says Lütfullah, now 8.
> When children didn't follow orders or learn quickly enough, their teacher would put them into a stress position they call "the motorcycle," the children say. Aysu and Lütfullah demonstrate: two arms stretched out front, knees bent in a half-squat, which they held for several minutes.
> But they say the worst punishment was being sent to the school's basement. Lütfullah says the teachers told him ghosts lived there, and children including him were locked there in the dark, alone, for hours at a time.
Hopefully someday the Chinese government atones for their crimes. Anyone with children knows how heartbreaking this is.
I mean, it's immoral, but looking at history, forced assimilation has succeeded many times - it's just that it takes a lot of time (century+, certainly more than any individual's lifetime) and when it does, we now think of the assimilated people as an inherent part of the assimilating nation. The currently visible examples are just exceptions, either the ones where it has failed as the "assimilating empire" became weak and assimilation stopped/reversed, or the cases where it's recent and ongoing and won't succeed until after I'm dead (but that doesn't mean it won't succeed).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...
I have read Blackhawk's memoirs, because it's such a part of my community, but nobody knows it.
There were extenuating circumstances (the British gun-running down the Mississipi).
U.S. forces suffered important defeats (Campbell's Island, and the Battle of Credit Island that humbled future president Zachary Taylor.)
I learned from another source that Blackhawk had a favorite teacup in his preferred trader's house (George Davenport), prior to his revolt.
Are we truly clean to judge?
What kind of weird deflection is this?
The US having done some horrible stuff in the past (or present) doesn't somehow excuse China doing horrible things too.
Heaven forbid!
If someone posts an English article from Deutsche Welle, should we assume everyone commenting on it is German?
But people living in Europe had their own much longer history of genocides. Example, I'm Italian. If I could look back into my family tree for 2 or 3 millenia I'm sure I'll find all sort of nasty and nice people. Somebody who fought their local wars, somebody invaded by Latins, some Latin invader, somebody who went invading other countries, somebody invading Italy in the last 2k years, somebody that had a part in the few colonial wars fought by Italy in the last centuries, etc. Somebody from a family branch probably went to the USA or any other expanding country and they of their descendants had their share of helping killing off native people.
Replace Italy with another European county. They could have had a less nasty ancient history but they are likely to have a more recent nastier one. And replace with most countries around the world, they still have some huge or small stains in their history.
So this actually applies to nearly all people alive now. This means that we should condone China because they are doing what our ancestors did, maybe on different scale or maybe canceling cultures not by indoctrination but by removing heads from bodies? I don't think so. What's important is what we do, not what ancestors did. But don't forget what they did.
“If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her”
https://www.gotquestions.org/without-sin-cast-first-stone.ht...
What blessed this generation with a wisdom not seen before?
What, precisely?
Does sovereignty still exist?
People do as they do.
All the weeping in the world will not make it so.
I imagine the answer should be, "pretty much anyone who isn't a child abuser."
No other realm may decide the fate of these people.
China is sovereign, and we must acknowledge that.
What does that mean to you, exactly?
Stalin and Mao agreed in a fateful moment to take a side with the U.S.
The adversaries perished.
We are left to decide amongst and between ourselves what to do.
In the U.S., I believe that all people are created equal.
That is not the universal belief.
>> China is sovereign, and we must acknowledge that.
I call BS.
Sovereignty is not an excuse for genocide or child abuse.
Would you accept the abuses described in the NPR report if they happened to you or your children?
Yaa, I heard they're locking kids up in cages, leaving them exposed to Covid.
Oh no, that is what the US is doing to Mexican kids.
We would wish for a better world.
Not all the wishing in the world would make it so.
Just imagine if free and fair trade hadn't happen in the U.S. in 1776.
What would we be, in 1972? I shudder to think.
Despite all that, or maybe thanks to having recognized the errors in our ways, we have grown into a democracy that now truly respect cultural differences.
Look at free speech here in the US, vs say in Austria or Germany: after WW2, they banned everything nazi related. We have some crazies marching down in full uniforms. Yet they are the one with a neonazi problem- not us. How come?
What is happening is sad and horrible, but at the society level, these are growing pains. You can't force enlightenment onto societies by force.
Not only is it possible for an American to condemn abuse of children, they have a moral duty to do so. It is also a requirement that China hold America to account for what America and Americans have done, in the past and today.
But any news outlet has not only a right but a duty to denounce human rights abuses everywhere.
Prior to the U.S. government, smallpox was aggressively dispersed in the Americas, removing 90% of the native population.
Are we willing to indict Spain?
If not, why not? I am no more guilty than they.
(I have karma to burn, feel free.)
It's good that some places have stopped it now. it's not good that some are still continuing to do so - and need to be stopped. Past abuses do not excuse or justify current ones, they are in an entirely different moral category that things which are happening now and can be changed (unlike tha past). The cases like the smallpox ones are condemnable and condemned, and we should not suffer anyone doing that now or in the future, no matter if it's USA or China or anyone else.
Our age implies intransigence.
We're like your obnoxious uncle.
https://www.voanews.com/a/who-is-that-chinese-troll/3540663....
No one is ever a paid shill for US imperialism, NED grants are for independent thinkers...
We're aware enough to change.
