Almost all of the extreme allegations are levelled by Zenz, Uighur seperatist organizations, and ASPI, an australian think-tank. Other sources do include people visiting there[1], including news-teams[2] and third-nation observers[3], but there claims usually get casually dismissed as a bad source for one reason or the other. Chinese media obviously isn't a good source either.
Now Zenz is an evangelical fundamentalist who once wrote he's on a crusade against the CPC. His studies often times don't really follow scientific standards.
For example, for his claim that 2 million Uighurs are held in concentration camps, he interviewed 8 Uighur refugees, and extrapolated from the numbers they believe to be detained from their villages to the whole region.
Both ASPI and Zenz when accusing the chinese government of genocide via forced sterilization completely glared over the fact that it is the enforcement of the two-child-policy. And they do so knowingly, because if you read between the lines of their reports, it is quite obvious that all the women interviewed already had 2 or more children.
It is extremely difficult to get an accurate picture of what is going on there. - Security is definetely extremely tight in the whole region, and "brainwashing camps" are admitted to exist by the government. Many international Xinjiang without an obvious agenda think something very fishy is going on, but the exact scale, method and goal are completely obfuscated by lies and propaganda from both sides.
Not sure why you are getting downvoted — I didn't know about this lack of sources and took all of the information about the region for granted. Thanks for reminding me that even things that sound plausible (or especially those things) need to be reviewed, toO!
Do not take a post on HN for granted that only cites a Medium post, a YouTube video, and Chinese state media as evidence AGAINST wrongdoing by the Chinese govt.
Actual journalistic sources, based on interviews with former detainees, etc, validate the claim that China is undertaking a campaign of demographic genocide against predominantly Muslim minorities: https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c
Your article literally is an example of what the OP cited:
- Multiple citations from Zenz (+Pompeo for bonus points)
- Entire article revolves around testimony of those with 2+ children being subjected to family planning policies (IUD / sterilizations etc).
- Mentions "now-abandoned ‘one child’ policy" without providing context of that new "Two-Child" policy is in affect for everyone, with no minority exemptions.
- Claims 30 interviews reveals how wide spread the practice is. Hint: you can interview 1.3 billion Han Chinese to see how wide spread family planning program was for the last 40 years.
We already know from leaked internal papers the purpose of these camps, the reality is, the camps themselves are boring techno authoritarian reeducation camps (like in France), but the threshold for manufacturing consent requires something meatier like literal genocide. There's sufficient state-level intelligence capability to actually verify the scope of the camps, but western media insists on quoting the same few unsubstantiated sources + Pompeo musings while conveniently omitting facts that goes against the narrative. I.e. recently ASPI "slave labour" study, casually glosses over that the minimum hourly wage from contracts was equivalent to basic salary at Foxconn and 2x annual GDP of prefecture the workers are from. Because the mental image for a prisoner stamping license plates for 50c an hour is different than $20 an hour.
Could you point me towards what you are referring to when you say "boring techno authoritarian reeducation camps (like in France)"? As a French, I don't know about any program in France that would fit this description.
Search French deradicalization boot camps + radicalization monitoring list. Quick research suggest the 2016 program was only partially implemented before being shut down and rebooted under new program in 2018 [0]. Of course the scale in China is going to be greater and execution more comprehensive due to nature of Chinese capabilities. To clarify, I'm only suggesting conceptually the approaches are similar and do not equivocate the two in execution.
The greater context is, Islamic attacks in multicultural European societies in the past 10 years (particularly in England + France) informed internal decision making in China regarding XJ. I remember French banlieue / ethnic enclaves where radicalization was happening were part of conversation on policy debates to revise minority policy in China a few years ago. The position being multicultural "salad bowl", classic soviet oblast model where minorities had relative cultural autonomy had failed to reign in extremism (and separatism in China's case), so now everyone gets sinicized and the Han treatment, aka blending into the US melting pot model.
Now Zenz is an evangelical fundamentalist who once wrote he's on a crusade against the CPC. His studies often times don't really follow scientific standards.
For example, for his claim that 2 million Uighurs are held in concentration camps, he interviewed 8 Uighur refugees, and extrapolated from the numbers they believe to be detained from their villages to the whole region.
Both ASPI and Zenz when accusing the chinese government of genocide via forced sterilization completely glared over the fact that it is the enforcement of the two-child-policy. And they do so knowingly, because if you read between the lines of their reports, it is quite obvious that all the women interviewed already had 2 or more children.
It is extremely difficult to get an accurate picture of what is going on there. - Security is definetely extremely tight in the whole region, and "brainwashing camps" are admitted to exist by the government. Many international Xinjiang without an obvious agenda think something very fishy is going on, but the exact scale, method and goal are completely obfuscated by lies and propaganda from both sides.
[1] https://medium.com/@jerry_grey2002/abc-four-corners-tell-the...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmId2ZP3h0c
[3] https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1168522.shtml