[ch4s3]

US prisons are not concentration camps. The majority of people in US prisons have committed usually dozens of crimes and the plurality of inmates have committed violent crimes[1]. No one is in a US prison for praying, teaching their children a language the state disapproves of, or similar non-crimes. There are no forced sterilizations in US prisons.

[1]https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html

[trasz3]

Many people in US prisons are there for drug related offenses, which were invented precisely to jail the black population. And while you probably can’t be jailed for praying, you definitely can be put there for rough sleeping or many other non-crimes invented for that specific purpose.

But you are right it’s not directly comparable - the usual American way of dealing with the Uighur ethnic group is killing them from safe distance (see Middle East), not incarceration.

[ch4s3]

If you had looked at the link I shared you see that only 20% of US prisoners are there for any charge related to drugs and most of them have multiple priors. The policies were not invented to "ail the black population" this is patently false. The war on drugs was championed among others by figures like Jesse Jackson and the whole of the Congressional Black Caucus in the 1980s.

> But you are right it’s not directly comparable - the usual American way of dealing with the Uighur ethnic group is killing them from safe distance (see Middle East), not incarceration.

Again you're engaged fully in whataboutism here. I get that you have a giant hate boner for the US, but you're spewing nonsense. I'm not here to justify the war in Iraq, it was wrong. But locking up 3 million people in your own territory for no reason and surveilling a whole population around the clock is pure evil. Its gross that you're trying to defend it.

[FooBarWidget]

Not the guy you're replying to, but I take issue with "it's gross that you're trying to defend it".

"Locking up 3 million people" is a false claim. If you look into the source of the claim that "1 million people" are locked up then you'll see that that's based on interviewing around 10 people, and then extrapolating their villages' figures to the whole of Xinjiang. The quality is evidence is so bad that even the Uyghur Tribunal failed to provide any evidence for the "1 million people" figure, but they still concluded "genocide" despite lack of evidence.

This "3 million people" figure that you cite now is absolutely without evidence. It's just the media taking the "1 million" figure and then sensationally inflating it, until finally people like you take "3 million" as a fact.

Calling it "[genocide] denial" (sic) is a way to shut down conversation and to dismiss counter-evidence and criticism out of hand.

Was the poster defending Chinese crimes? I see it entirely differently: he's pointing out double standards which is completely legit, even necessary. Let's say that China and the US are both bad. But only one of them is painted as a genocidal fascist expansionist existential threat. There can be no honest conversation about China until double standards are destroyed.

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You invoke whataboutism, but mentioning the US here is absolutely relevant because US officials have admitted on video that an important reason why they were in Afghanistan was to encourage Uyghur extremism, forcing China to respond with anti-terrorism measures.

Imagine your neighbor funding your enemies to harass you. You take measures against the harassers, but you had to resort to some dirty tricks and had to overrespond to make them stop. Your neighbor then reports you for those dirty tricks and overresponse in which you violated some laws. Yes you were absolutely wrong for violating laws, but you are also right in pointing out that your neighbor instigated the situation. Calling out your neighbor is not whataboutism, it's essential context. I don't think you think will appreciate people who deliberately ignore your neighbor's contribution and only focus on you.