
'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam - Tomte
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/11/if-you-enter-a-camp-you-never-come-out-inside-chinas-war-on-islam
======
owaislone
(off-topic/meta)

This feels like a very unique HN thread. I can't recall seeing people actually
attempting to defend something like this before on HN.

~~~
mercer
Specifically concerning the camps in China, every single thread I've seen has
a number of people defending it. It appears to be mostly commenters who
greatly fear islam and/or Chinese individuals who support the current regime.

~~~
dang
It's more complex than that. Like any sufficiently large population sample (5M
readers a month in HN's case), HN is divided on every topic where society is
divided. Or rather, societies, because many countries are represented here.
This story is embedded in the complicated and intensifying geopolitical
controversy around China vis-à-vis the West, and can't be abstracted from it.
This leaves people arguing with each other for all sorts of reasons, not all
of which are obvious, and which opponents tend to view in too reductionist a
way. The worst reductionist way is accusing each other of being shills or
spies, which fortunately you didn't do!

From an HN point of view, how do we support intellectual curiosity while at
the same time holding a place for the people—all people—whose lives are
affected by this? I don't know. For the time being, the only thing I know to
do is keep calling people back to the site guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
According to the guidelines, saying things like "I can't believe you support
concentration camps" is not ok on HN, regardless of how strongly one feels
about the topic. That's not a direct quote of anyone, but it's the sentiment
the most aggressive commenters are jumping to when this story comes up, which
it has frequently lately.

------
freewilly1040
The NY Times just did a heartbreaking two part podcast series on this that is
worth a listen:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/podcasts/the-
daily/china-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/podcasts/the-daily/china-
uighurs-internment-camps-surveillance.html)

------
originldirgibl
Genuinely curious, why is this flagged?

~~~
godelmachine
Another concrete example of how the Chinese have strong grips on the internet.
Even HN is not spared!

------
jordigh
Every time I read about what China is doing to Uighurs, my heart sinks.
Putting people in camps, monitoring their every move, coating it all with
bureaucracy and lies. This is what genocide looks like.

And nobody has the courage to stand up to China. Not even to publicly denounce
them.

Isn't this what the UN is for? To impose economic sanctions on flagrant human
rights abusers?

(Please, no whataboutism replies, what any other country is doing does not
justify what China is doing.)

~~~
godelmachine
The US is actually trying to raise some noise about this, but few are willing
to join the fray.

But for now, forget UN and forget the West.

Even the Islamic World and it's biggest representative, the OIC, is reluctant
to even make a comment about it! Totally appalling!

~~~
deogeo
> The US is actually trying to raise some noise about this, but few are
> willing to join the fray.

'Soft power' such as [https://nypost.com/2018/03/15/inside-the-shady-private-
equit...](https://nypost.com/2018/03/15/inside-the-shady-private-equity-firm-
run-by-kerry-and-bidens-kids/) might help explain US/global unwillingness to
be too noisy. tldr: "In short, the Chinese government was literally funding a
business that it co-owned along with the sons of two of America’s most
powerful decision makers."

------
aurizon
How would the Uighurs run a country where they were the majority? Sadly, we
have two governments, one(the Uighurs) believes in a warlike state where
religion is the authority and another warlike one (China) where the secular
state is the authority and China is larger. These states that blend state and
religious power all seem headed towards religious oligopolies - Iran comes to
mind. What happens when the states of Europe become majority Islamic? Will
Islam undergo a gradual reformation or will the islamic governments insist on
forced conversion?, as they have done in the past. I do not know why they
insist on control over others. Whatever end game follows, will be 100 years to
fruition...

~~~
_bxg1
Attaching agreed-upon bad things like authoritarianism and terrorism and
oppression onto arbitrary symbols like Islam and secularism is fallacious.
Those superficial symbols make for terrible indicators of actual evil, and
rhetoric like the above only serves to increase the injustice done to innocent
people. See the recent Christchurch attack.

~~~
growlist
Isn't Islam the only religion that says that all other religions are false?

~~~
mercer
Most Christian denominations I've encountered claim the same, and often even
narrow that claim to their specific denomination (many Evangelicals believing
that Catholics won't make the cut when it comes to going to heaven, for
example).

