
Satellite images expose China's network of secret re-education camps in Xinjiang - 0xmohit
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-01/satellite-images-expose-chinas-network-of-re-education-camps/10432924
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MichaelMoser123
A previous report on this outrage [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-
sh/China_hidden_cam...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-
sh/China_hidden_camps?fbclid=IwAR18LUvgdxBW8i1FU3Wh6mclx4VcIyUKU-d0zVLUHt1eGpLwM58MGMDFrVw)

~~~
isostatic
You can’t read that in China. DNS is intercepted and overwitten - *.bbc.co.uk
is directed to a random IP address that is typically in an AS that should be
somewhere in the US, at one point it was a netblock owned by facebook,
although with a 20ms response in Beijing.

Same applies to many other sites. To westerners, the Internet is effectively
unusable until you establish a vpn.

HN works though.

~~~
throwawayinside
Can someone explain why a netblock owned by Facebook would have a 20ms
response time in China? Does Facebook have Chinese servers?

~~~
stephen_g
I assume the inference is that the Government is hijacking the address within
China and routing it to a state-controlled server.

So they could make it plausibly look like it’s coming from a foreign IP while
locally censoring the content on the site.

If you have control over the network, hijacking the whole site is easier to do
than trying to MITM traffic between users and the site, since HTTPS would
hinder your efforts. As long as you don’t start to do it too late that people
have HSTS information saved in their browsers.

~~~
therein
And for that there is HSTS Preload.

[https://hstspreload.com/](https://hstspreload.com/)

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_iyig
Was this article flagged in some non-visible way? I don’t see it anywhere in
the first 7 pages, despite having 123 points and a post time of just 16 hours
ago. (Only noticed when I came back to it hoping for a reply to an earlier
comment.)

~~~
paraditedc
Because not everyone is interested in constant China bashing news on homepage,
especially from abc.net.au.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=abc.net.au](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=abc.net.au)

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lifeisstillgood
And will we abandon China's next Davos in the X conference as fast as we did
Saudi?

~~~
TaylorAlexander
I mentioned this in another thread recently but I heard many companies whose
CEOs abandoned the Saudi conference still sent representatives in their stead.
For PR reasons they distanced themselves but they don’t really want to abandon
the Saudis.

~~~
snorremd
Money rules and the CEOs have shareholders to answer to. Making it look good
in public is more important than actually taking a stance.

------
echevil
It’s not secret anymore. The government has explained what they are. And so
called re-education camps are not uncommon in other parts of China at all

~~~
singularity2001
In 1944 they were called 'work camps'. re-education does sound a bit more
friendly so there is progress in propaganda.

~~~
Cthulhu_
And ATM in the US they're called detention camps for enemy combatants.

~~~
adventured
There are 40 enemy combatants held at Guantanamo. They have public legal
representation and visitation rights.

China has removed all human rights for over ten million Uyghur Muslims.
Including freedom of movement, freedom of religion, tight restrictions on
behavior, tracking of all communication and movement, restrictions on who you
can meet or talk to, tracking of all Urghar family members in China or abroad,
non-existent freedoms around speech and expression, total lockdown on press
investigation or discussion, forced re-education.

And then for at least a million Uyghur Muslims, they're outright physically
and mentally torturing them in camps through forced programs to destroy their
culture and beliefs.

Please enlighten me as to how that compares to what the US is currently doing
with Guantanamo. I believe the detainment facility at Guantanamo should not
exist and should have never existed. There's an important on-going debate
there. There's no reasonable comparison to be had between Guantanamo and
Xinjiang, whether in scale, intent, or context.

~~~
hanchinese
My high school physics teacher escaped from the region fearing for her
children's safety and future. I have to disappoint you that the story is not
about a Uygur woman escaping from the horrible CCP re-education camp, it is
the complete opposite - my high school physics teacher is a talented Han
Chinese woman who escaped from endless Uygur terrorist bombings on Han Chinese
civilians.

She told me that a full bus of students from her school were killed in a Uygur
terrorist attack. Sadly, they didn't have access to any guns to defend for
themselves. There was no government intervention under the banner of autonomy.
For people like my physics teacher, the only viable choice was to leave the
region and reallocate the whole family to Han majority places.

To be frankly honest with you, CCP has probably 95% support from we Han
Chinese on those re-education camps - the other 5% are probably asking for
even tougher policies. You can paint Muslim as a peaceful religion or whatever
you want, Han Chinese don't buy political correctness. Your attack on the
Chinese government on matters like those re-education camps are being
considered as the proof that CCP is working its ass off protecting the
interests of all those non-Muslim Chinese citizens.

