- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
- china@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
- china@sopuli.xyz
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/53062611
[…]
Starting around March 27, Uyghur Times reviewed multiple videos from Urumqi and Kashgar showing city management workers removing Uyghur-language signs from shops, restaurants, supermarkets, and even private businesses. In many cases, only Chinese-language signage was left behind.
One widely circulated video on the Chinese version of TikTok shows the demolition of Uyghur-style architectural elements at a major transportation hub in Urumqi, known as Uchtash Qatnash Bikiti (also referred to as Sandongbi Transportation Station).
In the footage, a Uyghur man standing in front of the site expresses deep sorrow:
“Today we are witnessing the destruction of one of the most iconic cultural landmarks in Urumqi. It held our memories. For many of us, our journeys began here and ended here. Now, it is gone.”
[…]
Other videos show workers dismantling Uyghur-language signage across urban areas. One sign reads “ئۆي مۈلۈكچىلىك، ئىلىم سېتىم,” meaning “Real estate Sales & Transactions.” Another removed sign identifies a construction materials supplier. In the clip, a bystander can be heard lamenting:
“It is not over. One day, it will come back.”
Observers say the campaign reflects a broader effort to eliminate visible markers of Uyghur cultural and linguistic identity under the framework of the new law.
When the law was passed, experts warned that it would legitimize cultural destruction and forced assimilation. Uyghur activists also condemned the law.
[…]
These are empty words. What the Chinese Communist Party is doing here amounts to genocide.
The only people accusing China of genocide are Western genocidaires. The Arab League says there’s no genocide. Uyghur religious leaders in Xinjiang say there’s no genocide. There are no protests on the street in Xinjiang saying there’s a genocide (there are protests in Xinjiang, though, mostly involving worker safety).
There are twice as many mosques in Xinjiang than in the US, UK, France, and Germany combined.
The population of Xinjiang continues to increase as it has for many many years.
It’s a very strange genocide, this genocide you claim. It doesn’t look like American genocide of indigenous people. It doesn’t look like Israeli genocide of Palestinians. It doesn’t cause mass death. It doesn’t erase language or religion. It doesn’t strip the Uyghurs of their governance. It doesn’t separate their children from their families.
And yet, you, the most prolific sinophobic propagandist I see in the lemnyverse, continue to say there’s a genocide.
You’re going to have to produce some real evidence. And not a DC-based propaganda outlet that just happens to always side with the official US narrative.
Nobody is dying or losing their language/culture in the reeducation camps? Oh yah?
Give me proof of the camps or eat shit lol
No no, Jesus is (probably) not wrong about re-education. That’s the most believable thing out of all this. The US has been building terrorist groups in West Asia for 4 or 5 decades now. The East Turkestan movement is one of the US’s projects to destabilize China, just like when it trained Tibetan terrorists and literally airlifted them from training camps into Tibet to go commit mass murder.
This creates a huge problem for China. It can’t fight the terrorists with overwhelming violence. A) that just creates more terrorists and B) the US has proven it doesn’t work. So they need to find some other way to counter it. Re-education camps seem like they could be way heavy handed for this purpose. But the proof is in the numbers. Whatever China has done has successfully reduced the terrorist attacks, pretty much better than anything the world has ever seen, and they did it while maintaining cultural autonomy, religious freedom, etc.
China is pretty secretive about it because it’s literally a national security problem and if you expose to the Americans how you’re countering the US radicalization program, they’ll adapt their program. That’s why China brought in the Arab League to audit their program. The Arab League was the least likely to try to help the Americans adapt their terrorist training programs, and they were the most sympathetic to and knowledgeable about the Uyghurs. The Arab League reviewed the program first hand and they signed off on it.
So, I don’t doubt the existence of a reeducation program. I just think it’s an actual effective tool in combating religious extremism and radicalism, particularly the extremism fomented by US intelligence in the region.
The reeducation camps for adult Uyghurs that lasts less ? Not really possible to lose your language as an adult speaker in 3 years. Yup, 3 years. That’s the worst report I’ve been able to find in English about the horrors of reeducation.
Remember, the entire point of the reeducation camps is to reduce the number of terrorist attacks in the province. That’s not achievable by forcing people to stop speaking their language. In fact, that’s exactly how you get more terrorist attacks. And yet, China’s anti-terrorism campaign has been wildly successful at reducing terrorist attacks in the province. You think they did this by killing a bunch of people in camps? When in all of human history has that resulted in LESS violent resistance? It hasn’t.
So just to be clear you’re pro reeducation camp and you believe China’s claims about them at face value?
I am against creating terrorist groups, particularly against twisting religious doctrine to create terrorist groups, arming them, training them, and directing them towards innocent civilians. So far, China seems to have the most success least violent response to a terrorist threat. They have targeted the specific social mechanisms that are used to create in-group solidarity and worked to undermine the lies and manipulation that keeps people locked in extremist organizations and drives them to acts of violence. They have reduced violent terrorist attacks on civilians in Xinjiang by a huge percentage without having to resort to US tactics of anti-terrorism like bombing weddings and funerals.