It is a fact, today, go to streets of many cities and towns in xinjiang, Kashgar, Urumqi, Aksu, you will see kids running around on the streets, speaking in Ughur, Kazakh. Many Uyghur kids speak Uyghur among themselves. You will see cities signs in both Uyghur and mandarin. If Chinese government really have these "boarding schools" to completely ban minority languages, why would kids still speak them on the streets? Why would you have Uyghur on street signs!
If these schools, kids are treated "heads were shaved and that class monitors and teachers frequently hit them", why would you still see Uyghur kids runing on the street, playing, and look happy??
The fact is this, all schools in Xinjiang will teach Manderian and Uyghur. Schools will also have many classes on Uyghur cultures. Here is a interview at a school in xinjiang https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-H49vUhPDg&ab_channel=%E9%B...
There are 20 Million Uyghur people in China. If Chinese government's treatment of Uyghur children at schools is "shaving their heads and teachers beating them", I would think everyone will revolt and try to escape the country. Yet, why would over 20 million Uyghur people still live in xinjiang, seems to be fine with sending their kids to school?
The reason why China has boarding schools is people live far from the school. Often in less populated locations like xinjiang have to travel for hours for a school that is properly funded and staffed. But it's parents decision to have their kids to stay at the school or not. I went to boarding school myself. My parents pick me up on weekends. I actually loved my time at boarding school, it was great to get away from my parents and hang out with friends all day.
And reading through the article, many questionable lines jump out.
"Teachers came by for a mandatory bed inspection before the children could line up for breakfast, usually corn or rice porridge.", Not even Chinese prisons serve this stuff as punishment. Who would be willingly do this to kids even if this was prescribed by government? The people running the schools are humans too. You think that hundreds of thousands of school staff will do this to kids? shave their heads, commit the other physical and mental abuses at kids mentioned in this article? Only a sick, psychotic, out right crazy person would do that. I don't know about you, but as a Chinese, in my whole life, the Chinese people I know do have compassion. I can say that when it comes to kids, we do love kids. Sure, Chinese parents and teachers do punish children. But that is because people believe punishment is needed to educate kids, to make children grow up into better person. But deep down and bottom line is, people still adore and love kids, want to protect kids. Hey, regardless of everything else, Chinese people are human. And all humans do have hearts. And all humans are more like each other than their are different.
And now, even the culture of punishing kids are changing. Recently, Chinese government banned all manners of punishment from schools. Teachers caught doing so are being fired. If what is described here is true, the parents can sue the teacher and the school. They will win the suit and even get reimbursements.
"She made the children laghman, Uyghur-style noodles, and Aysu cried. She was served Uyghur food only twice while she was at the state boarding school, but both times older classmates ate it all before she could take a bite." - seems like the article is claiming the school tried to reduce exposure to Uyghur food to rid off kids cultural connection Uyghur. Go to Xinjiang, and you will see Uyghur restaurants everywhere. If the government is trying to ban Uyghur culture and banning food is a way to do that, why would they allow so many Uyghur restaurants running freely? Also, a Uyghur person doesn't need to flee to Turkey to get Uyghur food, they are available everywhere in xinjiang, all run by Uyghur people themselves, freely. Yes, Uyghur people are free to open their restaurants, open businesses, why would they be go to forced labor at factories?
“The children said they were taught in only Mandarin Chinese for six days a week, and students who spoke without permission or spoke Uyghur were hit with rulers” - again, if the schools is mandated by the government to ban and punish kids from speaking mother tongue, why would you see kids and adult alike on the streets walking freely and speak Uyghur?
Also, if the father in the story is on Chinese government's radar, and Chinese government arrested his children, sent them and punished them at state boarding school, physically and mentally punish them, why would Chinese government still allow him and his children to leave the country? So they could go aboard, speak to the media, publicize these "atrocities", and get international sanctions and punishment on China? So the only explanation is that Chinese government didn't specially target them. At worst, the children were treated like any other children. If a lot of children were treated like this in xinjiang, then how do you explain the free-running, Uyghur speaking kids on the streets?
Also, Uyghur people are in all walks of life in China right now. For example, many top actors and actresses are Uyghur, like Dilraba Dilmurat. What are presented in these stories are truly terrible, from treatment of kids, 1 million imprisioned, to so-called forced labor and forced sterilization. I am sure everyone will able to sympathize and everyone will revolt if they see these happening in front of them. But 20 million Uyghur people still live in China today, they seems to be okay with the lives they are living. We don't see massive uprising in xinjiang or exodus of refugees. Doesn't that contradict even a slight bit to the narrative presented?
Nazi Germany murdered 6 million Jews. Nobody is being killed in Xinjiang. Before the Holocaust, the Nazis very openly espoused a theory of racial purity, called the Jews parasites, and passed race laws that systematically separated Jews and "Aryans." Nothing of the sort is happening in Xinjiang. In fact, the Chinese government espouses exactly the opposite view: equality of all ethnic groups.
It's possible to talk about abuses in Xinjiang without engaging in massive, offensive exaggeration and comparing it to the Holocaust.
China vs Islam. I would love to know what comes up on top. Which is the bigger baddie?
ID=rayiner, as far as I know there's no user tagging for hackernews, but I KNOW you've see seen the post. What's your opinion?