• Anuvin@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    The burden of proof is on those who make accusations, it is not the responsibility of others to convince you of what isn’t happening. Further, you may have heard the adage that an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence, of which there is none and can therefore be dismissed. Even further, when we look at who stands to gain from such a narrative despite the lack of evidence, it follows that US imperial power and Sinophobia driven clickbait news corporations stand to gain monetary and political standing by publishing articles like this. This is the same tactic as the Holodomor myth (which is literally an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory made by nazi propagandists and pushed by nazi lover William Randolph Hurst)

    However, I once had a similar outlook and needed to be convinced, so here’s three sources. Also this.

    • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      From the AP source:

      A convenience store cashier chatted idly about declining sales – then was visited by the shadowy men tailing us. When we dropped by again, she didn’t say a word, instead making a zipping motion across her mouth, pushing past us and running out of the store.

      Bruh, she got invited to lake Lao Gai for talking about sales slowing down.

      “Arabic is not the only language that compiles Allah’s classics,” the lesson said. “To learn Chinese is our responsibility and obligation, because we are all Chinese.”

      Uhhhh

      In one village we stop in, an elderly Uyghur man in a square skullcap answers just one question – “We don’t have the coronavirus here, everything is good” – before a local Han Chinese cadre demands to know what we are doing. He tells the villagers in Uyghur, “If he asks you anything, just say you don’t know anything.”

      There is no COVID in Ba Sing Se lol. Not gonna lie, I think Chinese propaganda picks some strange hills to die on, COVID is everywhere, but whatever, it’s not genocide.

      At one point, I was tailed by a convoy of a dozen cars, an eerie procession through the silent streets of Aksu at 4 in the morning. Anytime I tried to chat with someone, the minders would draw in close, straining to hear every word.

      Well, I’m sure they got the real story, or else.

      Within Xinjiang, Han Chinese and Uyghurs live side by side, an unspoken but palpable gulf between them. In the suburbs of Kashgar, a Han woman at a tailor shop tells my colleague that most Uyghurs weren’t allowed to go far from their homes. “Isn’t that so? You can’t leave this shop?” the woman said to a Uyghur seamstress.

      I’m thinking “you can’t leave this shop” is probably an inelegance of translation, and she likely means that the seamstress can’t leave the vicinity of the shop. Still, that’s uh… Difficult to fathom being applied to “most” of an ethnic population.

      Yes, the AP article talks about how the prison camps were closed and stuff, that’s all well and good. The minders didn’t show them any mass graves, so I suppose that in that regard, there is indeed evidence missing to support genocide. That said, it reminds me a lot of how the US and Canada dealt with native populations, minus the physical relocation. Had they had the same technological capacity as modern China, it seems quite likely to me that Andrew Jackson would have been equally as happy, uh, re-educating the first nations in the way we’ve seen here. I have limited time to respond, so I’ll get to the other articles as I can, but I wonder about choosing this article to defend your position. This reads to me like they’ve quite finished with their most extreme measures, which, given the state of the present, must have been quite impressive. I always admired the work of the early communist party in fighting for the rights and freedoms of black people in the reconstruction period, it’s disappointing to see Saturday morning cartoon bad guy behavior.

        • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I mentioned that it doesn’t talk about killings, but I also point out that the reporter’s entire visit was tightly minded and regulated by party officials. I don’t imagine that they were in a special hurry to show them so much as a carton of spoiled milk.

          • brain_in_a_box [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            But you’re still moving the goal posts. They didn’t post the AP article because it’s a credible source on events in Xinjiang (it isn’t). They posted it to demonstrate that even sources extremely biased against China weren’t going as far as making accusations of killings.

            • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Yeah, okay, fair enough. I don’t have the time or will to commit to digging into resources to support my counter claim, and I’ll concede that I’m goalposting.

              • brain_in_a_box [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                Well I appreciate the good faith there.

                As to the other accusations about Xinjiang, that’s a more complicated discussion. I don’t think anybody is claiming that nothing dodgy was happening at all there, there was clearly some pretty heavy handed policing. Some people say it was justified to fight extremism; I don’t agree with that, but I also think that the Western media’s portrayal of it has been so cynical and exaggerated as to basically not resemble the truth at all.

              • Anuvin@lemmygrad.ml
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                1 year ago

                brain_in_a_box did a great job explaining about the source, about how it was not chosen for being a good source. Rather is is “reliable in the mainsteam” (read: virulently racist fascist state department drivel) and is still walking back the claim of genocide (since none is occurring).

                I will try not to waste your time, since you said you were low on time, but I want to talk about genocide claims for a second. A genocide is a very serious concept, it is a word reserved for the most atrocious acts of extermination like the holocaust. Calling something a genocide when it isn’t one is therefore anti-Semitic (this is brought up in the Foreign Policy article I linked) along with being deeply disrespectful to other peoples who have suffered through a genocide. Of course, the American government and the press it uses as mouthpieces do not care about this disrespect. You should though. I encourage you not to believe anything you read in the news, especially unverified claims of genocide without significant evidence. This is true for any given article, the info you are reading is manipulated, and “reliable” sources are actually lies designed to make you support war, racism, police murder, and other crimes against people.

      • CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.mlM
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        1 year ago

        Can you be serious for two fucking seconds? Jesus Christ liberalism is a terminal disease. Stop quoting a children’s TV show and actually contend with real life.

        Can you not think of any reason why the CPC in Xinjiang might be wary of weird AP reporters asking random people questions about covid and concentration camps on the streets? Have you literally not followed the RISE in anti-Asian hate crimes in the US? The accusations the US government flings at China every chance it gets?

        do I come into your house and start throwing your plates on the ground? And then kick up a fuss when you ask me to stop? AP should be grateful they are allowed in Xinjiang, this isn’t the century of humiliation anymore.

        “Arabic is not the only language that compiles Allah’s classics,” the lesson said. “To learn Chinese is our responsibility and obligation, because we are all Chinese.”

        Uhh what? Use your words and stop acting like a child. China officially recognizes 56 ethnic minorities, including Uyghurs. They all form the Chinese nation. Chinese does not mean solely Han. You don’t know anything about China, maybe that’s why your only arguments are drivel pulled from literal fiction. China is literally called Zhongguo in Chinese, which means Central Country. Chinese is Zhongwen, “language of the middle [country]”. What about these words gives you the impression of [Han] Chinese supremacy?