The Xinjiang Procedure
weeklystandard.com
weeklystandard.com
As interesting as it was - I couldn't actually compel myself to complete reading this. Perhaps later.
Before anyone jumps to vilify the China or the Chinese for this, remember that these kinds of evils have historically been perpetuated by all people in the past or presently. This story is a chilling reminder: people are still belligerent, tribal animals, no matter how advanced our culture or technology.
Let's all be clearheaded about what's going on here:
This is an article that says that the Chinese are rounding up protesters and warehousing them in military prisons until party officials show up with organ troubles, whereupon doctors are sent in to take blood from the prisoners to find matches so that those prisoners can be carefully executed (by gunshot) so that their organs can be harvested while the prisoner is still alive.
This extraordinarily claim is backed up by... an anonymous source.
I don't know anything really about the issue discussed in the article other than hearsay, but there is no doubt in my mind that Xinjiang is undergoing "ethnic cleansing" by dilution. AFAIK the same is happening in Tibet.
"I spent two weeks traveling in Xinjiang in 2006 and saw only ethnic Han policing the majority Uighur population, often unusually well-armed for Chinese police. Therefore, I think it is reasonable to report that the government of China is warehousing Uighur protesters in military prisons until party officials develop organ failure, whereupon prisoners are screened for blood/tissue matches and then murdered for their organs, which are removed while the prisoner is still alive."
Put in that light you can see the problem with this discussion: that Uighurs (like many other populations in China) are subjected to intense human rights violations does not imply that a monstrous organ harvesting program is being run out of Chinese prisons.
The fact that China isn't trying to prove the allegations wrong and that there is willful ignorance among other nations is frightening.
People often use the argument, "This can't possibly be true, because it would be very hard to hide such atrocities.", but if anything WWII proved how easy it is to hide such gross atrocities. During World War II, no one really knew what was happening in the concentration camps until the Russians first arrived in the Majdanek camp in July, 1944 for the first time and saw it with their own eyes. Just before they arrived, the Germans spent a lot of effort to try and destroy any evidence of what had been happening. If anything, WWII proves how long people at a distance and with no local knowledge can go without knowing horrible things were occurring. From what I remember what was discovered at the Majdanek camp wasn't even that bad because the Nazis had enough time to partially cover up the gravity of what was being done. AFAIK, it wasn't until Auschwitz was discovered January, 1945, that people truly discovered the gravity of the situation.
Allegations like this should be investigated by non-political independent third parties whose primary mission is preventing human rights atrocities.
IMHO both humans and other entities should be innocent until proven guilty, but organizational entities, even entire countries, should be subject to investigations into allegations.
Right now we have a situation where China isn't innocent, but no one has investigated to see if it might be guilty either.
The genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Nazi Germany have these things in common: before the fact, a respectable consensus that reports of atrocities were farfetched; afterwards, shock and dismay that more wasn't done to stop the killing.
Given this history, aren't we better off keeping a low threshold of suspicion?
Some facts are indisputable. Chinese executes more people per year than any other country. There is no accountability within the country for how these executions are carried, nor is there accountability to how they are carried out to international governing bodies. Compare how executions in the West are carried out versus China. I'd say there is more than enough evidence to warrant investigations into how these executions are carried out.
I would like to see someone take all Chinese government statistics on issues like organ donors per capita, transplants performed per capita, etc. and see if they are out of line with what is seen in other countries. I wouldn't be surprised is Benford's Law could be applied to the data.
Thanks for pointing that out. I've largely given up on flagging during the SOPApera.
But surely you'd agree having your organs cut out while you're still alive very much does matter, no? Or is it okay if it's done to particular kinds of people?
If any of the article is true it's horrific.
Also, it's not the first time the Weekly Standard distorts the facts in favor of some right-wing agenda (the very war on terror being such an example)
(like the OP, I'm not defending China's actions here. I'm simply pointing out the double-standard)
Even if they were not coerced into consenting (which they were) that would be completely beside the point. They are arbitrary sentenced to death, they necks are tied to they can't speak at their "hearing" and their organs are extracted while they are still alive.
