How many muslim countries can you count on the side that cry about a genocide in Xinjiang?

  • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
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    4 years ago

    According to China itself stuff is "going on." There is mass internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, ostensibly for purposes of de-radicalization and integration into the Chinese economy. Is China detaining millions of Uyghurs like the West is claiming? No, of course not. Are they killing them like the holocaust? Not even slightly—they leave the camps in jobs programs and such. But to pretend nothing is going on at all is disingenuous. There is a case to be made that perhaps the Chinese state is being a bit overzealous with its radicalization efforts, and could be going about them in a more targeted way that doesn't have to involve mass re-education camps, but it's hard to make that sort of argument without Western imperialists from jumping on any criticism as proof of "genocide." That's why a scenario like this is tough.

    Likewise, most of the bloc in this image don't give a shit about human rights or anything, just like the West. Governments in general, as they're almost all run by neoliberal ghouls, aren't in that kind of headspace. Instead, they're siding with China because they know which way the wind is blowing.

    • EugeneVDabs [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      Sounds like china is doing their own version of the Native boarding schools, I mean Uighurs coming out of these detention centers all talk about how they are forced to lose their culture and religion in these places. That would make it a cultural genocide especially since china admits they just snatch up people for the crime of being Uighur and nothing more

      • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
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        edit-2
        4 years ago

        Yeah, I fear that there's a similar dynamic here. Many of the Uyghurs fell under the Wahhabist spell of radical Islam, and that kind of ideology doesn't mix well with a communist state. Likewise, China is heavily pursuing its poverty alleviation deadlines, and pushing the Uyghurs to become more integrated into the Chinese economy helps tremendously with that effort. Hence the job programs, subsidies, etc. Also, Xinjiang is central to the Belt and Road Initiative, and will become something like an economic pivot in the coming decades, so China wants to shore up control and dominance of the region to ensure smooth sailing.

        That said, I don't think it's going so far as Native boarding schools like Canada and the United States. Unlike these settler colonial states, in China they're building more mosques, exempting the Uyghurs from the one child policy to encourage population growth, and generally encouraging Uyghur culture to develop, granted within the bounds set by the Chinese state. There's always a tough line to toe when dealing with "regressive" cultures in a progressive state, and China is running straight into those troubles. I don't know if they're handling it perfectly (and the CPC has always been a bit heavy handed when it comes to things like this), but they're certainly not handling it like the largest genocide in recent memory as the US and Canada did.