One by One, My Friends Were Sent to the Camps

https://www.theatlantic.com/the-uyghur-chronicles/

by pseudolus • 5 years ago

178 120 5 years ago

YuukiRey• 5 years ago

Unfortunately it takes forever to load for me on a mobile phone and is pretty unreadable once loaded to the page margins and font size.

gregsadetsky• 5 years ago

https://outline.com/CXdSrC

FemmeAndroid2• 5 years ago

This doesn't successfully pull the article, just the introduction by a different author than the one attributed.

pmontra• 5 years ago

If you are using Firefox, activate reader mode to access all the text (it's a soft paywall) and then bookmark the page to store it on your phone. You still have to load the page once, but only once and the font won't be a problem anymore.

subliminalpanda• 5 years ago

https://archive.is/UjYeV

eplanit• 5 years ago

I'm glad he made it to the US. Of course because it's The Atlantic, they were obligated to implicate the US as a co-conspirator: "Islamophobic discourses that gathered strength in the U.S. have been central to China’s efforts to justify its Xinjiang policies". Yeah, of course it's all really our fault, of course.

Keep in mind, The Atlantic is a lifestyle magazine.

celticninja3• 5 years ago

I fail to understand why it is the west that speaks up for these Muslims, whilst the Islamic countries remain quiet. Where is the outrage from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Iran? Why are the US the ones accused of needing to do more? Shouldn't Islamic countries at least do something?

toberoni• 5 years ago

The victims are humans first (their religion shouldn't be a concern) so I don't find it surprising that many Western people speak up for them.

I would be happy to see more opposition from Islamic countries though.

stanislavb• 5 years ago

I've wondered the same... given that they've been prosecuted due to their religion.

joelbluminator2• 5 years ago

Shouldn't Islamic countries at least do something?

I am gonna make some sweeping generalization (how could you not when speaking about 1.5 billion people) but here goes:

Not really, the Islamic world didn't care much about ISIS and the Syrian civil war, both of which killed and displaced millions of people. The only place where Muslims pay attention to regularly and express outrage is Palestine as far as I know. I mean yes some Arab newspaper may talk about Syria or ISIS now and then, even talk badly about it, but nothing that will make people go out to the streets like Israel/Palestine does. Muslims are much more sensitive to killings of Muslims by the West than by other empires (e.g Russia or China) since the West is perceived as a threat to their way of life and other empires aren't. Israel is part of the West in their eyes. I am quite confident that if it were Israel or the U.S running these camps we would've heard much more about it in the Muslim world.

yorwba2• 5 years ago

All Muslim-majority countries also have large Muslim minorities and are worried about charismatic leaders using their religious authority to challenge the government (e.g. Indonesia: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/indonesia-arr... ) so they tend to be in favor of allowing only state-sanctioned forms of Islam.

lupire4• 5 years ago

"Islamic" countries are dictatorships like China.

throwaway0a5e• 5 years ago

Shouldn't Islamic countries at least do something?

They're farther down the hierarchy of nation state needs than where you need to be to be in order to call out someone like China.

So they all shit on Israel because it's the only "local enough we could conceivably do something about it" problem they can all agree on.

_alxk• 5 years ago

There's a few things.

1) One thing to keep in mind is that religion is usually only the backdrop for some geopolitical issues. Yes, ISIS was an Islamist movement, but it was first and foremost opportunists seizing a vacuum of power in Iraq, and the instability in Syria, to put themselves into power. When looked at through that lens, why would a Muslim in Morocco or Algeria or Indonesia care that much about ISIS? Does a Catholic in Rome feel intimately connected to violence in Mexico? Most of them thought ISIS were a bunch of assholes, but it wasn't happening in their backyard.

2) Another thing is again politics. It's good for Arab leaders to criticize Israel and blame it for their problems. (Most of them) don't need Israel for anything. They rely more in China. That's the same reason most Western countries are falling short of accusing China of genocide.

3) From a purely religious point of view, Jerusalem/Al-Quds is a very important religious site Islam. It's the direction they originally faced when they prayed (Mohammed moved it to Mecca later), and is the location from which Mohammed ascended to heaven in one of his visions. China has no religious value.

sidibe• 5 years ago

Shouldn't Islamic countries at least do something?

