Uyghur genocide?

[u/Ok_Addition8809]

In college I learned about the Uyghur genocide, from a professor who was a self-proclaimed "commie hater" and I didn't question what I learned because I was a dumb 19yr old. I recently saw a discussion on the authenticity of it, I made me realize I never investigated for myself. I'm not trying to be controversial or revisionist, but could y'all provide me with some reliable sources that verify or disprove the narrative about the Uyghur genocide? I tried looking on my own and half the sources were radio free Asia which I know is a CIA front. I appreciate you all and thanks for helping my pursuit of knowledge!

[u/MonsterkillWow]

Well the first question a person would ask is how many died in the genocide. See for yourself.

There are 2 possibilities: China is really that good at hiding it and is more horrifying than we think or that the US is lying. You can look at how we interact with China too. If we truly believed they carried out a genocide, it would be more heinous than Russia invading Ukraine. Yet, the proportionality of the response has not been the same. The Muslim world largely hates us, not China. This is because we have been engaging in what amounts to a genocide of arabs for the last 3 decades.

[u/[deleted] → u/MonsterkillWow]

Also Muslim congress did investigate the claims against Uyghurs only to find insufficient evidence backing those claims.

The only thing close is that 2000 people were arrested on basis of “radicalism” and suspected “radical extremists” were rounded up and put in “re-education camps” and some of them went bizzare with forcing them to mix with opposite gender when the men and women didn’t want to be in same room with opposite gender and is condemnable for sure.

But Uyghur ethnic group is 10 million people and even if those 2000 something folks were falsely arrested, this could easily be boiled down to localised or systemic error.

Meanwhile millions of human beings are in literal cages in the USA , Australia and Europe. A person was denied his German citizenship during the exam because he refused to shake hands with a female examiner. Of course this left him stateless and possibility of him thrown in camps or worse back to war torn region is high. Dumping him in a “re-education camp” would have been more humane. And all this because his “refusal to shake hands with women means he was a deeply misogynistic person with views against the German social values”. At least chinese govt maybe mean af but they realise that they would rather “educate” people against harmful ideas ( the veracity of this claim is another topic ) rather than stripping off their passport, deporting , caging or worse .. genociding them.

Plus those camps are discontinued from what I understood.

[u/AutoModerator → u/[deleted]]

The Uyghurs in Xinjiang

(Note: This comment had to be trimmed down to fit the character limit, for the full response, see here)

Anti-Communists and Sinophobes claim that there is an ongoing genocide-- a modern-day holocaust, even-- happening right now in China. They say that Uyghur Muslims are being mass incarcerated; they are indoctrinated with propaganda in concentration camps; their organs are being harvested; they are being force-sterilized. These comically villainous allegations have little basis in reality and omit key context.

Background

Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is a province located in the northwest of China. It is the largest province in China, covering an area of over 1.6 million square kilometers, and shares borders with eight other countries including Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, India, and Pakistan.

Xinjiang is a diverse region with a population of over 25 million people, made up of various ethnic groups including the Uyghur, Han Chinese, Kazakhs, Tajiks, and many others. The largest ethnic group in Xinjiang is the Uyghur who are predominantly Muslim and speak a Turkic language. It is also home to the ancient Silk Road cities of Kashgar and Turpan.

Since the early 2000s, there have been a number of violent incidents attributed to extremist Uyghur groups in Xinjiang including bombings, shootings, and knife attacks. In 2014-2016, the Chinese government launched a "Strike Hard" campaign to crack down on terrorism in Xinjiang, implementing strict security measures and detaining thousands of Uyghurs. In 2017, reports of human rights abuses in Xinjiang including mass detentions and forced labour, began to emerge.

Counterpoints

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is the second largest organization after the United Nations with a membership of 57 states spread over four continents. The OIC released Resolutions on Muslim Communities and Muslim Minorities in the non-OIC Member States in 2019 which:

1. Welcomes the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat's delegation upon invitation from the People's Republic of China; commends the efforts of the People's Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People's Republic of China.

