> That's not the same as putting people into prison because their religious beliefs make them enemies of the state.
Isn't this what some people ended up in Guantanamo Bay for?
Edit: TIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_detainees_at_Guantanamo...
Also, the U.S. didn't 'get away with' Guantanamo. It was a big news cycle and the prison is nearly shut down now, and operates with much more consideration for the prisoners, giving them access to counsel and repatriating then when able.
Normal numbers are zero.
> Also, the U.S. didn't 'get away with' Guantanamo
Who ended up in prison for it?
Name a government that hasn't abused it's power at one point. Not sure what your definition of normal is in this instance.
> Who ended up in prison for it?
I'd be ok if China simply stopped what they are doing without sending anyone to prison.
To answer your question though, no one. It's hard to prosecute individuals for an organization's failings without dismantling the organization, which is the US military in this case. The best we can hope for is fixes to prevent such abuses inches future, which we got.
Many Americans, myself included, wish some people were put away, and also sincerely hope that the perpetrators of abuses in Xinjiang find similar ends.
Many people of the rest of the world wish for the responsible US politicians to be put away. I hope the American perpetrators find similar ends.
Its an awful kind of mockery to see the US displaying themselves as the hand of justice in the Xinjiang situation. I wish countries like the Netherlands or Switzerland would do it instead, their hands are much, much cleaner.
This is the same kind of mockery as having Saudi Arabia on the UN panel for womens rights.
Me too, not sure what that has to do with anything.
> Many people of the rest of the world wish for the responsible US politicians to be put away. I hope the American perpetrators find similar ends.
ok? Not sure where that fits in though.
> Its an awful kind of mockery to see the US displaying themselves as the hand of justice in the Xinjiang situation. I wish countries like the Netherlands or Switzerland would do it instead, their hands are much, much cleaner.
If you consider doing nothing at all about bad things happening clean, then sure. Also, your diction leads me to believe you are Chinese yourself, so maybe a little bias?
> This is the same kind of mockery as having Saudi Arabia on the UN panel for womens rights.
The US doesn't have over a million people in a concentration camp right now, so I don't see the similarity.
> Me too, not sure what that has to do with anything.
Nothing about the topic at hand. It's a distraction, an OT axe to grind, or both.
Other than that the US kidnaps people from various countries, often without approval of the country where the kidnapping happens, brings the rebel (patriot?) to Guantanamo Bay without even trial by US legal system and waterboards and tortures them and holds them indefinitely - although some are realized to be the wrong identity and let go - there is another point...
...Cuba has denounced the US military occupation of Guantanamo Bay for decades, and requested the US to leave. So this is happening against the wishes of the country it is happening in.
It's not a military occupation in the sense you imply. It is a perpetual lease made between the US and Cuba. [1]
[1] https://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/cnrse/installations/ns_gua...
(and also, how could I forget, "these Uighurs aren't prisoners, they're just people who, realizing their mistakes, kindly happened to voluntarily come here for education")
The remainder of the comment illustrates some very obvious examples of this from the past.
> U.S. control of Guantánamo Bay came about through the end of the Spanish-American war and the Platt Amendment. This amendment was initiated in 1903 and outlined seven conditions for the U.S. withdrawal from Cuba. The United States intervened at the end of the Spanish-American War, taking credit for Cuban independence from Spain. The Platt Amendment was an amendment to the Cuban constitution that supposedly gave Cuba sovereignty, however it included conditions that allowed for U.S. intervention and the ability for the United States to lease or buy lands in order to establish naval bases. The U.S. was allowed to create up to four naval bases on the island of Cuba, but only ever built one, at Guantánamo Bay. The Platt Amendment was repealed in 1934, which is why the Cuban government considers the U.S. occupation of Guantánamo Bay illegal.
"conditions for the U.S. withdrawal from Cuba" = military force. "perpetual lease" my ass.
"A 1934 treaty reaffirming the lease granted Cuba and her trading partners free access through the Bay, modified the lease payment from $2,000 in gold coins per year to the 1934 equivalent value of $4,085 U.S. dollars, and added a requirement that termination of the lease requires the consent of both the U.S. and Cuban governments, or the U.S. abandonment of the base property."
[1] https://www.cnic.navy.mil/regions/cnrse/installations/ns_gua...
Yes. I called the 1934 document a lease, but it was actually a treaty that also included a modified form of the earlier lease's provisions.
In 1934, a new Cuban-American Treaty of Relations,
reaffirming the lease, granted Cuba and its trading
partners free access through the bay, modified the lease
payment from $2,000 in U.S. gold coins per year to the
1934 equivalent value of $4,085 in U.S. dollars,
and made the lease permanent unless both governments
agreed to break it, or until the U.S. abandoned the base
property. [1]
United States - Cuban Agreements and Treaty of 1934 [2]
Cuban–American Treaty of Relations (1934)
Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Law Library [3]
Cuban–American Treaty of Relations (1934) [4]
[2] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_-_Cuban_Agreeme...
[3] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/dip_cuba001.asp
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban%E2%80%93American_Treaty_...