If that means they used a re-education program to do it, then heck yeah I support that. Certainly beats wanton mass murder. It would be great if we could learn what the curriculum is and how they deradicalized the movement. That would be really valuable to the whole world.
Also, it’s historically inline with how the PLA won the civil war. There were entire divisions of the PLA with a casually rate of well over 100% because they were able to convince their KMT POWs that not only was the PLA the good guys but that the KMT had through lied to them and manipulated them. The communists in China have a good track record of this. I would trust them when they say that they are successfully deradicalizing the East Turkestan separatists through predominantly non-violent means
You’re not addressing the article but sidestepping the discussion. This tells a lot.
I’m not addressing an article from a DC-based psyop?
Let’s address it.
Literally against the law. As I posted. Article 5 of the law prohibits this. First line of the article and it’s already trying to create an alternate reality where China passed a law targeting Uyghur identity when it did the exact opposite.
Again, almost a complete fabrication. China has had autonomous cultural regions for literally centuries, even before the genocidal Europeans came to the region. In those regions, for literally centuries, those ethnic groups indigenous to those regions have not only educated, worshiped, celebrated, farmed, and raised their children in accordance with their culture, it has been ILLEGAL to discriminate against them or prevent them from doing so.
Here’s an article from an actual anthropologist: https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/teaching-tibetan-tibet-bilingual-education-survival
This article isn’t trying to combat propaganda, so I’ll have to call out specifically what it says: It says that there are challenges for students who have to learn both languages, which means they are learning the Tibetan language. It says that students can study in the Tibetan language from primary school all the way through university in Tibet.
Similarly, there is no ban on the Uyghur language in schools. Starting in 2014, China began countering the terrorism in Xinjiang which was associated with a separatist movement that combined anti-communism, sinophobia, religious extremism, and extremist nationalism. This included propagandizing children in education. China banned a large number of Uyghur texts that pushed the narrative of East Turkestan separatists and religious extremism. The West decided to call that “banning all instruction in the Uyghur language”.
As for demolitions, I’ve seen numbers as high as 40 mosques “destroyed or altered since 2017”. That’s hardly a program of cultural denial, is it? 40 mosques. Out of 24,000? In the US, at least 1500 churches have completely closed in the last decade. Is that a government program to destroy Christianity?
So the propaganda rag isn’t even sending journalists to the area they are studying? They’re watching a few videos, without citing them, where signs are removed. No context for it either? Like, did the restaurant close? Did the private businesses close? Seems like it would be pretty weird for city management workers to do something that is literally against the law (Article 5) and carries actual penalties as described in the law. Who to believe? The report from DC that they saw some videos and therefore it’s a cultural genocide? Or you know, the people actually there, on the ground.
So you mean a major transportation hub is undergoing reconstruction as part of increase public services to the people in the region? Literally anything you demolish or renovate in Xinjiang is going to have cultural elements informed by the Uyghur culture. That’s because it’s a culturally autonomous region that got to define its own architectural style and the CPC has spent nearly its entire existence integrating those cultural choices into their work in the region. If I renovate a house here in the states, I’m going to have to destroy some sheetrock. Does that mean I’ve got a program of cultural erasure of gypsum?
Let’s go to the linked tweet, shall we?
Really? Nothing related to Uyghur culture is allowed to exist in China? 24000 mosques, Uyghur cultural festivals, Uyghur cuisine, etc? I don’t trust the person writing this tweet any more than I trust the “Uyghur Times” out of DC. Clearly this poster has zero integrity to say something so bald-faced like this in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary
Huh! Well I’ll be damned! It must be a cultural genocide! No one removes signs for any other reason. No no. Those 24000 mosques will be removed too. Just you wait!
Again, literally the opposite of what the law says and what the law literally lists as grounds for criminal and civil punishments.
There. Happy now? I had to read that fucking paper thin propaganda so I could look for even an OUNCE of journalist integrity and what I found was a DC-based “journalist” saying that they saw a couple TikToks and that clearly the very detailed and very thorough law that is written to protect the variety of ethnicity in China is ACTUALLY just an elaborate ruse where everyone is totally lying and everyone knows everyone is lying and no one does anything about everyone lying and they’re just going to keep going with their cultural genocide by… rebuilding a bus station and removing a handful of signs from commercial buildings.
Very convincing.
@frisbird@lemmy.ml
This article is from 2010. It’s 16 years old.
And it has, of course, nothing to do with the fact that China’s government is, once again, committing genocide.
Being an anthropologist doesn’t magically prove the claims they’re making dumbass, you need evidence to do that and as usual there’s none
Good, i’m happy now.
You’re adding nothing as well…?
I’m addressing their comment.