Realistically they are much better off being China's friend which in China's view means not criticizing China for anything.

Pakistani PM said it best last month about Xinjiang:

"Because of our extreme proximity and relationship with China, we actually accept the Chinese version."

It's pretty sad, but you can't really blame him either, they can't really afford to lose all the deals and propping up they get from China.

chaostheory6• 5 years ago

I would guess it’s because many if not most Islamic majority governments are not democracies. Their people cannot speak out, and their governments seek favor with Beijing.

kvathupo2• 5 years ago

Keep in mind, The Atlantic is a lifestyle magazine.

Have you ever read The Atlantic?

Quite a few of its writers have either been nominated for or outright won Pulitzers, with one winner this year [1]. Even beyond awards, it has published important reporting [2] and very influential commentary [3].

[1] https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/ed-yong-atlantic

[2] https://pulitzercenter.org/publications/atlantic

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_for_Reparations

CountDrewku2• 5 years ago

JohnWhigham3• 5 years ago

It's undeniable that the Atlantic has become overly polarizing (like every other American outlet). But for every Pulitzer winner, they have 5 other writers writing overly-partisan clickbait. Right now under their "Most Popular" column, the top article has "Trump" in it. Trump has been out of office for over 6 months, and people are still fucking writing about him, still giving him coverage.

If Trump wins again in 2024, he'll have won mostly because left-leaning rags learned nothing from 2016 by constantly giving him free press.

guscost2• 5 years ago

A magazine dangling this important humanitarian story behind a “soft” paywall to sell subscriptions, no less.

Imagine the reaction if they had done this with their COVID collection.

SamBam• 5 years ago

If you think they published an important story just to sell more copies... well then you'd be right, of course. That's how every single publication in the country works, if they're not scraping by on ads.

But what a silly way to look at it. "The Times and Post are publishing this Watergate thing, and they expect me to pay for a paper??? They're only publishing it to sell more copies."

benrbray5• 5 years ago

That's just capitalism for you. The same happens with all important news stories, including about covid and active warzones. It's a problem, sure, but it doesn't invalidate journalism entirely.

lupire4• 5 years ago

If you cared enough to finance open access to the article, I'm sure they'd be amenable.

pastage2• 5 years ago

If you do nothing it is your fault. That is what these camps have thought us you really need to critize them harshly and take action. That said the legal power nations have to put people in camp during war time is anachronistic. So there is alot we can do to make it better.

lupire4• 5 years ago

critize them harshly

does nothing.

and take action.

How? Suit up and form an A*Team to infiltrate? Cyberattacks? Pool funds to bribe politicians?

FemmeAndroid2• 5 years ago

I'm disappointed that the highest upvoted comment on a long and thoughtful read is a critique of its introduction by a different author. The quoted text requires you to even click to read more of the introduction. It's not the substance of the piece.

user-the-name• 5 years ago

That statement is both correct, and also does not say "it's all really our fault". That is a very weak strawman argument.

nomoreplease• 5 years ago

After visiting Auschwitz, I expected (or maybe hoped) that the world would never let it happen again.

“How could they do this?”, People asked.

“That would never happen today” people murmured.

Yet, here we are. Reading the 15th article about it, while the White House deletes tweets that likely anger the CCP

They should be removed from most favored nation status.

Governments could do a lot more but don’t

MikeUt• 5 years ago

while the White House deletes tweets that likely anger the CCP

I haven't heard about this. Could you elaborate?

aidenn02• 5 years ago

I've heard of tweets taken down, but always assumed Twitter was self censoring

Chris20483• 5 years ago

Who's "they", or "the world"? Do we have a world government already?

You either interfere (on a global scale) in the sovereignty of other nations, or you don't. Hitler was only stopped after a very costly war.

How would any alliance have the disproportionate resources to police the globe, while allowing free trade and the distributed opportunity that allows any nations to get rich enough to challenge them?