It's about how China's political regime treats its citizens regardless of ethnicity. If it doesn't discriminate (which I think it does) and gives everyone the same unfair treatment that doesn't somehow make it better compared to the scenario where it did discriminate. It's the same.
Are you really sure you want to defend the Chinese system and criticize the American system on utilitarian grounds? Let's run through the general structure.
Only a fraction of the Chinese executions result in organ donations; some will fail, of course, and only a fraction of those donations result in the equivalent of a life, 30 years at the most optimistic the article says. Given the ages involved (younger men being executed for their organs' use in older men), we can expect each execution to save significantly less than one life on a lifespan/QALY basis.
The value of each execution would not be significantly better in the US and the same logic applies.
Wikipedia lists rates of Chinese execution at 5000-10000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Peop...) a year during the 2000s; the estimate is difficult as it is a state secret. It is not in the US, so we have more solid numbers in the 30-50 range for the 2000s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Unite...).
Keeping in mind the previous logic, this indicates the number of lives saved by organ donations from all US executions would be under 30-50.
Now, let's compare that with the Chinese system. At 5000 executions a year, the profit and other perverse incentives in place would need to result in only 1% of prisoners being unjustly executed for the benefits of American organ donation to be completely eliminated.
And actually, remembering the point about QALYs, for every person unjustly executed for their organs, they represent a net decrease in welfare. We all know how many the US incorrectly executes, and that's with the state benefitting not at all from the execution and wasting a tremendous amount of money going through appeals and a strong civil society and many groups opposed to execution like the Innocence Project.
There is no reason to think China does not have a significantly worse false execution rate even before we add in the perverse incentives of organ harvesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Turkestan_Islamic_Movement
Canada tried that with its native population in the 20th century -- take children away from their backwards and uncivilized parents and raise them instead in residential schools -- and it was an utter disaster.
Old Tibetan system is exactly how force kids turning into monks and abey the teachings of Dalai Lama (note: not only the 14th).
What the Communist did wrong in Tibet, is not about exile Dalai Lama, but replacing the old ruling ranks without providing more options. So if anything thing went wrong, blame the Communists.
>>> The article didn't present any evidence of genocide. Only organ harvesting was substantiated. <<< (from : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3388828 )
I've been on HN for a long time and this is the most disturbing thing I've ever read. The OP acknowledges that the practice of forcibly harvesting organs is being carried out, but defends the practice through nebulous hand waving.
This sickens me. It's not about politics. It's not about countries. It's not about socio-economic doctrines and ideologies. It's about the extortion of the death of a conscious, living and sentient being. A being which possesses a high amount of self awareness. A being not too different from you and me. A being with strong, deep ties with other beings to form units such as "families". Imagine what the extermination, for this is exactly what this is, of such a being means and imagine the fact that this horror hasn't been carried out once, not twice but thousands of times. Over and over again.
Horrific.
(edit : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8222732.stm )
Yes the Chinese government are surpressive, but it's because USSR tried to invade all Mideast Asia. There are shit ton of politics and history involved more than "Chinese want to genocide Uyghurs".
Harvesting organs from condemned criminals is kind of messed up, but you can see why they do it. China has a big shortage of organ donors. It's fucked up if they are doing it in an inhumane way, but it has little to do with the Uighurs - most of the "donors" will be Han (though Uighurs will be disproportionately represented for a few reasons).
The Uighur situation is also complicated. If China didn't invade, Xinjiang would probably be some basket-case like Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan (both have a GDP per capita of about $850 / year). China has a GDP per capita of over $4,000, though Uighurs may be below average. On the other hand, the China hasn't always been a barrel of laughs. I'm not sure there was ever an "intent to destroy", which is part of the definition of genocide, but you wouldn't call the accusation "bullshit", either.
I don't like the way the two issues are being packaged together, though.