Talk:Uyghur genocide

Silver
It's ongoing, but it's a huge deal. I support silver. 20:15, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

107
A meme on Reddit is the source? That seems a little less than reliable....

Issues with Article Rationality / Non-Bayesian Analysis
This article makes some fair points, and I have updated my opinions on the issue accordingly. However, in many places the article reads as trying to prove a point instead of "following the evidence wherever it goes." In particular, some fair counterarguments are not covered as "this should update your prior negatively towards source X" and are instead entirely thrown out or inappropriately associated with a fallacy. Here are a couple examples:


 * Didn't CHRD only interview eight Uyghurs?
 * As stated earlier, the Greyzone strawmanned their claim.
 * However, webshites like The Greyzone strawman their argument by conveniently omitting that each of the villagers came from a different village.
 * However, webshites like The Greyzone strawman their argument by conveniently omitting that each of the villagers came from a different village.

As I understand The Greyzone's argument, their issue is that the study is based on eight people, not that the statistical sourcing of those people is bad. In fact, the information on different villages is even included in the screenshot The Greyzone provides.

Bringing up the extremely small sample size is a valid point, and should update your Bayesian prediction (at least slightly) in favor of Adrian Zenz being ideologically motivated. It is honestly confusing to me how NCHRD managed to get such a small sample size - if they were visiting the villages in person, why did they only have time for one interview? Was it conducted remotely instead of in person? If so, how were the participants in the study sourced - was it through a third party organization like the WUC? Such issues are not discussed in the original study.

If the WUC were involved in interviewee sourcing, that would lead to issues of ideological motivation, as the WUC is explicitly separatist according to their own website (bolding mine):


 * The Chinese communist reign in East Turkistan can be considered the darkest chapter in the history of the Uyghurs and East Turkistan. Under the current conditions, the very existence of the Uyghur nation is under threat. The Chinese communist government has been carrying out a vicious campaign against Uyghurs and other indigenous people of East Turkistan in order to permanently annex the lands of East Turkistan.
 * Despite all the brutal and destructive campaigns by the Chinese government against their identity and existence, the Uyghurs and other indigenous peoples of East Turkistan refuse to be subjugated by China and keep carrying the torch of resistance against Chinese occupation, handed down to them by their ancestors.
 * Despite all the brutal and destructive campaigns by the Chinese government against their identity and existence, the Uyghurs and other indigenous peoples of East Turkistan refuse to be subjugated by China and keep carrying the torch of resistance against Chinese occupation, handed down to them by their ancestors.

Furthermore, the NCHRD study itself leads to concern over whether the numbers were obtained through a process similar to p-hacking. They start their data collection section by saying:


 * Between July 2017 and June 2018, we interviewed dozens of ethnic Uyghur villagers in several counties in Kashgar Prefecture...

(Dozens meaning at least 24.) But when they get to estimation of the number of people in the camps, they say:


 * The following table presents the data we have compiled based on interview with eight ethnic Uyghurs.

Why did they throw out at least 2/3rds of their interviewees? Or did they simply not ask numbers from the rest of their interviewees? It is not discussed in the study. It could be as simple as most of the interviewees being sourced from a few villages, but it's not clear.

I don't claim that the above hypotheticals (eg Uyghurs interviewees sourced from the WUC) are true, just that the study leaves open the possibility of such bias, and that should be rationally concerning.

The second example I will point out here is "But Radio Free Asia is US state media!" In this section, the counterarguments are:


 * 1) CGTN is state media.
 * 2) The US has lied before, which is has no impact on the current allegations, as it is a fallacy to claim this.
 * 3) Chinese media performs censorship.
 * 4) The US does not want to start a war with China, just to have political leverage. China is a valuable trading partner with the US, and the US did not push especially hard until 2020, when relations between the two countries broke down.
 * 5) US leftists have compared the rhetoric in Xinjiang to Bush's War on Terror.

Points 1, 3, and 5 can be thrown out completely; they have no bearing on whether RFA is state propaganda or is trustworthy. Points 2 and 4 seem to be arguing in favor of the trustworthiness of RFA, rather than whether or not RFA is US funded.

It is correct that RFA is funded by USAGM, which is funded directly by the US Congress, and it is correct that NED (also funded by Congress) has been funding Uyghur separatist groups. This should increase your Bayesian prediction that RFA is ideologically motivated.

On issues of trustworthiness, point 2 should have the opposite logical effect as described in the article. It should increase your Bayesian prediction that RFA is willing to lie about issues if it is in the US interest. Because it has happened before, it is in theory possible that it could happen again. If we lived in a counterfactual world where the US associates had never lied about issues to start a war, then the Bayesian impact of RFA's funding source (Congress) would be much lower. It is only correct to call this a fallacy if you're doing binary evaluations of truth, not Bayesian evaluations.

