[nixon_why69]

They ran a rolling internment program for a few years, holding people against their will in mandatory patriotism camp for months at a time.

That's bad and wrong but you need to be killing people to call it genocide. It's been a master class in propaganda on this topic, look up the name Adrian Zenz and see how often he gets uncritically quoted.

[saxonww]

> you need to be killing people to call it genocide

No, you don't.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...

See Article 2.

[refurb]

So the “-cide” root of the word which means “kill” no longer means that?

[saxonww]

It's never meant only that, but that's not the argument. We decided that a long time ago.

Genocide refers to a People (race, kind, tribe, family, etc.), not individual people. The group is a concept, and 'killing' it doesn't have to involve the biological death of the group members. That's part of what the linked resolution is trying to say.

For example, you could go sterilize every member of an ethnic group, without killing - causing the biological death of - any of them. None of them will be able to have children, and as they die of old age, the group disappears. That's genocide.

Another example would be to forcibly separate all the members of the group and prevent them from engaging in the lifestyle associated with membership in the group (e.g. style of dress, music, food, language, worship, etc.). Over time, perhaps generations, the people basically give up trying to do any of these things if they even remember what they were. They have no group cohesion, so the group has essentially disappeared. No need to directly cause any biological death. The argument is that if this is done intentionally, it is also genocide.

Genocide as a concept is about ending the group, not specifically the individual members. It's definitely true that you can end a group by killing all its members, though.

[nixon_why69]

Ok but none of those things came even close to happening in this case. The arguments are all, like, it was in pursuit of genocide, because I say so, so if one guy died in detention then it's a genocide.

[saxonww]

Well there are allegations of mass detentions, forced labor, destruction of religious sites, suppression of language, separation of children into Chinese-controlled boarding schools, coercive birth control, and sterilization.

You agreed with me that genocide is more expansive than "we're directly killing people". For the sake of argument, let's assume the allegations are true: what would you call that?

[nixon_why69]

But the allegations aren't true for the most part. Some are out-of-context true, like if you have too many kids they sterilize you, that was true across China for decades and going away now. But then the limit on kids for minorities was HIGHER than it was for Han Chinese until recently. So were they self genociding?

Taking an angle like "well, lets assume these things are true, THEN can we accuse China of genocide" is basically what the media did for 5 years on this topic.

[refurb]

So genocide ranges from “murder” to “discrimination, maybe”?

The only thing this does is cheapen the word. In the past genocide was something serious. But now it includes activities that are simply upsetting.

[saxonww]

It doesn't cheapen the word. If discrimination is intentional and has the effect of minimizing and eventually eliminating the target ethnic group, then you have the same result as if you lined up everyone in that group and shot them.

The word is attached to the intended outcome, not the specific actions taken to achieve it.

[refurb]

Of course it cheapens it.

Using your example, if some ethnic group changed how they dressed it would be genocide.

That cheapens the word. Change in dress is not as severe an outcome as buried in a ditch with a bullet in your head.

[warumdarum]

So beeing unable to keep up, because your culture holds you back that is a genocide? Like somebody develops machines, that marginalize your existence until you fade away, that is a genocide?

[fc417fc802]

No I believe it requires intent (possibly systemic in nature) on the part of the perpetrator. If the quakers end up disappearing and it turns out to be primarily due to their refusal to adopt modern technology that's not genocide as I understand it so long as everyone else was at worst indifferent to their plight.

[mmooss]

You're omitting so much, such as torture and ethnic cleansing and massive levels of abuse. Any genocidal concentration camp could be called 'an internment camp'. Anyone reading this, just look up coverage in credible sources.

[nkmnz]

"Killing people" is not required for committing a genocide:

Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:

1. A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and

2. A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:

2.1 Killing members of the group

2.2 Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

2.3 Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

2.4 Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

2.5 Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

[0] https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition

[nixon_why69]

Brother, I eat at a Uyghur restaurant in Wuhan pretty regularly. Nobody destroyed any groups.

There was a big overreaction that violated people's rights but the people still exist and are fine.

If we contrast with how the West have reacted to terror attacks, its quite rich to see them throwing UN definitions at China.

[nkmnz]

I really haven’t written anything about Uyghurs specifically. I only corrected your mistaken assumption that genocide must necessarily involve the killing or physical extermination of people. It doesn't even require to be successful at its mission - it's the intent when taking any of the specified actions that counts, such as causing serious bodily or mental harm, imposing destructive conditions of life, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children. If those acts are committed with intent to destroy a protected group in whole or in part, it might be considered a genocide.

So “Uyghur restaurants still exist” or “Uyghur people still exist” does not answer the legal question. The relevant question is whether the group’s cultural, religious, familial, or biological continuity is being targeted as a group. It's enough to do this in a single village.

This may sound like a grammar nitpick, but I think it points to the actual issue: “the people still exist and are fine” does not answer the genocide question.

Genocide is not simply about whether “the people” — individual members of a group — still exist. It is about whether a people — a protected group as such — is being targeted for destruction, in whole or in part.

So the relevant question is not merely whether “the people still exist and are fine,” but whether a people still exists as a people, and whether it is fine culturally, religiously, socially, biologically, and institutionally.