You talk of a unified humanity that doesn't exist. China is a superpower - the only solution to policing their actions would be ensuring no other superpowers can rise: neo-colonialism.

deregulateMed• 5 years ago

Tariffs over intellectual property wasn't enough or aimed at the correct problem.

How hard would it be to ban trade with China?

I know automotive tooling is inside china and impossible to get out, but if it costs 4 trillion dollars, it's still less expensive than coronavirus.

I say all of that, then get embarrassed at the evils my government committed over the years.

tomjen3• 5 years ago

You don't have to go to war over this. If the west put the same sanctions on Chinas as it did on Iran China would be forced to step down.

benrbray5• 5 years ago

It's heart-breaking to see many of my Chinese friends / peers keep their heads in the sand about this. Usually they'll fall silent the topic arises. At most, they'll say something about cultural differences and social cohesion and that as an American I just couldn't possibly understand. If I press them on it they'll mention the Japanese internment camps in WWII, and I'll agree with them that it was awful and that my country has done evil things that I am ashamed of. But I've never heard this shame reciprocated.

Miner49er• 5 years ago

I think most Americans would have gave a similar response during WWII as well. It's only with time that opinion has shifted to it being something that we are shameful of.

yunohn5• 5 years ago

I'll agree with them that it was awful and that my country has done evil things that I am ashamed of

I think what a lot of the non-West feels is that the West has done horrible things, benefited from it, and continues to commit modern colonialism and direct/indirect exploitation of developing countries to continually benefit from them.

The dissonance is in thinking that the West is no longer doing these things and only the Enemy (China/Russia/whoever) is.

Thus, taking an (invalid) higher moral ground is what probably turns your friends away.

dirtyid2• 5 years ago

But I've never heard this shame reciprocated.

Maybe in 100 years with benefit of hindsight, even then for performative reconciliation, such are nature of these things. A Chinese person with connection to east&west understands five years of XJ securitization that affects less than 1% of population eliminated previously regular extremist terrorist attacks with heavy sticks like internment / reducation but also carrots like development and vocational training. It's the best of a terrible situation. Meanwhile, US+coalition just exited one ME forever war, with others ongoing, many indigenous communities in west don't have running water and US for profit industrial complex jails more blacks as proportion of their population than the wildest wested funded thinktank extrapolations for XJ internmen. All without meaningful reconciliation in sight, and to the relative indifference of the "global community" that's strangely engaged in how PRC mistreats a domestic muslim minority.

The TL;DR: is Chinese with dual perspective of how US/west and PRC prosecuted their war on terror hold their opinions after considered evaluation, they're silent because it's un/counter-productive to discuss with their western friends whose heads are in sand due to western propaganda. Most are tired of such westerners, majority of whom only get exposed to narrative from one side keeps asserting they wish their Chinese peers knew better. What the last few years of US manufactured consent campaigns about XJ/HK etc. has taught most Chinese (a lesson previously learned by diasphora of many global south previously targetted by US) is that free fifth estate and disucssion creates more dangerous brainwashed individuals that are both self-righteous and oblivious to their ignorance. There's no point in engaging.

hnedeotes• 5 years ago

Unbound technological surveillance in the hands of a few, and police state on the basis of false flags are the stepping stones to RealFreedom™

pc863• 5 years ago

What false flags are you referring to?

lupire4• 5 years ago

The name World War Two was a pretty big clue that humanity as a whole doesn't learn from its mistakes.

jiaaro• 5 years ago

The handling of Germany after WWII was pretty different than WWI. Perhaps a clue it’s more complicated

CountDrewku2• 5 years ago

After the last few months I can only assume the current administration is actually supportive of communism. At best they're ignoring the atrocities in Cuba and China, at worst they're supportive of these governments... I'm starting to think it's the latter.

shadowgovt5• 5 years ago

Practically speaking, there's very little most governments can do to the most populous nation in the world with a military infrastructure rivaled by only a handful of other countries.