On point 4, this is the closest to a valid argument. If it is true, it would decrease the motivation for RFA to make ideologically motivated claims. I think the political leverage vs. war point is debatable, as balkanization of the USSR greatly helped the US without directly causing a war, which implies the US would be happy to support separatist movements in the hope of a similar outcome. But I admit the valuable trading partner point should update your Bayesian prediction on this. I think "the US didn't push especially hard until 2020" is true, but I hope some sources (eg media analysis) are provided for this. We could take the favorability ratings of China in the US as correlated factor, which shows a drop starting in 2019.

There are other issues, but this post is already quite long, so I'll leave at this for now. --Order (talk) 21:00, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

So....
Hasn't recent evidence shown this to be completely wrong and at no point were anywhere near a million people detained in xinjiang?

The people's tribunal, setting aside questions of bias, only alleged around 6000 people missing. We say millions.

Did we publish total bunk? Rationalwiki should not have been a place for making extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 14:37, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
 * What the fuck is this thefinancialdistric.com.ph source? At any rate, currently there is no really good concrete evidence because China is being China and holding a tight lip. The "million people" in detention camps (not missing) is an informed estimate based on several sources and I think that's clear from the many references. Likewise, there of course is fuzziness due to China's tight lip, but based on reports this probably involves forced labor (so at minimum slavery), might involve torture, and most probably involves Orwellian surveillance. Missing people is not really the deal here, I don't think it's gotten to the "China is deliberately killing Uyghurs" stage of things. However, the reports of forced sterilization, abortion, and suppression of religious practices are what possibly qualify this as a genocide . PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 14:57, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Added a couple lines of disclaimer. Feel free to alter.  15:27, 14 October 2021 (UTC)
 * We fucking claim a million people were detained. That's one out of every 25 people in the district.  It's insanely and demonstrably not true.  Don't defend the motte position of "China did bad things".  Defend the outright bogus assertion we put in our lede that was completely without substantiation beyond unreasonable extrapolation of very few interviews.
 * And we're well past the point of "Just fix it" because the nature of claim and the fact that we staked our reputation on saying something that degree of incorrect. It's a tremendous error that needs more accountability to how it happened than that.
 * I'm of the very strict opinion that you don't make allegations of that kind of scale without some kind of real material evidence. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 01:06, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Have you even read any of the sources? I mean, you are basically saying Amnesty International (twice), Human Rights Watch and United Nation spokespeople are basically spouting out complete bullshit on the subject for the last few years (let alone some of the other organizations like Buzzfeed News).
 * It is fair to say it is an estimate. But at this point, the estimate is based on:
 * A) Interviews with people who have been through the detention camps.
 * B) Satellite images detecting the detention camps and certain other leaked documents.
 * I think it is fair to add "estimated" anywhere that term does not exist, as it most certainly is an estimate at this time. I also think changing the phrase from a definitive ("1 million detained") to more fuzzy ("estimated to be up to a million detained, or even more") is fair. However, the one million estimate is being touted IMHO by some very credible organizations on this matter, it's even considered . I'm afraid that I need some proof for this "insanely and demonstrably not true" comment, we have some pretty heavy hitters that are reporting this information, and generally speaking the ones not reporting this position lean towards propaganda outlets like China Daily. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 01:46, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
 * OK, I went through and changed a few places where it seemed like the article advocated concrete evidence instead of an estimate. Also, the editor that slipped in a globaltimes.cn citation without actually reading the propaganda contained within it needs a little trout whack. :p PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 02:05, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Woefully inadequate. The military crackdown in xinjiang (that absolutely happened and was absolutely not a good thing) has now ended, and it's possible to interview people there with some degree of security, and it's 100% clear that no mass incarceration on the scale that insane people like Megha Rajagopalan conjectured by looking at buildings on google fucking maps happened.  He won a pulitzer for that insane drivel.  And frankly we were idiots to publish it uncritically.  You're an idiot now for doubling down and throwing fucking winky faces to cover for "oh it was just an estimate."  Fuck you.  Genocide of millions is not something to idly speculate is happening.  That's is inexcusable. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 17:44, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I mean, I can find a reliable source that says some of the restrictions have eased but I can't find anything saying the mass detention never happened. We shouldn't push something that could potentially be genocide denial uncritically either. Plutocow (talk) 17:50, 18 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed, what we need are some links with your point of view, ikanreed. I can't find anything even remotely comparable. In fact, the BBC claims via a China white paper that China itself was sending 1.3 million people to "reeducation camps", so it's pretty clear something big happened and the question is more "what" (with the details we have not looking that great). It's a little bit puzzling why you're, frankly, sounding quite like the China propaganda mouthpieces here on this subject. PanGalacticGargleBlaster (talk) 17:55, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

The entire thing was fabricated, start to finish and you fell for it, willingly or otherwise. There is no credible evidence whatsoever for the (patently absurd) claims in this article. This entire page is an embarrassment to this website and what it's supposed to stand for.