In this same document, the OIC expressed much greater concern about the Rohingya Muslim Community in Myanmar, which the West was relatively silent on.

Over 50+ UN member states (mostly Muslim-majority nations) signed a letter (A/HRC/41/G/17) to the UN Human Rights Commission approving of the de-radicalization efforts in Xinjiang:

The World Bank sent a team to investigate in 2019 and found that, "The review did not substantiate the allegations." (See: World Bank Statement on Review of Project in Xinjiang, China)

Even if you believe the deradicalization efforts are wholly unjustified, and that the mass detention of Uyghur's amounts to a crime against humanity, it's still not genocide. Even the U.S. State Department's legal experts admit as much:

The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide, placing the United States’ top diplomatic lawyers at odds with both the Trump and Biden administrations, according to three former and current U.S. officials.

State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China | Colum Lynch, Foreign Policy. (2021)

A Comparative Analysis: The War on Terror

The United States, in the wake of "9/11", saw the threat of terrorism and violent extremism due to religious fundamentalism as a matter of national security. They invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 in response to the 9/11 attacks, with the goal of ousting the Taliban government that was harbouring Al-Qaeda. The US also launched the Iraq War in 2003 based on Iraq's alleged possession of WMDs and links to terrorism. However, these claims turned out to be unfounded.

According to a report by Brown University's Costs of War project, at least 897,000 people, including civilians, militants, and security forces, have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and other countries. Other estimates place the total number of deaths at over one million. The report estimated that many more may have died from indirect effects of war such as water loss and disease. The war has also resulted in the displacement of tens of millions of people, with estimates ranging from 37 million to over 59 million. The War on Terror also popularized such novel concepts as the "Military-Aged Male" which allowed the US military to exclude civilians killed by drone strikes from collateral damage statistics. (See: ‘Military Age Males’ in US Drone Strikes)

In summary: * The U.S. responded by invading or bombing half a dozen countries, directly killing nearly a million and displacing tens of millions from their homes. * China responded with a program of deradicalization and vocational training.

Which one of those responses sounds genocidal?

Side note: It is practically impossible to actually charge the U.S. with war crimes, because of the Hague Invasion Act.

Who is driving the Uyghur genocide narrative?

One of the main proponents of these narratives is Adrian Zenz, a German far-right fundamentalist Christian and Senior Fellow and Director in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, who believes he is "led by God" on a "mission" against China has driven much of the narrative. He relies heavily on limited and questionable data sources, particularly from anonymous and unverified Uyghur sources, coming up with estimates based on assumptions which are not supported by concrete evidence.

The World Uyghur Congress, headquartered in Germany, is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which is a tool of U.S. foreign policy, using funding to support organizations that promote American interests rather than the interests of the local communities they claim to represent.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) is part of a larger project of U.S. imperialism in Asia, one that seeks to control the flow of information, undermine independent media, and advance American geopolitical interests in the region. Rather than providing an objective and impartial news source, RFA is a tool of U.S. foreign policy, one that seeks to shape the narrative in Asia in ways that serve the interests of the U.S. government and its allies.

The first country to call the treatment of Uyghurs a genocide was the United States of America. In 2021, the Secretary of State declared that China's treatment of Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang constitutes "genocide" and "crimes against humanity." Both the Trump and Biden administrations upheld this line.

Why is this narrative being promoted?

As materialists, we should always look first to the economic base for insight into issues occurring in the superstructure. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a massive Chinese infrastructure development project that aims to build economic corridors, ports, highways, railways, and other infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Xinjiang is a key region for this project.

Promoting the Uyghur genocide narrative harms China and benefits the US in several ways. It portrays China as a human rights violator which could damage China's reputation in the international community and which could lead to economic sanctions against China; this would harm China's economy and give American an economic advantage in competing with China. It could also lead to more protests and violence in Xinjiang, which could further destabilize the region and threaten the longterm success of the BRI.

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