[dr_faustus]

I also find that interesting in contrast to the constant outrage about the situation of Palestinians in Israel which certainly has many highly problematic aspects but to me still seems to be a far cry from the situation of Muslims in China or the treatment of the predominantly Muslim Chechnians by Russia. It seems to be quite hypocritical by the governments of Muslim countries.

[femiagbabiaka]

It is not a far cry, it is in fact almost exactly the same situation, although to my knowledge the crimes of Israel are much more well documented by many sources. Also note that it has taken almost a decade to get to this level of awareness and still to this day Israel critics are called anti-semites and worse. Hopefully more widespread awareness and outrage about the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang comes soon.

EDIT: Wow, actually more than a decade now since the original BDS statement.

[dr_faustus]

Ok, so: Israel has currently ~4500 Palestinians detained = < 0.1% [1]

China has about 1.8m Uygurs in internment camps = 14% [2]

I would call that a far cry.

Also, many other statistics of welfare, e.g. child mortality or GPD/capita in the West Bank and Gaza are about the same or better than in the neighboring countries (Jordan, Egypt). On the other hand, there seems to be quite substantial evidence for mass sterilizations and abortions forced on Uygurs in China. I have never heard of anything like that committed by Israel.

Again, I do believe that there are overreaches and overreactions on the Israeli side to actions by the Palestinians and there are innocent lives lost on both sides. I really hope, that they at some point manage to either live together peacefully or agree on a two state solution.

But there is a very substantial difference between that and the plight of the Uygurs.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/17/infographic-how-man... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide#Inside_internm...

[akhmatova]

Israel has currently ~4500 Palestinians detained = < 0.1% [1]

The entire West Bank and Gaza Strip are effectively a giant detention camp.

[lazylion2]

"almost exactly the same situation"

Did the Muslims in Xinjiang declare a war against China? did they blow up Chinese buses or shoot thousands of rockets at Chinese civilians ?

[skitout]

There have been several (terrorist) attacks against Chinese civilians in Xinjiang over the years. The perpetrators have been lone wolfs, and people part of organized groups. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_conflict

Personally I think that attack on civilians cannot justify the actions of Chinese state or of the Israeli state (massive repression against civilians and continued colonization). And while I condemn both China and Israel for such actions, the two situation are very different.

[falsepromises]

Yeah, a lot of the issues have to do with the systemic denial of resources and oppression in the region. For the most part like in most of Mainland China, the goal of the CCP has been to convert the local ethnic groups and populations to a singular Han identity. Accompanying this being that they both actively send people from the Mainland over to take over jobs of the local inhabitants it's pretty clear why a lot of this is occurring. A lack of respect for the locals and the systemic destruction of their identity leaving them with nothing. A strategy used by the CCP in China since their great cultural revolution of the early 60s.

Though the CCP claim to not be doing so, it's been a trademark of their party for generations and overall, nothing new. We're just seeing a glimpse of it now, because of the dawn of the internet age.

If you want to see more there are several Chinese state sponsored English media outlets that cover it in great detail, though they like to pretend to have no affiliation. Continued development in the region is expected along with the belt and road initiatives. And a long list of other issues as well.

If you want an unbiased source of information about the ongoing event in China check out. https://www.neican.org

[ashwagary]

>a lot of the issues have to do with the systemic denial of resources and oppression

How do you explain Chinese Uyghurs committing terrorist acts in the rest of Asia outside of China?

[skitout]

Some Uighur did turn Jihadist. Oppression and denial of resources in an area is perfect for radicalization, including Jihadist radicalization if this area/population is mostly Muslim. But so far, the vast majority of Uighur and Kazakh in China are not Jihadist, not even Islamist.

[plankers]

uh yeah, kinda. the following is from 2011.