"We shouldn't push something that could potentially be genocide denial uncritically either."

"I can't find anything saying the mass detention never happened."

"you're, frankly, sounding quite like the China propaganda mouthpieces"

This sounds like a discussion on a far-right racist website. Now you're demanding proof of negatives and calling defence of the truth "propaganda". You're engaging in war and atrocity propaganda as mouthpieces for American imperialism. It's all been entirely debunked repeatedly and at length, all of it. Your reliance on these "heavy hitters" is likewise spurious. HRW is known for this behaviour and the BBC certainly willingly manufactured propaganda for this nonsense. Likewise Amnesty backed the Nayirah testimony. If you're honest, and from this discussion it does look like at least some of you are, you'll either delete the page and save your reputation from further damage or change the page to show that it was all a hoax from the start and admit your part in it. You need to question the motivations of the people who spun this here too.
 * Oh look a tankie. 15:41, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh look a twelve year old.
 * To be fair, it can be hard to tell based on support of China alone whether someone is a tankie or a fashy these days considering that China has more in common with a fascist government and is pro-capitalist today than it was in say, the Mao era. They have Deng to thank for that, after the crackdowns that happened in Tiananmen Square. Not that tankies would know that and most of them look like a deer in headlights when you tell them "China isn't actually communist" and "the progess China makes on poverty can be attributed to capitalist growth that enabled it". Which they really don't like to talk about. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 15:53, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Demanding proof of negatives seems reasonable to me, considering you are essentially arguing that something that has been documented by tons of sources is actually incorrect on a very fundamental level. armed_roomba (she/her)What am I doing wrong this time? 16:13, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The Sasquatch has been documented by tonnes of sources. Prove it doesn't exist.
 * While some of the details are unclear due to China's secrecy, it's pretty much undeniable that the Uyghurs are being oppressed in Xinjiang. If you try to deny it, you are basically a genocide denier in my book. Plutocow (talk) 16:17, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * What "secrecy"? The tourism is increasing, which is why this story is being dropped from major outlets like AP. I deny this particular ludicrous "genocide", so apparently I am a genocide denier, yes. Belgium just murdered all of the citizens of Luxemburg last week. Don't agree? Now you're a genocide denier too. I'm also a grey alien denier and a Iraq WMD denier, I routinely deny incredible claims with no credible evidence, and so should you.
 * Claiming that BBC is not reliable while using a blog tier source like Medium is quite funny to say the least. GeeJayK (talk) 17:13, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Engage with the content, it shows up the BBC's unreliability very well. It's quite clear that this article has been desperately written with an extreme bias.
 * When I say it's over, I mean it's quickly being dropped, they're not even claiming genocide anymore. You'll need to at the very least change the title of the article to match the warmongering propaganda narrative you're trying to help with. You're off-message.
 * —cosmikdebris talk stalk 16:00, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Just because some restrictions eased doesn't mean it never happened. That's like saying the Holocaust never happened because they aren't exterminating Jews anymore. Also, the source you linked says the Uyghurs are still oppressed and does not dispute that over a million were likely imprisoned. You're gonna have to try harder, genocide denier. Plutocow (talk) 16:15, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Oh they won't. They're going to repeat their talking points, ad hom you, and complain because we don't lick the CCP's boots like they do. Gods, imagine having politics as childish and naive as "US bad, enemies of US good." 19:27, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I can't say the enemies of the US are good. China has universal internet censorship, an incredibly regressive policy.  But the claims we have made on the basis of some very dubious reasoning(that if it weren't published on major outlets would be described here as a conspiracy theory) are outrageously and unreasonably false.  Proving that no misconduct of any kind happened during the course of China's "antiterrorism" martial law period is impossible because some human rights violations did happen, their government executed several mid-level officials for the organ harvesting thing.  But it's a billion percent clear that no incarceration on the scale of 7 digits ever happened.  I feel like if we took the attitude towards weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that we did for this fucking travesty, we'd say new york was poised to be a radioactive crater, and only the invasion spared them.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:16, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The article reads "Several human rights organizations, scholars, media outlets, and government agencies have estimated that there are up to one million Uighurs (or possibly higher, depending on the source) that have been detained in these camps." This is apparently a true statement. Who knows how many Uighurs are actually incarcerated? We are not claiming to know, are we? UncleKrampus (talk) 23:43, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
 * The AP article also doesn't seem to be discounting previous claims, and if anything, is showing the aftermath of these programs (heavy surveillance, overtones of Han superiority and Uyghurs as others, Uyghurs getting silent or saying party approved dialogue when the authorities are around). If anything, this seems like a lull in activity and could flare back up any time. Overall, it's very telling that as soon as Uyghers are brought up, leftists begin echoing their far right opponents' Islamophobic claims and memes while claimingto fight imperialism without a hint of irony. P.S.: Genocide watch links are broken. Someone should probably give the links a once-over.-Ryan1257 (talk) 22:38, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

