this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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I'm not very informed on modern China and there's a ton of sources accusing China of killing and even harvesting organs from Uyghurs and Falun Gong believers.

Is there any truth to those claims or is it all pigpoop ?

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The Uyghur stuff is the lie of the decade.

Like, consider what even is the claim they are making.

The way it works is to take some tiny nugget of news and expand it beyond recognition into genocide.

For example, the Chinese government made birth control free. A provision of sexual health care and the ability to conduct family planning. This became the claim that China was conducting “mass forced sterilizations.”

Another example was China providing free meals to kids at school. Now, during Ramadan Muslims do not eat during the day but children are excluded from this and are allowed to eat. The age at which someone is expected to participate isn’t well defined and different Muslim communities adopt different standards for when someone is considered a child for the purposes of Ramadan. In Uyghur culture it is typically into the teens. So when China was providing free meals to kids at school… this was spun a campaign to assimilate Uyghurs and “cultural genocide.” Free meals to school kids is cultural genocide.

There is a heavy handed security presence in Xinjiang related to Islamic terrorism since there has been a problem with Islamic fundamentalism intersecting with Uyghur separatism. I do have sympathy for the heavy police intervention and there has been at least some degree of racism in the way that was applied. So there are valid criticisms to be made about how China responded to the problem of Islamic extremism. But the heavy hand of the state seems to be receding as the threat of fundamentalism declines, so that is at least improving, and it needs to be contrasted with the western response to Islamic fundamentalism which was extremely violent.

When you make that comparison then the Chinese response is exemplary, without denying the examples of racism and police violence in that response but also acknowledging those issues do not seem to have a systemic character.

The truth of Xinjiang is that the USA and the west likes to exploit and promote ethnic conflict within adversary states. It’s called a “fifth column”. A way to weaken your enemy is to promote internal conflict.

The USA has sought to promote ethnic conflict in China by funding Uyghur separatists, and Uyghur separatism is inextricably connected with Islamic fundamentalism.

When you look at these “international committee to free east Turkmenistan” they are usually based in Virginia.

The narrative of Uyghur genocide is to train a western audience to view China as another Nazi Germany because this provides a (false) moral basis for war and geostrategic conflict with china.

Whenever you read these articles, look for the name “Adrian Zenz”. He’s a fundamentalist Christian based in Germany who doesn’t speak Chinese and hasn’t been to China or Xinjiang. He has previously claimed that God gave him a mission to destroy communist (atheist) China. As in, he described a voice talking to him and giving him this divine mission. He’s the source of about 80% of this bullshit and the BBC uncritically repeat his claims because the BBC is state-owned media.