>In recent years, ETIM has set up bases outside China to train terrorists and has dispatched its members to China to plot and execute terrorist acts including bombing buses, cinemas, department stores, markets and hotels. ETIM has also undertaken assassinations and arson attacks and has carried out terrorist attacks against Chinese targets abroad. Among the violent acts committed by ETIM members were the blowing up of the warehouse of the Urumqi Train Station on 23 May 1998, the armed looting of 247,000 RMB Yuan in Urumqi on 4 February 1999, an explosion in Hetian City, Xinjiang, on 25 March 1999 and violent resistance against arrest in Xinhe County, Xinjiang, on 18 June 1999. These incidents resulted in the deaths of 140 people and injuries to 371.

https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/sanctions/1267/aq_sanctio...

[cies]

Indeed, only the actions of the oppressor are "almost exactly the same".

The Uygars have so far been a lot more peaceful in their oppression.

I also find that Israel is very good in presenting itself in the western MSM, while China seems to have the western MSM against it lately. That makes me also a bit more hesitant to accept the MSM's China critiques.

[femiagbabiaka]

This is the exact reasoning that Russia is using to justify its invasion of Ukraine.

[schnable]

Israel for all its faults vis-a-vis the Palestinians is not committing ethnic cleansing or anything close to it. People who claim genocide by the Israelis are either anti-semetic or basing their opinions on anti-semitic disinformation.

[wutbrodo]

Is this surprising? Polities care about things happening in their backyard, and societies' goals tend to be much more pragmatic than what it says on the tin. The Palestinian situation is happening in their backyard, with people whose history is intertwined with theirs, and a refugee situation that affects them directly. There's not a country in the world that doesn't ultimately prioritize geopolitical concerns and a heaping dose of "people who look like me" prioritization.

For example, it's not "surprising hypocrisy" that Israel has a problem with racism towards some Jewish ethnic groups (Mizrahi, Ethiopian), despite Israel's supposedly deeply-held identity as a homeland where all Jews are welcome.

Note that this isn't a criticism of Israel! Just an acknowledgement that everywhere, people are people, and most people happen to be monsters. The fact that Arab countries care more about Arabs than a Muslim group halfway across the world seems almost tautological to me.

[ookdatnog]

I think that's adequately explained by the fact that, unlike China, Israel is considered an ally in the west. That means we are in some way more responsible for the actions of Israel than the actions of China, as continued support implies agreement with those actions, to some extent.

[IntrepidWorm]

Yes - the US and many other western nations have propped up Israel, in many ways enabling the continued aggression towards Palestine, though much of the west has an economic incentive to continue turning a blind eye towards the ongoing persecution of the Uyghur population. We are not blameless in their struggle.

[thaumasiotes]

> the situation of Muslims in China

Here's your problem; trying to talk about "the situation of Muslims in China" is incoherent. Islam has been an accepted (though small) part of Chinese culture for many centuries, and it still is. The Uyghurs are highly atypical Muslims in China who don't speak Chinese and don't participate in Chinese culture, instead preferring their own rival culture. That (and rebelliousness) is why they're oppressed.

Uyghurs have problems in China. Muslims don't, except to the extent that negative views of the Uyghurs start bleeding over into negative views of Muslims generally (which is indeed happening).

I've been confused for years about why the Western press seems so determined to demonstrate that it has no idea what it's talking about by representing oppression of Uyghurs as "oppressing people because of their religion". The case just can't be made. It would be trivial to call it "oppressing people because of their race"; that case is easy to make. But I guess the Western audience wouldn't see race-based oppression as being all that villainous?

[alisonatwork]

What does "participate in Chinese culture" mean, and why shouldn't the culture of China's Xinjiang province count as "Chinese culture", assuming we accept the official description of China as a 多民族國家 multi-ethnic country?

I do get what you mean about language, insofar as most people of the Hui ethnic group do tend to speak the dominant Sinitic language of the region in which they live and not an entirely different language family like most Uyghur people. But that's more of a geographic inevitability than some kind of fundamental cultural difference - people from Inner Mongolia don't speak a Sinitic language either, does that make them equally as un-Chinese as people from Xinjiang? And if that matters so much, why does the Chinese government insist on holding on to these provinces whose culture is apparently unacceptably divergent from what they deem to be Chinese?