This is asinine. You take being clearly an unambiguously wrong about a crucial point as a minor hiccup that can be glossed over with weasel words after-the-fact but call questioning it toeing the goddamn party line? What part of that pullitzer-winning article that alleged prisons to hold a million people was accurate, exactly? I'm all for using a fair and reasoned widely encompassing idea of genocide that includes crushing cultural traditions, selective oppression, and military policing, but to allege the other less-broad kind, the mass, extrajudicial incarceration of entire populations with the intent of removing them from their ancestral homes or killing them, while not presenting evidence, and when contrary evidence does appear just handwave pointing at the former?

Don't you have any sense of shame?

Don't you care how fucking gross that is?

Doesn't it leave you with a slimy sense of guilt on your conscience?

I don't think you really appreciate just how bad what you're doing is. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 21:13, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
 * "Just because there aren't a million people in prison right now, that means that there were never a million people in prison!" This is a denialist talking point. Plutocow (talk) 21:23, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

UN final decision
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf

Who China is copying
Assume all the statements about Xinjiang in English media are true (somehow I doubt Sayragul Sauytbay both "did not personally see violence" AND witness a gang rape seeing as those are rather mutually exclusive) It's probably worth noting that the Muslim-supermajority country of Tajikistan has very similar rules and policies to China in Xinjiang: strict prison incarceration for possible ties to unapproved religious groups (Tajik prisons make Xinjiang centers look like a vacation; I'm not saying reeducation centers are a picnic in Xinjiang but it's an open secret what goes on in Tajik prisons, come on), police-enforced shaving (Tajikistan is rather infamous for this long before Xinjiang got any attention for this), promotion of native ethnic names over Arabic names (Emmomali Rahmon tried to ban ALL Arabic names for new babies to force Tajiks to use Tajik names. And yes, that would have included bans on the name "Muhammed"). Frankly it seems like China has been copying the Tajik model for cracking down on public (and also sometimes private) displays of religious devotion. And it's not just Tajikistan than China copies, albeit the prisons are very similar. Uzbekistan is notorious for forced sterilization after the 2nd or 3rd child. Turkmenistan has a very high incarceration rate much like Xinjiang. Burning down Uzbek neighborhoods and shaming Uzbeks for being Uzbek is standard operating procedure in Bishkek. Frankly I don't buy the whole "Emmomali Rahmon is a crypto-Zoroastrian trying to eliminate Islam and turn Tajiks into Zoroastrians" thing, but frankly, these things do beg the question: does the religion and ethnic group of the perpetrator of anti-religion and ethnic group policies matter as to wether something is genocide or not? Frankly if Xinjiang were independent but maintained the exact same policies I doubt anyone would call it genocide. This stuff is frankly just part and parcel for Central Asia, the stuff that happens in the other countries I listed just get way less attention and thereby is not called genocide because 1. It's Muslims vs Muslims not Chinese atheists vs Muslims and 2. Most people can spell China or at least find it on a map unlike the Central Asia countries that China has been copying religious and ethnic policies on. And let's not forget, the Uyghurs have outlived the Soviet Union despite the predictions of their disappearance during the Sino-Soviet split. And to be fair, China hasn't gone full explicit-declaration-of-genocidal-intent unlike SOME PEOPLE in Central Asia and is OK with Uyghurs existing submissively, in contrast to entities in Central Asia that make it their goal to fully eliminate their minorities with nobody spared. I can't help but look at what the Uzbeks did to the Kartvelian Muslims which nobody here calls genocide even though they actually were very clear about their genocidal aspirations and were very sucessful in it (suvivors of the pogrom-genocide having to be airlifted out of the country; if there was no airlift the Kartvelian Muslims would have been annihilated for sure), and frankly we are kidding ourselves to say that Uyghurs somehow have it worse than they had it in Fergana.--PotterGarry (talk) 03:04, 7 July 2023 (UTC)