
Buzzfeed journalist denied China visa following coverage of Xinjiang crackdown - shalmanese
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/08/22/buzzfeed-journalist-denied-new-china-visa-following-award-winning-coverage-xinjiang-crackdown/
======
mattigames
An indirect reminder that now that YC China is a thing @sama and @paulg and
any other affiliated will have to avoid saying anything negative about China
in order to keep doing business there.

~~~
adventured
If YC China succeeds and becomes big there, it'll inevitably draw Chinese
attention back to YC US including news.ycombinator.com. I would expect they'll
have to begin blocking sensitive discussions on HN in the near future. The
wave of one hand is all it takes to destroy YC China, because of one upsetting
thread on HN getting back to authorities in China.

If they plan to stay in bed with China and all that entails, it might not be a
bad idea to formally separate HN off from YC (for the sake of YC and the sake
of HN). The Chinese authorities are extremely sensitive about certain things,
easily insulted, and unforgiving about the lack of compliance. They've barred
far larger targets for far less than the discussions that go on here.

~~~
oh-kumudo
HN is already blocked. Funny, right?

~~~
shalmanese
HN isn't blocked in China

~~~
oh-kumudo
Well it is definitely blocked last time when I was in China, or in Beijing,
but that is like 3 years ago.

------
wiradikusuma
The question is, how did the Chinese immigration know?

for each applicant do select count(*) from people_who_pissed_us where
social_username = applicant.fb.username?

~~~
0x4f3759df
One infers their systems are highly integrated
(tax/crime/social/banking/education/gps all unified)

~~~
chrischen
It's actually quite surprising how un-integrated US government agencies and
systems are.

~~~
kardos
It's not a bug, it's a feature

~~~
chrischen
Yes but it's also the primary source of a lot of government waste (the same
type of waste the conservatives are against).

I think it makes sense to separate local, state, and federal governments, but
there's surprisingly little government data sharing between even federal
government agencies, even when there's jurisdiction overlap.

~~~
kardos
It may be the price to pay in to avoid your government becoming a highly
efficient oppression machine

------
TangoTrotFox
I found an interesting paragraph in the article [1] from Buzzfeed:

 _" But critics say [positive gestures from China towards Uighur] are
overshadowed by the government’s more repressive measures, which have fueled
the propaganda of a small number of extremists, including the Turkestan
Islamic Party (TIP), a radical Uighur militant group, some of whose adherents
are believed to have been active in Syria and Afghanistan. According to a
translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute, TIP released an issue
of its online magazine on Aug. 29, calling for its fighters in Syria to
prepare for future battle against the Chinese state in East Turkestan, a name
many Uighurs use to refer to Xinjiang."._

The last sentence there struck me as unusual given what that implies: [2]

 _" The medieval Persian toponym "Turkestan" and its derivatives were not used
by the local population of the greater region, and China had its own name for
an overlapping area since the Han Dynasty as Xiyu, with the parts controlled
by China termed Xinjiang from the 18th century onward. The historical Uyghur
name for the Tarim Basin is Altishahr, which means "six cities" in Uyghur.

Starting in the 20th century, Uyghur separatists and their supporters used
East Turkestan (or "Uyghurstan") as an appellation for the whole of Xinjiang,
or for a future independent state in present-day Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous
Region (presumably with Ürümqi as its capital). They reject the name of
Xinjiang because of an allegedly Chinese perspective reflected in the name and
prefer East Turkestan to emphasize connection to other westerly Turkic groups.
However, even in nationalist writing, East Turkestan retained its older, more
narrow geographical meaning. In China, the term has negative connotations
because of its origins in European colonialism and present use by militant
groups."_

[1] - [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/the-police-
stat...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/the-police-state-of-the-
future-is-already-here)

[2] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Turkestan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Turkestan)

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reustle
Is this surprising at all?

~~~
busterarm
Seriously. What did she think was going to happen?