Were the Japanese released from that internment? Yes. Were they genocided? No. Were they stripped of their culture, heritage, social lives, and tortured for decades due to their beliefs? No. Does the US today recognize the Japanese internment as a moral crime? Yes.
That last one is a critical difference between cultures.
In China today you can't even discuss what's going on in Xinjiang.
You are of course lambasting the US, on a US website. Nothing bad will happen to you because of that. And in this thread you won't find thousands of bots attempting to say that the Japanese internment is ok, or otherwise justify that it should have happened; instead, most of the replies are fully agreeing that it was atrocious. Try that in China, see what happens.
Not only is it recognized as a moral crime, but the US government passed a law to give restitution to interned people. Does that clean the slate? No. Does that make it ok? No, of course not.
The point is not that the US is perfect or even good. The point is that the US system allows open discussion, criticism, protest, legislating, etc. It has built-in mechanisms to improve itself which it has done and continues to do.
China has none of that.
Is the US government less effectively repressive of dissent than the PRC? Sure. But it still does tend to violently repress dissent, especially when that is about conduct of policing or war.
Yes, the US has done bad things. And some of those bad things have been forgotten. But if you want to find out about them... the government is not going to prevent you from doing so. China is much worse in that regard.
As a side node/regarding initial topic, I also really dislike the quick jump to "whataboutism" to try and kill off any form of discussion that draws parallels and comparisons with other countries (or, to anything else more generally). Because this is unfortunately how it mostly gets used today.
You absolutely can, they openly put it on their own government websites and everything even. These measures are written into public law. All of this is behind some misleading language of course, but chinese people aren't stupid. People, especially in Xinjiang, being aware of what's going on is in fact beneficial to the government, as it serves as a warning to anyone who might resist in the future.
> coughinternment of japanesecough
cough2022-70=1952cough
That was also like three generations ago: there are a lot of things that happened in the US at that time that the US itself now roundly condemns.
You may return with this comparison when the PRC makes a formal apology to the Uyghurs, pays reparations, and teaches about the Xinjiang camps in schools as a shameful event of Chinese history.
What’s also interesting is that towards the late 80s and 90s the USA was really warming up to China at a time when they were carrying out pretty horrible atrocities, far worse than the USSR, but that was the political agenda of the time.
A “few signature cases”??
I completely agree that what China is doing is completely wrong, immoral and bordering on genocide but let’s not swing too far the other way here.
The US has used the prison system to persecute black people en mass for the past 70 years. Look at differing rates of incarceration and length of sentences.
On top of that, the reason that the US has the highest prison population is because of the war on drugs, which the US has long used as an excuse to persecute minorities, whether they are black, Hispanic, Chinese or Mormon.
Do you mean the absolute difference between rates (black people in prison for 1000, white people in prison for 1000) or relative to the crimes that people commit (X people getting a longer sentence on average than Y people for the same crime)?
It should be noted that it is only "bordering on" genocide by the very watered down defintion that the UN countries themselves were willing to approve such that their own actions (notably the native american genocide) were not considered genocides.
Fuck the CCP but I'm sure they have an easy time using the US's own actions in the domestic arena where they have the upper hand. As they can magnify every bit of hypocrisy and flaw just like happens here. Countless incarcerated? Still much less than in the US! Hell they too can probably make up some stuff on the go. Refer to the Tibetans that were armed and then paid by the US to leave and claim similar stuff is happening now. It doesn't take much for their people to align with em. Hell plenty were already mad about exemptions the uighurs got from the 1 child policy and such.
Why does China not “enjoy” the same kinds of sanctions as the Russia? Because we live in a world without justice where the demand for open (not free!) markets and the flow of goods to the metropol.
And if you support out present system, you should acknowledge that things are exactly as they should be.
Why exactly? Are you suggesting that we do exactly nothing? Why can't we try to push our countries to be better citizens of the world?
I don't think we should accept atrocities. If outrage and anger didn't matter and if there actually was no way to change the economic order of the world Taiwan would have been invaded already.
If China in turn does something to further the release of Gitmo detainees, all the better.
Show me that article, I'll upvote it, and downvote all the whataboutism from Westerners about China.
- The fact that neither China nor the US are actually even interested protecting these people from human rights abuses.
- The history of US interventions making thing significantly worse, not better (see: every US intervention)
How do you feel about Xinjiang?
Maybe here's an example you'll like better: It is true that Ukraine has had a serious rise in neonazi activity in recent history. I am not a fan of neonazis. However Russia's justification of their invasion by that is obviously disingenuous. Their own government is proto-fascist, obviously they are going to do anything but that.
If you apply that same logic to the US, you'll have a pretty good understanding of my position.
I think they are worse because:
1) You are put there for your ethnicity and religion, (no suspected crimes are needed for detainment), despite being a Chinese citizen.
2) Freedom of press in the US means we found out bad things were happening in Guantanamo, and the prison has since been mostly wound down.
I think Guantanamo is good example of why the US's interest in Xinjiang is not disingenuous. We felt the same about Guantanamo as we do about Xinjiang: it's bad.
Ditto in Guantanamo. I suggest doing a bit more research.
