[guessmyname]

More context about this WikiPedia excerpt:

→ https://www.chinafile.com/extensive-surveillance-china

→ https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/student-01272020075256.ht...

It looks like 周月明 (Vera Yueming Zhou) was sent to a Chinese concentration camp mostly because she was part of a religious minority and not necessarily for using a VPN to access the University of Washington’s website.

> Vera was living in her hometown of Kuytun (Kuitun) in Ili Prefecture, an area directly north of the Tian Shan mountains that borders Kazakhstan. She had been trapped there since 2017, when—in the middle of her junior year at the University of Washington, where I was an instructor—she had taken a spur-of-the-moment trip back home to see her boyfriend, a former elementary school classmate. Using digital surveillance tools, the Kuytun police had noticed that Vera had used a Virtual Private Network in order to access websites such as her university Gmail account. Given her status as a member of a Muslim minority group, this could be deemed a “sign of religious extremism.”

[kjs3]

That's the thing about "illegal but everyone does it"...it's nothing to worry about until the government decides it's convenient to enforce (against an individual or group), and then it's definitely something to worry about and it becomes a low barrier pretext for all sorts of oppression.

[sowbug]

Remember this next time you're driving above the speed limit on the highway. Especially if you live in the US and are white.

[kjs3]

WTF are you talking about. Being white means it's a non-issue. Being not-white is potentially fatal.

[DangitBobby]

I'm pretty sure that's why they are asking white people to think about it. Others already know.

[rixed]

I think you missed the point

[esaym]

Encamped for your beliefs and not for breaking the law, that makes it much better!

[nonethewiser]

Just tragic. Hard to imagine living in such a backwards place

[stevofolife]

Thanks for this elaboration. Upon reading original comment, it felt very strange that she was "encamped" for using VPN to access her school homework. Immediately I knew there was more than it meets the eye.

[psychphysic]

The best bit is that we're enacting very similar laws in the West [0]. As much as China is often deplorable I do wonder how much of a blind spot we have here to our own sins.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36428046

[fnordpiglet]

It’s subjective of course, but the real story seems worse.

[pessimizer]

Exactly. This is the period when Muslim ethnic groups like the Uigurs were being rounded up on any pretense to be reeducated into not wanting to be separatists anymore (often with no indication that they had anything to do with separatism other than their ethnicity.) Seeing the VPN pop up was more than enough of an excuse. Calling it a "genocide" is 99% propaganda, but it was obviously a sinofication meant to get rid of separatist identities and cultures, and a horrible injustice. In the beginning, they were inspired and immunized by the US's anti-Muslim fervor during the GWB invasions (we were not only not criticizing, but probably even sharing intelligence with China.)

[l3mure]

> In the beginning, they were inspired and immunized by the US's anti-Muslim fervor during the GWB invasions (we were not only not criticizing, but probably even sharing intelligence with China.)

Yeah, seems to be overlooked quite a lot since it's convenient for the US narrative lately.

> Starting in 2002, the American government detained 22 Uyghurs in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp. The last 3 Uyghur detainees, Yusef Abbas, Hajiakbar Abdulghupur and Saidullah Khalik, were released from Guantanamo on December 29, 2013, and later transferred to Slovakia.

> None of the Uyghurs wanted to be returned to China. The United States declined to grant the Uyghurs political asylum, or to allow them parole, or even freedom on the Naval Base.

> A May 2008 report by the Inspector General of the United States Department of Justice claimed that American military interrogators appeared to have collaborated with visiting Chinese officials at Guantánamo Bay to enact sleep deprivation of the Uyghur detainees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_detainees_at_Guantanamo...

[matchapples]

Why do you say it's 99% propaganda?

"sinofication" sounds a lot like "eliminating the existing culture" which sounds a lot like genocide. Genocide is more than just murdering everyone like in some of the most well known cases like the Holocaust -- it includes elimination of an ethnic group by any means possible, including "nativification"

[ineptech]

I understand where you're coming from, but -cide implies killing.

[ImPostingOnHN]

the "cide" in genocide refers to destroying

for example, a cultural genocide refers to destroying culture, e.g. Uighur or Muslim culture

[woooooo]

Would you say the choice of the word "genocide" here is because it's the most accurate description of what's going on?

Or is it chosen for rhetorical/propaganda effect without too much concern for accuracy?

[mayormcmatt]

Not the person you're responding to, but it is an accurate description of genocide under its current meaning as defined by the UN (probably the most authoritative body on this kind of matter).

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml

What the Chinese are doing there is covered under Article II, c.

If you are being pedantic by holding fast to the literal Greek translation of "geno" and "cide" then, well, this is simply not the complete modern meaning of the term.

[ImPostingOnHN]

Would you say the common, accurate usage of the term "cultural genocide" to refer to what the term refers to, is a bigger or smaller problem than the actual cultural genocide itself?

[DiogenesKynikos]

"-cide" is a suffix that means "to kill," as in:

  * suicide
  * regicide
  * fratricide
  * insecticide
  * pesticide

It comes from the Latin word "caedo," which means "to kill." The phrase "cultural genocide" is not the same as "genocide," and indeed the legal definition of "genocide" expliticly says that destruction of a culture is not genocide.

Using the word "genocide" to refer to something other than mass murder - and then falling back to the claim that "genocide" doesn't mean mass murder - is just playing rhetorical games.

[KptMarchewa]

Of a nation or ethnic group.

[mistermann]

> Why do you say it's 99% propaganda?

I suspect because of propaganda.