In any case, even Hui face some degree of discrimination in China, documented most recently in national anti-halal actions that expanded well beyond Xinjiang[0]. Like most minority ethnicities in the country, their culture is often joked about or dismissed in ways that "mainstream" Han culture is not. While this may not be blatant bigotry, the discrimination is something that would not be considered appropriate in countries whose people are more welcoming of ethnic diversity.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-religion-islam-idUS...

[thaumasiotes]

> But that's more of a geographic inevitability than some kind of fundamental cultural difference

No, speaking a different language is the most fundamental cultural difference there is.

> And if that matters so much, why does the Chinese government insist on holding on to these provinces whose culture is apparently unacceptably divergent from what they deem to be Chinese?

I asked this question of a Chinese high school student once. His response was that the Chinese didn't want to be conquered by the people of those regions. (Which notably happened in the 13th and 17th centuries.)

Wikipedia says that when the Qing dynasty fell, the idea was brought up that Xinjiang and similar regions should be divested from China as not being Chinese; they see the retention of non-Chinese territory as more a matter of no one being willing to take the responsibility/blame for the country getting smaller.

[thaumasiotes]

> assuming we accept the official description of China as a 多民族國家 multi-ethnic country?

Responding separately to this bit of inanity, if we're going to take Chinese official descriptions at face value, the Uyghurs aren't being oppressed in any way. They're in charge of their own 自治区.

[IntrepidWorm]

US media has a long history of conflating race, religion, and socioeconomic class, in part due to the tangled nature of the 'States own biases and prejudice.

[free-malloc]

I think this is nearly entirely wrong. It's entirely about power and god.

Xi Jinping has cracked down on Christianity shutting down many churches. China has other ethnicities besides the Han, which don't speak Mandarin. If the Uyghurs had no faith they would be safe.

There is little room for religion unless the religion is centralized and submissive to the state. In some sense religion undermines the state.

[Melting_Harps]

> In some sense religion undermines the state.

In the 21st century, especially under the CCP, they're just competing forces more than direct adversaries, they both strive to do the same thing. And for most of History, the Church was the State.

It's parallels are quite visible, and now most wars are fought not for the deliberate imposition of deities, but rather for the new pantheon of self-declared god's: political leaders.

[trasz]

>And for most of History, the Church was the State.

Would you agree that the "Party" in CCP is something entirely different from what this term means in the west, and that it's closer in its meaning to a secularised version of a centralised church?

[Melting_Harps]

Death Cult, is more like it.

People wash away the misdeeds of the CCP during COVID because it suits their agenda, all the while their were was dissent fomenting during lockdowns. Han Chinese have been starved in Shanghai, those make shift hospitals were a joke and they under reported the deaths etc...

No, I'm very open about my disdain about the CCP, it's a cancer on the World and it should be seen for what it is.

[trasz]

Thank you; we might disagree on moral judgement of CCP (I'm not sure if I even have any consistent opinion), but the reason I've asked is that knowing about that semantical difference - bordering on mistranslation - makes it much easier to make sense of the situation, and I found it non-obvious.

[thaumasiotes]

> And for most of History, the Church was the State.

This is wildly false. The Church of England is about as close as things get. What historical periods are you thinking of in which the Church and the State were identified?

[Melting_Harps]

The Spanish crown during it's imperial rule, Isabella was called the Catholic FFS. Greece and Rome were all driven by their deities will as well. The Holy Roman Empire, and the Byzantine Empire...

In short most of the impactful societies, specifically in the West have had hardcore religious zealotry.

[thaumasiotes]

> The Spanish crown during it's imperial rule, Isabella was called the Catholic FFS.

It would be difficult for Isabella to be called the Catholic without being religiously subordinate to the Pope.

> Greece and Rome were all driven by their deities will as well.

This is a bizarre claim. Pagan Greece and Rome didn't have organized religion at all, not in any sense we would understand. And both were riddled with mystery cults. The Church was unified with the classical Greek State only in the same sense that it was unified with the olive oil industry, or that the modern American Church is unified with the modern American State.

[rayiner]

In my experience the constant outrage over Palestine is driven more by hatred of Israel than concern about Palestinians. Antisemitism is universal in the Muslim world,[1] not so with anti-Sino sentiment. Note that the wealthy Arab states surrounding Palestine aren’t leaping to admit refugees from Palestine.