> 2) Freedom of press in the US means we found out bad things were happening in Guantanamo, and the prison has since been mostly wound down.
Done not by the US press but by Wikileaks, whose founder ( Assange) is being hounded by both the US govt and the media.
Stop with the sanctimonious hypocrisy please.
There are far more than 1000 Islamists in the US. Not sure where you're pulling that statement from.
> Done not by the US press but by Wikileaks, whose founder ( Assange) is being hounded by both the US govt and the media.
And I can freely read all about it. It was picked up by every major news organization on American soil.
>Stop with the sanctimonious hypocrisy please.
Is it hypocritical to point out bad comparisons? I think Gitmo was bad. I think Xinjiang is worse given it's larger scale. I'd like both to stop, along with a billion other things, but here we are, on a thread about Xinjiang.
I am responding to this statement: "You are put there for your ethnicity and religion, (no suspected crimes are needed for detainment), despite being a Chinese citizen.".
I am sure you are aware that there were no suspected crimes needed for detainment in Gitmo and the US government said: "It Can Indefinitely Detain Anyone — Even U.S. Citizens".
> Is it hypocritical to point out bad comparisons?
No, not as an individual and I will concede that to you. But as a government, MOST certainly yes. The US always berates and sanctions other nations for policies that itself regularly carries out without any blowback. Most of the bad stuff never makes it to the US media if the media favours the party in power and it doesn't serve US interests.
One set of standards for the US (& its close allies) and another set of standards for the rest of the world
My point was that didn't happen. If we were putting people there solely for their religion and ethnicity, it'd be much more than a thousand. It would be millions... like in Xinjiang.
> No, not as an individual and I will concede that to you. But as a government, MOST certainly yes.
I'm not a government. You called me hypocritical.
In any case, democracies are necessarily hypocritical. They change leaders pretty often, and different leaders tend to have different beliefs.
Tens of thousands passed through Abu Ghraib too in Iraq. A truckload of torture and prisoner abuse done to people of only ONE ethnicity. People lost limbs in prison. No one in the US administration paid for these crimes against humanity.
Some folks in the US govt who were in explicit favour of hard intervention in Iraq and who were deeply influential in igniting the Iraq war are the same ones criticising China now. (Hint: Under Secretary of State). So, yes, it is definitely sanctimonious and ridiculous hypocrisy.
Not you personally, but I assumed you were supporting the US government in this stance. If not, I apologize.
If we put Iraqis in prison because of their religion and ethnicity, there would have been millions locked up. In Xinjiang, people are put in camps because of their religion and ethnicity, that's why millions are locked up. Key word: because
> Some folks in the US govt who were in explicit favour of hard intervention in Iraq and who were deeply influential in igniting the Iraq war are the same ones criticising China now.
Sometimes murderers snitch on murderers. Doesn't mean they shouldn't be arrested. I mean, there is plenty of evidence on what's happening in Xinjiang, it's not like we are talking about taking war-hawks on their word.
Well, it's not by Religion. If so, China would have ~45 million muslims permanently imprisoned. Contrary to popular belief, the folks in Xinjiang don't make up the majority of Muslims in China. Those would be the Hui who make up ~3% of the population just by themselves.
It is indeed deeply distressing that Uyghurs are detained for months, under-go re-education before being released. And torture if they fail to comply. But we have an international council for that - the UNHRC. The US has no leg to stand on to individually judge other nations with their extra-ordinary violent history and propaganda in the modern era.
> Sometimes murderers snitch on murderers..
Indeed and such people should be treated for the evil hypocrites they truly are until they pay for their crimes. American citizens can support them and be sanctimonious about this, but the rest of the world (esp Middle-East/Asia) will take it for what it truly is:
"Might Makes Right and Daddy USA is Mightier Than You, So None Can Judge Us, But We Can Judge You".
The US should make make a clear, evidenced case at UNHRC, hold an international hearing and attempt a resolution. But hey, then everything would need to be questioned and analysed from more than one party.
Probably just a coincidence tho.
Probably just a coincidence tho.
Oh, but you only put there those that you didn't kill in the first place. China, on the other hand, isn't exterminating those people up front.
That is an interesting argument. I guess delayed death is slightly less bad. Fair enough.
www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2021/07/08/united-nations-concerned-about-organ-harvesting-in-china/amp/
Because there are very few actual journalist on the ground (and even less with any understanding of the local politics), most of the media just gets their information from gov news releases.
Eventually it wide spread abuse in one prison in Iraq came to be known and was downplayed and called isolated. People old enough will remember the prisoner on a dog leash for example. But there were many other prisons as well. And many had even worse control for abuse so we can assume what happens.
And tons of other things the US does in Middle East that are secret or so widely distorted that its hilarious to even call it news. Reliable allies turn into terrorist murderers within one strategic meeting. And terrorist turn into freedom fighters at the drop of a hat.
Does no one actually care about the words of the Uyghur people suffering or Han Chinese who have spoken out?
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/23/uighurs-in-turkey-c...
- https://youtu.be/RH0F75tpD_A
- https://youtu.be/2Shla50pRxA
OK, and? Is that a reason to not support this concern and investigation?