Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by refurb 1490 days ago
I think the reason is pretty clear - Western nations can be pressured and people can voice their opinion and protest their own government's actions.

Only a little over 30 years ago China rolled out its military and crushed its own citizens beneath tank treads, then denied the whole thing happened.

Public condemnation against China will do nothing, so Islamic countries don't even try. Plus I would throw in a bit of geopolitcal posturing in that 1) going against China might look a little too much aligning with the US and 2) not pissing off China keeps some sort of partnership with China and it's deep pockets open in the future.

1 comments

Only a little over 30 years ago USA rolled out its police to blow up its own citizens, razing entire city block: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing. They didn't need to deny or cover up anything, obviously nobody got punished for this, because the victims were black.

So, yeah, while the Western people can certainly voice their opinion, it's often because their opinion doesn't matter.

("According to an article in The Lancet, between 1980 and 2018, more than 30,000 were killed by the police", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enfor...)

Did you read your own link? The "Aftermath" section where several courts condemned those actions and awarded substantial awards to the victims. The City apologized. Independent commissions condemned the decision.

Can you please list all of the acts of restitution that the Chinese government has done since 1989?

Oh, and ignoring all that, you're posting an awful lot of whataboutisms. I count about 9 of them so far.

What game are you playing?

While you are right, I think GP still has a point. Those responsible for the MOVE massacre walked from it.

The broader point I think GP tries to make is: the west should not be so quick to point fingers, especially not while it's own fingers are covered in blood.

The US likes to same "human rights violations" about other nations, but then commits many themselves every year, and claims to be above the The Hague court.

I also believe the US has not right to use those terms while it is still misbahaving on such a large scale.

So you're suggesting that the US, since it's guilty of human rights violations, should just be silent when it sees others countries commit human rights violations?

I think that's absurd.

There isn't a country on this planet who hasn't committed some human rights violation in its past.

By your logic, nobody should ever call out human rights violations...ever.

A far better approach is to judge a country by its actions in totality. Yes the US commits human rights violations, but it also has courts where victims can seek restitution, a free press to talk about such violations, free elections where voters can choose leaders who work against human rights violations.

To compare the US and China and say "well they're both guilty of the same sins" is, frankly, bizarre.

Right, that's classic whataboutism, and it uses an inch of U.S. abuses to sweep away a mile of abuses by China. Those things just don't exist in a logical relationship of justifying, absolving, or forbidding analysis of one another. Their relation, if there is one at all, would be an and relationship, not an or, and certainly not an xor.

Even a person fully invested in talking about U.S. human rights abuses and categorically disagrees with the idea that China has ever done anything wrong, you would hope that such a person wouldn't try to use the one topic to derail the other.

This above has a name: "American Exceptionalism".
Nah. Note how the invocation of move bombing is not even attempt to compare the level of both countries crimes historically. It is literally just attempt to "since America has/did crimes, no one is allowed to criticize China/Israel/Russia".

Moreover, while USA did in fact committed crimes either on own soil or internationally, claiming that it is exactly the same as China or Russia is just wrong. America has its own authoritarians trying to destroy its own democracy. It is has its own sociopaths in leadership too. And still, it is not currently commuting genocide, unlike China or Russia. And whatever wrong America did does not mean it is ok for China or Russia to be imperial or genocidal until America fills itself with angels only.

>It is literally just attempt to "since America has/did crimes, no one is allowed to criticize China/Israel/Russia".

Not at all. Please read my comment in its context: it's a response to parent's claim that this can only happen in China, because in the West the public has the right to speak out and fix it - while in reality it happens too, and simply gets ignored, sometimes without even bothering to cover it up.

Also - ever seen the racial stats for US prisons, or for police shooting victims? Doesn't it look like a genocide to you? If it doesn't - perhaps it's because you've been told your entire life that it's actually normal, same way Chinese are taught their government crimes are ok. And even if it does - do you believe you can realistically do anything about it?

On the other hand in US it's at least properly documented. China does have a terrible problem with transparency, and I'm afraid it might be a cultural thing, because it's not just China.

The whole your thing is to distract from discussing China and making it sound like China is actually ok with what it does. No it is not and nothing that happens in USA makes China actions less grave or less genocidal.

> it's a response to parent's claim that this can only happen in China, because in the West the public has the right to speak out and fix it

Not true. The parent said that in the Western countries can be pressured and the public has right and possibility to speak about issue. The implication is that therefore public pressure can be used to change the things. It was not that nothing bad in west ever happens.

> Also - ever seen the racial stats for US prisons, or for police shooting victims? Doesn't it look like a genocide to you?

Yes and actually no it does not look like genocide at all. It does look like racial bias and imprisonment rates are absurdly high. Nevertheless, it is not nearly genocide.

Your entire argument is a whataboutism.

You’ve still failed to explain why China’s actions against Uyghur population shouldn’t be condemned.

Ah, right, they apologised. That changes everything :->

What matters is that nobody - not a single one of perpetrators of a bombing organised by police, which killed five random kids, and this is ignoring reports of police shooting at survivors fleeing the fire - got punished. "The city" paid some (public) money, that's all. It's not whataboutism, it's showing that the claim that "public condemnation against China will do nothing" because of Tienanmen is terribly misleading: those same things happen everywhere, you're just assuming they are somehow fundamentally different there. Sometimes they are, but mostly not.

As for the Chinese government: Chinese prime minister responsible for Tienanmen spent the rest of his life in house arrest. Can you imagine this happening in the land of the free?

China denies the event. They just removed a memorial statue in Hong Kong.

Are you seriously arguing that response is better than the US?

Never mind crushing a democratic protest and killing thousands is in no way comparable to police trying to execute an arrest of a small group.

>China denies the event.

It never ceases to amaze me how people still believe things like this.

https://www.quora.com/What-do-Chinese-citizens-particularly-...

> Are you seriously arguing that response is better than the US?

Are you seriously not realising that you're making a huge assumption here? But please, tell me how putting the prime minister in house arrest for the rest of his life is a worse response than ignoring the whole thing altogether and not even pretending to prosecute.

(Also: thousands? Estimates, eg Amnesty International, say few hundred up to a thousand; funny how those numbers somehow keep growing when it's about China and not US, isn't it?)

China just tore down a statue in HK commemorating the massacre.

But your telling me your quora link tells me all is fine?

Come on, your spending an awful lot of time defending a brutal dictatorship.