------
growlist
The other day the Guardian was inviting us to feel terrible about historic
Uighur mosques being bulldozed:
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/07/bulldo...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/07/bulldozing-
mosques-china-war-uighur-culture-xinjiang)

...so I went and did a little research. It turns out that one of these mosques
is a shrine to a certain Imam Asim, a charming fellow that played an important
part in the purposeful destruction in the 10/11th centuries of the Buddhist
Khotan kingdom that once occupied the area, during which destruction
apparently 'there were years of battles where "blood flows like the Oxus",
"heads litter the battlefield like stones" until the "infidels" were
defeated'. Unsurprisingly this violence also included the razing of countless
Buddhist temples in the area.

Thus the Guardian, apparently with a straight face, asks us to mourn the
destruction of a shrine to a warlord when said warlord was part of a
deliberate and concerted programme of ethnic cleansing and cultural
destruction including destruction of the temples of an earlier culture. At
this point my irony meter is off the scale.

~~~
_bxg1
So then we should bulldoze all Christian churches, too?

Numbers 31 "The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Take vengeance on the Midianites for
the Israelites. After that, you will be gathered to your people.”

3 So Moses said to the people, “Arm some of your men to go to war against the
Midianites so that they may carry out the Lord’s vengeance on them...7 They
fought against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every man...9
The Israelites captured the Midianite women and children and took all the
Midianite herds, flocks and goods as plunder. 10 They burned all the towns
where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. 11 They took all
the plunder and spoils, including the people and animals, 12 and brought the
captives, spoils and plunder to Moses and Eleazar...14 Moses was angry with
the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of
hundreds—who returned from the battle.

15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 “They were the
ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful
to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people.
17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18
but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."

~~~
keanzu
The Chinese government is destroying Christian churches too.

"Over the past year, local governments have shut hundreds of unofficial
congregations or “house churches” that operate outside the government-approved
church network, including Early Rain. A statement signed by 500 house church
leaders in November says authorities have removed crosses from buildings,
forced churches to hang the Chinese flag and sing patriotic songs, and barred
minors from attending."

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-
christia...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-christians-
religious-persecution-translation-bible)

~~~
_bxg1
Exactly my point. Good and evil, in the real world, have no correlation with
religious symbols. Both the oppressed and the oppressors are both Muslims and
Christians.

------
HansLandaa
These observations about increased security always fail to include information
about past terrorist attacks and militant activity in the region. The reality
of the situation is more nuanced than the depiction by western media.

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

In December 2016 in Xinjiang, Islamic militants drove a vehicle into a yard at
the county Communist party offices and set off a bomb but were all shot dead.
Three people were wounded and one other died.

In July 2011, At least 18 people died in a series of alleged terrorist attacks
in the city of Kashgar. According to state-run media accounts, the violence
began when two Uyghur men hijacked a truck, ran it into a crowded street, and
started stabbing people, killing six. The attack ended when the assailants
were overpowered by the crowd, which killed one attacker. On the second day,
state media reported that a "group of armed terrorists" stormed a restaurant,
killed the owner and a waiter, and set it ablaze. They then proceeded to
indiscriminately kill four more civilians. Armed clashes then reportedly
ensured, ending with police capturing or killing the attackers. The Turkistan
Islamic Party later claimed responsibility for the attack. One of the suspects
appeared in a TIP video training in Pakistan.

In March 2015 in Guangzhou, three ethnic Uyghur assailants with long knives
attacked civilians at Guangzhou train station, 13 injured.

In November 2014 in Xinjian, militants with knives and explosives attacked
civilians, 15 dead and 14 injured. 14 of the 15 deaths were attackers

In May 2014 in Ürümqi, Xinjiang, Two sport utility vehicles (SUVs) carrying
five assailants were driven into a busy street market in Ürümqi. Up to a dozen
explosives were thrown at shoppers from the windows of the SUVs. The SUVs
crashed into shoppers then collided with each other and exploded. 43 people
were killed, including 4 of the assailants, and more than 90 wounded.

There are many more.

~~~
_bxg1
Believe it or not, it's possible to combat terrorism without criminalizing an
entire ethnicity.

~~~
HansLandaa
Such as a proposed ban on Muslim immigrants? I agree with you. I'm not making
a value judgement but merely stating relevant facts.

~~~
_bxg1
A religion is an ethnicity too. Many Muslims are peaceful. To lump them all
together is broad-strokes-painting with deadly consequences.

~~~
HansLandaa
I agree. I was referring to the US President's proposed ban on Muslim
immigrants. I'm curious, what would be your solution to terrorist activity in
western China?

~~~
_bxg1
As I'm neither an experienced state official nor a military commander, I can't
pretend to have a solution. But I'd start by reversing any policies that are
harming more people than the terrorism itself.