~~~
sadness2
Thank you for honestly sharing your perspective. Unfortunately a fear-based
approach reliably creates what it fears. If the proponents of a culture want
others to do adopt their culture, they may do so by inspiring others through
their compassion, generosity and self-sacrifice. This is the trust-based
approach. Unfortunately it is rarely done because it is counter-intuitive and
requires systematically setting aside all anger, forgiving when forgiveness is
not deserved and making oneself vulnerable. Both approaches often result in
casualties, but while one results in people dying attempting to enforce their
will on others, the other involves people dying in an attempt to show
compassion. The latter is profoundly persuasive in favour of the giver of
compassion while the former incites profound hatred.

~~~
echevil
Except it’s not a fear based approach. The re-education camp are - like it’s
name - for re-education. The Chinese government want these Muslim extremists
to learn enough skills to live a normal life. If they can make a living like
everyone else, they’ll be much likely to become a terrorist. It’s a better
outcome for everyone

------
plaguuuuuu
related: [https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/mapping-chinas-re-
educatio...](https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/mapping-chinas-re-education-
camps-the-power-of-open-source-intelligence/)

------
boomboomsubban
It's strange to see this thread full of outrage over China's acts and
demanding they give the Uyghur their sovereignty when Xinjiang borders
Afghanistan. Nothing they are doing is worse than the seventeen years that the
US has held sovereignty of Afghanistan, resulting in hundreds of thousands of
dead.

~~~
adventured
What would make you think there's a lack of outrage related to the US and Iraq
+ Afghanistan? Did you miss the massive global marches against the Iraq
invasion? It's routinely brought up in discussion threads here and everywhere,
and has been for 15 years now. If you want to criticize the US on human
rights, the #1 go to point in every discussion is either the Iraq/Afghanistan
wars (or incarceration policies in the US). It's immediately brought up,
without exception. There has never been a lack of outrage about the US
involvement in those countries.

~~~
boomboomsubban
>There has never been a lack of outrage about the US involvement in those
countries.

Yet the sovereignty of those countries is still in US control, thee were
10,000 civilian casualties last year just in Afghanistan, and an ever
increasing amount of countries face the same fate.

We should address our own atrocities if we want to shame the Chinese for
theirs.

------
sho
It's hard to defend China here but it's also hard to see how they are supposed
to handle the Uyghur question, and articles like this certainly don't give
useful suggestions. What do you do with a region full of separatist agitators
who frequently resort to violence and refuse to even teach their children
Mandarin? Leave them to it and tolerate the bombings? Allow them to secede?

There's a long history here and after decades of failure, China is beginning
to turn the screws, in typical heavy handed style. But I'd genuinely like to
know what people think the alternative is with a near-rebel province.

One quote from the article which I think sums things up:

> “I cannot bear keeping silent [any more] because I think there’s a genocide
> taking place in East Turkestan,” he said, using the name many Uighurs use to
> refer to their homeland.

This chap has unwittingly hit the nail on the head. China cannot, and will
not, allow the separatist movement in the Xinjiang region to proceed further.

~~~
Cthulhu_
> Allow them to secede?

Is that a serious question? If a people no longer wants to be part of a
country they should be allowed to secede. The Scottish tried it via a
democratic route - which would have succeeded with a wide margin post-Brexit.
Actually, the British voted to secede from the EU. The Catalans want to secede
from Spain.

But that's besides the point - you're almost implying that it's OK to put
people in concentration camps.

~~~
toxik
The EU is not a nation state

Scotland has a very unique history in this

Catalunya is not gaining independence and the central Madrid government has
declared their referendum illegitimate and illegal.

People cannot vote their way to secession, even in democracies.

~~~
int_19h
That depends on the democracy. You mentioned Scotland already (and there's
nothing particularly unique about it). Then there's Canada, where the Supreme
Court has specifically outlined the rules for Quebec (or any other province)
to secede - but acknowledged that there is a basic right to do so. One could
argue that ability to handle peaceful secession is simply the next stage in
evolution of liberal democracy, and those that allow for it are more advanced
than those that do not.

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hitripley
This is just another try to demonize that country. Do these people (especially
those from CNN and BBC) really care about the fate of the prisoners?

~~~
Krasnol
You make it as if it would require some creative work do paint China in a bad
light when the facts are more then enough and that's what is happening here.
Facts. Reality.

It's interesting though that you simultaneously know that this makes China
look bad but instead of blaming those who cause it (Chinese government) you
chose to blame those who report it. Why is that?