In this particular case, I don’t claim to have enough information to make a final judgment. But the fact that so little independent journalism and investigation is possible must be blamed on the CCP and cannot be treated as counterevidence. Unlike individual human beings in a court of law, governments that suppress a free press and block independent investigations should not receive the benefit of the doubt in the court of public opinion.

[nixon_why69]

I'm saying all of the people still exist and their lives were never in danger. There were some dozens executed for actual terror/separatism charges, maybe some of those cases were bad, but it was not a threat to "the people".

The fact that the argument has to lean into technicalities and attributed unspoken intentions rather than actual horrors should say everything.

[nkmnz]

There are people saying all the Jews were still alive in Germany. For a matter of fact, I've recently been to a jewish restaurant. The owners seemed fine.

[nixon_why69]

And those people are cranks because we have tons of evidence of the holocaust.

Conversely, in this case, Adrian Zenz is a crank because for a decade he's been unable to put up any. In an era where every single person carries a high def video camera in their pocket. It's a faith-based accusation.

[warumdarum]

What if a culture is genocidal and hellbent in removing all minorities from its surroundings? Like nazis driving everything away in a wave of conquest? Is extinction of this genocide? Look at the minority histograms of the middle east for example

[defrost]

> Brother, I eat at a Uyghur restaurant in Wuhan pretty regularly.

Honest question here;

is it a traditional Uyghur owned and managed restaurant freely frequented by local Uyghurs as a living expression of past and ongoing Uyghur culture, or

is it more a Disney "themed Uyghur restaurant" with the same relationship to Uyghur culture as Outback Steakhouse has to actual IRL Australian food and culture (ie three tenths of f-all).

[nixon_why69]

It's run by a family from there, they speak dialect among themselves which is very much not Wuhanhua. The food is only slightly xinjiang actually, its a stretch noodle shop with a couple of lamb dishes.

But even if it were the latter.. even that would go against the narrative of total cultural hostility?

[defrost]

In context, and I'm not just thinking of Uyghur culture in China here, the presence of {X}-like restaurants can mean a lot of things.

Majority culture "celebrating" / "allowing" minority culture restaurants, clubs, bars, etc happens in many different ways with many differing meanings, complicated layers even.

Black Harlem in New York went through stages of being an outpost of US black culture(s) (from US North and South, urban, rural, "African"), a hip place for hip white people, birth place for new takes on old culture, etc. All that while the attitude of majority culture in the US fluxed a few times wrt black minority culture.

TLDR; It's hard to get a read on what a Uyghur restaurant in Wuhan means either way in the greater China attitude toward the re-education of the Uyghur.

[nixon_why69]

Ok, can I step back a bit and call out some big picture differences?

The legacy of slavery in America is a key component of the microwave background radiation there, the story seeps into default assumptions of everything.

China just.. doesn't have that. They had slavery amongst themselves in the olden days like everyone else but no master race chattel slavery period. There's definitely racism on the black/white scale here but it mostly goes with perceived income/status of the black/white foreigner (most blacks here are from africa), its not some core piece of the national story.

Additionally, minorities here have mostly always been loosely governed people at the empire's periphery, rather than integrated and persecuted in the core. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_regions_of_China). The Xinjiang camps were an exceptional case after some terror attacks, and they're over now.

I think the equivalent core narrative here would be being victims of colonialism during the century of humiliation, which puts them if anything on the same side as domestic minorities.

[maxglute]

> intent to destroy

Except there was no intent to destroy, literally all other points 2.X that follows is irrelevant. There's reason plurality of UN takes PRC position that they indented to deradicalize / reeducate, aka not genocide. Which is obvious except to useful idiots on Pompeo propaganda because reducing PRC minorities by 1 is bad for Xi's hagiography. Now the gets to bask in the glory of speed running histories most successful war on terror with minimal bloodshed by sinicizing restive frontier region. Basically Obama should hand over his Nobel Peace Prize to Xi.

[nkmnz]

So you say the Germans should just have reeducated the Jews to not being Jews anymore - and it wouldn't have been a genocide?

[maxglute]

No, it would be "cultural genocide", which bluntly is empty label - there's a reason no international framework exits for something prosaic like enforcing common language and culture on minorities - because it's nation building 101. And regardless that's not even what PRC did, they didn't turn Uyghurs into non Muslims, they Sinicized them back to traditional Uyghur + state Islam and excised strains of extremist Wahhabism which was recent import. You know how western minorities mostly speak the dominant language, aka melting pot, that's what PRC minority policy is moving towards, away from soviet autonomous multicultural oblast model which was too hands off leading to minorities getting to restive/handsy with terrorism/separatism.

German jews btw overwhelmingly spoke German, were deeply assimilated, patriotic of course. XJ would be like if German Jews who spoke only Yiddish and stuck in their minority enclaves, carried out 100s of terrorist attacks, got reeducated to speak both German, and Yiddish, reform religion to be less extremist, and doing it in <10 years / single generation. Not only would it have not been genocide, it would have been exemplar model to emulate for domestic serenity. Which is broadly what XJ securitization was, the most successful deradicalization and integration program in human history. Not unique to human history... again integration = nation building 101 stuff, it was just technologic mediated speedrun, in that sense parallels Germans.