And even fewer things they could do that don't ultimately culminate in massive bloodshed.

enriquto2• 5 years ago

maybe stop financing them? We are voluntarily paying them to manufacture most of our stuff.

throwaway3169433• 5 years ago

We can get out of bed with them. The current situation is like watching the appeasement of 1920s-1930s Germany happening again in real time. Our corporations are defending their supply lines that directly involve businesses run by the CCP. Financial institutions are obviously funneling money for high ranking party members. Politicians and thought leaders are smoothing over all the ugly bumps. Most of the media is silent or vaguely positive about this rising world power. The only positive thing is that the current leadership isn’t territorially expansionist so it’s closer to a brewing Cold War where the battles are based on political influence in other nations but that’s still not a good situation especially since we aren’t gearing up to resist it internally let alone in our sphere of influence.

schnable2• 5 years ago

The US government has many tools at its disposal - sanctions, tariffs, supplier policy, etc.

But culturally we can do a lot more. Western filmmakers, actors, and athletes should not censor themselves (or allow themselves to be censored) to avoid irritating China. There could be a BDS-like movement against China. The media and activists could spend some cycles focusing on the genocide occurring in China in between much lower stakes issues that get disproportionate attention.

fouc• 5 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...

tarsinge• 5 years ago

I feel the opposite, we started to hear so much about China overnight around 2019 that I can't help but feel it's another war the US is starting to brew and preparing the public opinion for it. Kosovo, Iraq, Syria, ... The pattern is the same everytime, the media pick a target to prepare the opinion for the warmongering. Is China doing awful things? Of course. But so is Saudi Arabia, the Yemeni crisis currently dwarf the problems in China (and Syria at the time when the US chose to intervene). I don't know what should be done, but at least US citizen please don't fall blindly for the N-th iteration of the "one and unique evil enemy of democracy that must be dealt with" du jour.

chaostheory6• 5 years ago

I agree. There’s no doubt that what’s happening in Xinjiang is beyond terrible, but the West and its allies in Asia are preparing for war. I wouldn’t be surprised if India joined.

The big questions are is this just a new Cold War since everyone has nukes, or will it transform into a hot one? Will Russia participate and if so which side will it take? Who will make the first strike? I have a feeling that it won’t be hard to trick Beijing into striking first. All the US needs to do is give the Taiwanese government the freedom to say whatever they want.

elliekelly3• 5 years ago

The woman operating the computer explained what I was to do. When she gave me a signal, I needed to look straight at the camera, then turn my head slowly and steadily to the right. I was then to turn at the same speed back to face the camera. Then I had to turn my head fully to the left, and back again to face the camera. At the same slow, steady speed, I was then to tilt my head back and look up, then to look straight at the camera. After that, I had to tilt my head down at the same speed and look toward the floor, and then to return to the original position. Finally, I was to slowly and completely open my mouth and hold that position. After I closed my mouth and looked steadily at the camera, my facial scan would be complete. All of these movements needed to be carried out in the assigned order in a single, uninterrupted sequence, two seconds per position. If any movement did not conform to the requirements, the computer would give a signal and stop running, after which I would have to start over from the beginning.
...
My wife, who had been going through these procedures immediately after me, struggled when she came to the facial scan. The sequences for men and women differed in only one way: While men were required to open their mouths wide at the end, women had to close their mouths tightly and puff out their cheeks. I wondered what the reason was for this difference.

Does anyone know the reason for the difference?

germinalphrase• 5 years ago

Could it be as simple as the system has trouble identifying male vs female faces, so this is workaround to make that explicit?

kragen3• 5 years ago

I hadn't realized that the absolute number in the Xinjiang camps --- "more than 1 million", according to the article --- is half the number of people in US prisons. It's 4% of the population of Xinjiang, compared to less than 1% of the population of the US, but of course it's 0.1% of the population of China as a whole, and there are US communities that are more heavily incarcerated.