[1] I think my home country of Bangladesh is thousands of miles away from any significant population of Jews. Yet the casual antisemitism is off the charts.

EDIT: Got some anonymous hate mail from a BDS saying “the tide is turning” and threatening me for my support of the “apartheid state Israel.” Sorry for exposing the things folks say “just between us.”

[DoughnutHole]

Well the wealthy Arab states aren't the ones surrounding Palestine - the poor countries that do surround Palestine have taken in an enormous number of refugees - there are 2 million Palestinians in Jordan, nearly as many as there are in Palestine, the vast majority of which descend from those that fled Palestine between '47 and '67. Of the states actually bordering Israel and Palestine, Egypt is really the only one that hasn't pulled its weight.

The sabre rattling by the gulf states is 100% motivated by distracting their people with rage rather than by actual concern for Palestinians - but don't let that distract you from the fact that the states on Palestine's doorstep have genuinely dealt with their share of the human tragedy caused by the conflict. Close to a quarter of Jordan's citizens are now Palestinians, and the intake of refugees in Lebanon even triggered a 15 year civil war when the delicate Christian-Muslim political balance in the country was disrupted.

[slibhb]

Before 1967, Egypt controlled Gaza and Jordan controlled the West Bank. They administrated those territories in a far worse manner than the Israelis currently do.

The relationship between Egypt and especially Jordan and the Palestinians is extremely complicated. Consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September

[skitout]

" They administrated those territories in a far worse manner than the Israelis currently do."

Currently Gaza is under partial blockade by Israelis, with extreme consequences on the population and the economy. And colonization continues on west bank, with many many check points... While heavy critics can certainly be made against administration of those territories by Egypt and Jordan, arguments would be welcome to support your view.

[Sporktacular]

But the topic (of this thread anyway) is Palestine in general, not the West Bank and Gaza specifically.

[skitout]

Your comment could be read like: Muslim people "support" Palestinians because they are antisemitic... I mostly disagree.

1) While antisemitism was prevalent all over (including in Muslim countries) the world before Israel existed, we've seen a shift in the Arabic world, and more generally in the Muslim population, after the creation of Israel, and the series of conflicts ensuing. e.g. Before the creation of Israel Jewish and Muslim lived in relative peace together in Morocco. So a case could be made that antisemitism is ALSO driven by how Israel was created and behaved (and let be clear, I condemn antisemitism).

2) Jerusalem is an holly city of Islam (and of Christian), so of course, any big thing happening there against Muslim bear much more weight ! This point is not necessity linked to antisemitism.

3) Israel became also the symbol of "Western imperialism" and of the humiliation of third word, and particularly of Muslims. That is a "Western country" that is seen as having stole the land of people and evicted 700.000 people. That is a country that continues colonization, evictions and repression... while being very actively supported for decades by US. This symbolic weight also explain why such attention.

4) And that is an old story, with many episodes. Just like a good TV show (with all the element above), when you've been exposed to many episodes, you are more keen to see the new episodes...

-

DoughnutHole answered you about the refugees. Some countries also support(ed) financially Palestine and Palestinians (in Palestine or refugees).

[Sporktacular]

The only wealthy state neighbouring the Palestinian territories is Israel (which is in some ways more of a suzerain than a neighbour).

Anti-semitism went through the roof when Zionists started taking large tracts of land for a new state that wasn't recognised by its neighbours. Pan-Arabists and muslim groups, knew their land could be next if the precedent went unchallenged and stirred up bigotry in response. The hatred was initially more of the idea of Israel than of Jews.

And they were prepared to throw Palestinians under a bus too, banishing them to a multi-generational life of homelessness and refugee status rather than allow full citizenship, so as to keep pressure on Israel and prevent normalisation of the situation. Of course they don't care about Palestinians either.

Now, in the Gulf states it's about business. Outside the Gulf States it's about domestic politics. But beneath the bigotry, the principled opposition to land annexation by foreign powers still remains.