She's lucky they were nice enough to wait out the rest of her visa instead of
revoking it and deporting her on the spot. Shrewd move on their part for that,
btw. If she was a citizen they would have just disappeared or killed her.

~~~
Sag0Sag0
That's a bit much. It's unlikely that even if she was a citizen they would
have disappeared or killed her. More like give her a firm warning and lecture
and a vague threat or two of what may be to come if she keeps it up.

~~~
busterarm
[https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/23/asia/china-lawyers-
disappeare...](https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/23/asia/china-lawyers-
disappeared/index.html)

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/29/the-disappeared-
china-r...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/29/the-disappeared-china-
renditions-kidnapping/)

[https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/09/22/why-are-people-
disappear...](https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/09/22/why-are-people-disappearing-
china)

[https://www.businessinsider.com/how-china-deals-with-
dissent...](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-china-deals-with-dissent-
threats-family-arrests-2018-8)

[http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2014/11/28/chinese-
dissidents...](http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2014/11/28/chinese-dissidents-
organs)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China)

[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/china-still-gathering-
orga...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/china-still-gathering-organs-
executed-prisoners)

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JohnTHaller
I wonder how many pro-China green accounts, accounts used solely for anti-US
sentiment, etc we will see commenting on this story. It seems the propaganda
folks are turning more attention to HN.

There were 3 at the time of this posting with the usual bothersiderisms, etc.
One even went full "Sharia law in the US!"

~~~
dang
Please don't break the site guidelines by insinuating astroturfing or shillage
without evidence. Someone having an opposing view to yours is not evidence.
Neither is an account being new.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
JohnTHaller
I wasn't insinuating, I was stating. These types of troll/propaganda/astroturf
accounts are obvious on the left/right or pro/anti-US side of things on
Twitter/reddit and are similarly obvious here. You banned the specific account
I mentioned for trolling.

I was unaware that discussing astroturfing, trolling, and propaganda on HN was
prohibited. Apologies, I will refrain from calling attention to it in the
future.

~~~
dang
Ok—please don't state it without evidence either!

I know it looks and feels super obvious, but I assure you this is an illusion.
On the internet, people are orders of magnitude too quick to leap from "random
user with obviously wrong opinion" to "obvious bot/astroturfer/paid shill".
It's a crazy bias. We look into this stuff all the time, and 99% of the time
it's just that some people disagree with you. More than 99% actually.

Even when we ban an account for trolling, that's almost always someone whose
sincere passions about a topic led them to violate the guidelines and not stop
when we asked them to stop. That's not astroturfing. People are just very
passionate about divisive issues.

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hardsoftnfloppy
I am “shocked”

This is “shocking”

------
spork12
China is the true enemy of freedom for the 21st century.

~~~
dang
Nationalistic flamebait will get you banned here. Please don't post like this
again, regardless of what you're for or against.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
oathbreaker
Why is this even a news on HN ? All governments including USA denies visa to
foreigners for political reasons. I remember USA denying visa to an Indian
chief minister in past because of lobbying by evangelists and Islamist.

It might come as a surprise by American journalists are not entitled for a
visa from China and I wish more countries would crackdown on click-bate rags
like Buzzfeed.

~~~
danso
Foreign journalists based in China write critical stories about China on a
regular basis. It's a bit bizarre to me why you're calling Buzzfeed a "click-
bate [sic]" rag when we're talking about a journalist who had just published
an investigative story about the Chinese police state involving Uyghurs.

~~~
InitialLastName
I can understand calling Buzzfeed clickbait; "XX Best ways to N: number 6 will
blow your mind" used to be their bread and butter. Even now, the #2 story on
their website is "29 things that'll genuinely make people say 'OMG I love your
outfit'".

It took me a long time after their move towards occasionally funding "real"
journalism before I was willing to even click a link to their URL.

~~~
TimothyBJacobs
Buzzfeed clickbait is not the same as Buzzfeed News.

~~~
InitialLastName
Sure, but even looking at the two sites now I'm not sure I can see much
difference in content quality.

