
China putting minority Muslims in 'concentration camps,' U.S. says - onetimemanytime
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-china-concentrationcamps/china-putting-minority-muslims-in-concentration-camps-u-s-says-idUKKCN1S925F
======
b_tterc_p
The photo and caption are telling

> Workers walk by the perimeter fence of what is officially known as a
> vocational skills education centre

Below a picture of a barbed wire prison

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geogra4
Yeah, sure. And Guaido is the president of Venezuela

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A2017U1
The US is putting minorities into private prisons at far greater rates for
nonviolent crimes. The rate of imprisonment is entirely correlated to race.

Yes whataboutism, but please think of an actual justification before you
respond rather than the usual low effort handwaving it away with a single
word.

Large powerful countries are carte blanche allowed to get away with horrendous
injustices. I'd be eager to hear solutions.

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

> half of all persons incarcerated under state jurisdiction are for non-
> violent offenses, and 20% are incarcerated for drug offenses (in state
> prisons; federal prison percentages are higher).

~~~
deogeo
> please think of an actual justification before you respond

Why? Both systems are threats, one internal (from a US perspective), one
external. Opposing one does not imply supporting the other, and US sins do not
mean China presents less of a threat.

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acqq
Whenever you read something like that that the "U.S. says" remember that the
"U.S. said" for a long time that WMDs exist in Iraq and used that claim for a
war. It turned out it was a complete fabrication, and that there were even
helpers, e.g. Britain and Germany. So "UK said" it too and it was later
completely obvious:

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

"much of the work in the Iraq Dossier had been plagiarised from various
unattributed sources including a 13-year-old thesis produced by a student at
California State University. The most notable source was an article by then
graduate student Ibrahim al-Marashi"

Also:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/15/defector-
admit...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/15/defector-admits-wmd-
lies-iraq-war)

Even older (Gulf War) claims of the "enemy" killing babies in the incubators
were a complete fabrication:

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

"The Nayirah testimony was a false testimony given before the Congressional
Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990 by a 15-year-old girl who provided
only her first name, Nayirah." It "was cited numerous times by United States
senators and President George H. W. Bush in their rationale to back Kuwait in
the Gulf War. In 1992, it was revealed that Nayirah's last name was al-Ṣabaḥ
and that she was the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the
United States. Furthermore, it was revealed that her testimony was organized"

"On January 6, 1992, The New York Times published an op-ed piece by John
MacArthur entitled "Remember Nayirah, Witness for Kuwait?"[57]" "The story
earned MacArthur the Monthly Journalism Award from The Washington Monthly in
April 1992, and the Mencken Award in 1993."

~~~
marak830
Imho enough non-us sites have pointed out the fact that China has
concentration camps. But hey, I guess there were doubters for nazi Germany
too, and in this age, paid commenters trying to add doubt. Not that I'm
accusing you directly, just I may be doubting your sincerity a little.

~~~
acqq
> Imho enough non-us sites have pointed out the fact that China has
> concentration camps.

If they simply reported about the U.S. claims, or the sources are the same in
some other way, that shouldn't count as "more proof". Again, see the WMD
story, and consider how long main stream media in multiple countries hasn't
questioned that, now proved false, narration.

> Not that I'm accusing you directly, just I may be doubting your sincerity a
> little.

What you effectively promote is not even questioning the validity of some
claims when it is e.g. "against China" so that as soon as I point the provable
U.S. propaganda actions which even resulted in the wars before, I must be paid
for that? In reality, those who are spreading the actual propaganda are those
who are nicely paid for their work. That's exactly why I advocate extreme
caution in unconditionally accepting the inflammatory claims, and the lines
involving "Muslims in concentration camps" are obviously very much such.

~~~
namirez
Actually it's China that appears to be borrowing from the US propaganda
playbook by using the war on terror as a pretext for incarcerating up to 30%
of an ethnic and religious minority. Even Human Rights Watch has reported on
them. [https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/09/09/eradicating-
ideologica...](https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/09/09/eradicating-ideological-
viruses/chinas-campaign-repression-against-xinjiangs)

~~~
acqq
Thanks for that link, I see no use of "concentration" camps term there.

Where do you get that 30 percent though? That would be at least more than 3
million people!

The biggest claim I know of is, as an example, 1700 out of some specific town
of 32,000 inhabitants, and that could be realistic if the said town was indeed
the center of the extremist activity, including some kind of preparing a
paramilitary organization:

[https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/target-0629201813250...](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/target-06292018132506.html)

Note how that specific claim (of around 5% of that 32000 people town) is first
blown up to be "10%" and then put in the title as "One in 10 Uyghur Residents
of Xinjiang Township Jailed or Detained in ‘Re-Education Camp’" to bind the
title not to the specific town but to the whole province with 11 million
residents. Which is again less surprising knowing that it's RFA who publishes
it that way:

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

Paid by U.S. taxpayers, initially directly organized by the CIA. Now it is:

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

"the US government described the Asia Foundation as a "quasi-nongovernmental
organizations" and said that "the core of its budget" was still provided by
the US government."

And even that RFA didn't use the "concentration" word.

~~~
namirez
I'm not claiming that I know the exact numbers; I don't. But this was reported
by the same news outlet:
[https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/millions-08032018142...](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/millions-08032018142025.html)

------
mrobot
Why does this article keep happening? Do we really think the United States
gives a damn or are they just projecting? Any time the United States has a
humanitarian concern it's a red flag to me. Xinjiang has abundant oil and
mineral reserves, just saying...

~~~
mrobot
Counternarrative about US-funded "World Uyghur Congress" separatists
instigating this: [https://journal-neo.org/2019/01/30/is-china-building-a-
polic...](https://journal-neo.org/2019/01/30/is-china-building-a-police-state-
or-countering-western-sponsored-terrorism/)

~~~
heraclius
Politico says that this website is part of a Russian government institution.⁰
Perhaps that’s bunkum, but both sides fund propaganda about the other; most of
the time, they will fund propaganda about things that are true—I remember
Xinhua writing something entirely true about police brutality in the US for
example—because true things are more credible.

The article, moreover, contains something of a non sequitur. The terrorist
attacks it cites are from before the terror attacks. So at the very least the
approach the CCP used between that time and the concentration camps was
sufficient, and the recent escalation insufficient.

It is also worth asking why the Uyghurs became violent in the first place.
China was one of the powers that opposed the Soviets in Afghanistan; this, of
course, involved the creation of a violent Islam to oppose their rule. The
Strike Hard campaign was not obviously born of necessity; the 90s were not a
time of substantial strife. Terrorism is something of a weasel word; the use
of violence is fairly common and oughtn’t to render an entire people pariahs.
Moreover the CCP response is grossly disproportionate—the detention of
millions in response to terrorist attacks on the scale of, at most, thousands,
is entirely unjustified.

As for the use of “separatism” as code for “a priori bad”, this usage is
entirely unjustified.

It is quite plausible that the Americans are not acting benevolently. That is
not an excuse to ignore the plight of the Uyghurs, documented by others.¹

0\. [https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/12/how-
russi...](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/12/how-russia-
targets-the-us-military-215247)

1\. [https://jamestown.org/program/xinjiangs-re-education-and-
sec...](https://jamestown.org/program/xinjiangs-re-education-and-
securitization-campaign-evidence-from-domestic-security-budgets/) — on the
nature of the campaign; [https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/05/01/chinas-
algorithms-repr...](https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/05/01/chinas-algorithms-
repression/reverse-engineering-xinjiang-police-mass-surveillance) — on mass
surveillance.