The whole situation is appalling, in both countries, though it has not yet reached the extremes of GULAG, the US Civil War, the Great Leap Forward, the Holodomor, the Taiping Rebellion, the Holocaust, the Congo Free State, or the Killing Fields of Kampuchea. What can we do to make this kind of abuse impossible? It seems to me that only state power can create such horrors; how can we prevent it from becoming so unrestrained?

laurent92• 5 years ago

Have a culture which leave the least amount of power possible to the states, and prevents forming groups that are too large (be it monopolies of governments). But with US borrowing something like 1 trillion dollars per semester, it has good chances of overpowering everyone if it ever turns into an undesired form.

kragen3• 5 years ago

Well, I think a lot of indigenous groups in America and Africa did in fact have cultures that granted very little power to the State. But those groups were mostly not agricultural, and so they had low population density and very limited military defenses, and were largely overwhelmed by the military force of absolutist monarchies and then republics during the colonial era. (There were also agricultural indigenous cultures overwhelmed by colonization in both America and Africa, but those cultures also had high degrees of social stratification and state power, at least in the examples I'm familiar with.)

I'm not clear on how similar the genocide in Xinjiang is to the process of colonization I'm more familiar with; it clearly has some elements in common, like the Indian Schools, forced relocations, and the mass destruction of religious artifacts and languages, and (in the US) the obligatory United Line of Defense/Pledge of Allegiance. The Stasi-like culture of informers and the hierarchical neighborhood committee structure, however, seems like a significant difference. And the levels of brutality are still, fortunately, comparatively low, compared to those historical atrocities—though still intolerably high in absolute terms.

The historical background is quite different; there have been mosques throughout China since at least the Song and probably the Tang, and many of the greatest Chinese in history have been Muslims (郑和 is perhaps the most famous), and the Uighur settlement of much of what is now Xinjiang dates to the late 18th century, after the Qing committed genocide against the Dzungar Mongols.

This article provides a very useful anatomy of the forms state oppression can take in today's world. Studying it will probably serve anyone well, because these same practices are likely in the future of many peoples, at the hands of many different governments—at least those that prove effective at establishing social control. Tahir Hamut Izgil's present is many, many people's future.

How can we prevent the heavily-stratified societies that generate such profound oppression from overpowering people and territory in this way? Having a culture that doesn't generate that kind of stratification is surely necessary, but it wasn't enough for the Lakota, the San, or the Bayaka.

VictorPath• 5 years ago

China has been facing a series of Uighur terrorist attacks. The US faced one day of attacks loosely related to Muslims living on the western border of Xinjiang, and the US just had a (partial!) withdrawal from there this month after 20 years there (or more going back to the 1970s). The US going to the other side of the world, while the Chinese are dealing with a threat in their own country. Puzzling to see the same Americans bemoaning the US ending the invasion of Afghanistan while wailing about the Chinese actions just over the border. Well not puzzling, but this posturing is ridiculous.

As you say, the descendants of the enslaved Africans are more persecuted and incarcerated in raw numbers than the Uighur. The US News media blasts any mischief in George Floyd's youth over the airwaves endlessly, before turning to reports of the Chinese dealing with their internal terrorism problems (critical of the Chinese).

elliekelly3• 5 years ago

There is no evidence the subject of the article is a terrorist. The “terrorism” story presented by the government is pretext.

chaostheory6• 5 years ago

The US media may bemoan the end of our occupation of Afghanistan, but most Americans are sick of military deployments. It’s one of the main reasons we pulled back.

We are far from perfect, but unlike the CCP, we have the courage to address our shortcomings directly. We even record them in our history books for future generations to learn. Things have gotten better over time because of it. We don’t suffer from cowardice nor do we hide from our mistakes.

motohagiography• 5 years ago

People like Tahir come to the U.S. and Canada to escape the regime, but also to warn us. We should take heed.

elliekelly3• 5 years ago

This line about his friend broke my heart:

When Kamil had left for the U.S., though, the Chinese government had required that two of his friends serve as guarantors. If he did not return, they would be punished.

How evil and disgusting. But a reminder that the people who escape and tell us their story have paid a huge price to do so. And so have their families and friends.

ilaksh2• 5 years ago

This is horrible but I think it's worse than people realize. Because this is the type of thing used to motivate world wars. Where hundreds of millions work hard to murder each other. Maybe try to find another way to stop it.

newnamenewface• 5 years ago

WWII was not motivated by the Holocaust. Many western nations considered that an internal matter. The actual motivation was Hitler and the axis taking a continued policy of aggression and invasion, eventually forcing conflict.

ilaksh2• 5 years ago

Its the type of thing used in propaganda for promoting war.

alkonaut• 5 years ago

This won’t trigger war, just like the Holocaust didn’t trigger WW2.

But this could of course trigger massive international pushback in the forms of sanctions and boycotts etc, and those will unfortunately trigger even more nationalism and tension, which could eventually lead to war. In the end, there is just no way any regime treats people like the Chinese treat Uighurs without consequences.

bsd44• 5 years ago

I remember watching video footage of fabricated camps in the Balkan wars made by CNN and BCC in the mid 90s (I forgot the name of the video hosting website that was popular back then), following years of similar articles. Nothing changed really, people are as dumb as they ever were and even easier to manipulate nowadays.

Americans and their allies are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in the Middle East alone in the last twenty years or so, not counting their military orgies since the end of the II. world war. However China bad, Russia bad. Israel kills 66 children in just 4 days. No problem for the US and its allies. China bad. Russia bad.

This sort of media brainwashing will continue until there's nobody sane left to oppose the establishment in their military action against China in the distant future. No proof, no common sense, just..."news". From us, for us. Because nobody else matters. Vietnam fiasco can't happen again.

thinktankie• 5 years ago

Thank you. This is an important comment in a world lacking nuance and cynicism of mainstream media narratives.

I don’t know what it will take for Americans not to be mislead once again by evidence as flimsy as satellite images and vials of washing powder.

cbHXBY1D• 5 years ago

Yep. Keep in mind that the writer is a separatist who works for Radio Free Asia (a CIA cutout). RFA has pushed several false testimonies from Uighurs in the past few years. For example, RFA pushed the claims of Mihrigul Tursun, who claimed to have been sent to a camp, seen 9 women die, and that they killed one of her newborns. All evidence (hospital records, etc) and testimonies from her family members have shown those claims to have been fabricated. Her son is alive in Egypt and she was never sent to a vocational training camp. [1]

Radio Free Asia weaponized the story of a young boy drowning [2]. They pushed the claims of Sayragul Sauytbay who says she was for forced to work in a camp... which again was shown to be a lie. Her family members explain how she was never in a camp and how she fled to Kazakhstan because of defrauding a rural credit co-op. [3]

There's an active propaganda campaign going on right now. In my opinion, this is the biggest lie since the Nayirah testimony or the WMD lie.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsQxjFCh5zU

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjy_4xP5lpU

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmO8aT692jU

cannabis_sam2• 5 years ago

I’m always wondering what makes people work for this kind of surveillance apparatus…

In this concrete situation: Are they convinced of the party line that this is “combatting terrorism”, is it a civic duty, simply out of fear, or is this just me being ignorant about Chinese society?

9999px• 5 years ago

The counter-terrorism system they've conceived is worth learning about. They basically erred on the side of "too much surveillance, but alive" over "bomb them all 'til they're dead."

Given the near complete absence of terror in the region over the last few years, I'd say it worked to some end.

pas• 5 years ago

There's plenty of state terror. So in terms of QALY it's pretty close to being dead.

cannabis_sam2• 5 years ago

The counter-terrorism system they've conceived is worth learning about.

I have learned about it, from multiple sources.

They basically erred on the side of "too much surveillance, but alive" over "bomb them all 'til they're dead."

So literally a false dichotomy…?

Given the near complete absence of terror in the region over the last few years, I'd say it worked to some end.

Compared to when?

batushka3• 5 years ago

So chineese are putting them to camps now, by the book, next will come extermination phase. I be prepared for very very deep concerns about it...

chaostheory6• 5 years ago

As horrible as Xinjiang is, the CCP’s main goal is conformity at any cost vs racial purity. Those are very different goals.

Historically, how this was achieved was through interracial marriages with Chinese men. The end result produced children who both acted and looked Chinese so they were more or less accepted as Chinese; this doesn’t fly for Nazi ideologies. This strategy did not work in Xinjiang and to a lesser degree Tibet.

One by One, My Friends Were Sent to the Camps

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