Oh come on. They’re attempting to “re-educate” a culture out of existence, to prevent the transmission of a language, a religion and an identity, a culture and using the most brutal methods to do so but there are no plans to kill everyone. It’s quite evil enough without trivialising actual attempts at genocide, like in Rwanda, WWII or the Dzhungar genocide. This is an attempt at cultural erasure, not a full blown plan to kill everyone of a particular ethnicity. The PRC party-state will gladly take any Uyghur who will cast off their culture and treat them as a loyal citizen.
Genocide specifically refers to the organized extermination of a people. That's not what's happening in Xinjiang. Nobody claims that. They claim it's a 'cultural genocide', which is a very incendiary way of saying China is trying to stamp out Uyghur culture.
I think we will see what is happening to the Uighurs now as a genocide in that it is an intentional destruction of a culture and people. I'm not sure what can be done when a country so powerful as China is the perpetrator but it's pretty terrible to watch as it is happening.
They’ve started with throwing 2 million into a concentration camp and are currently in the process of working them to death. Their families are being genetically wiped out with Han men literally taking the place of the previous Uyghur male. No, this is a literal holocaust/genocide.
You may wish to look up the definition of genocide.
Genocide is about extinguishing an ethnic, racial, or religious group.
One way is to simply murder everyone that belongs to it. It is effective, but hard to do without consequences.
Another, perhaps more insidious way is to prevent that culture from propagating, thus destroying it in the long run. Tools you can use are involuntary birth control, displacement, and indoctrination. Which is what is happening in Xinjiang.
But the question is, _why?_ What's their incentive to apply more cruel population control on one ethnic group over others?
It's a culture- and religion-based form of oppression. The ethnic Uighur people are Muslims, for the most part. They form a distinct subculture within China. The Communist Party sees their nonconformity as a threat to social harmony. That's why, in addition to forced sterilization and forced birth control, the government has imposed forced re-education in concentration camps.
Their goal is to destroy the Uighur population's distinctiveness as a subculture in China. It is deliberate ethnocide (by forced internment) and genocide (by reproductive suppression).
I don't know what point you are trying to make; the intent is key, but the intent is clear. The Chinese government is targetting the Uigher people and their supporters with the intention of destroying the Uigher cultural identity.
The Chinese government is doing all of these things to the Uigher people, and I am not going to replicate the exhaustively cited information that is summarized in the article[1] below to support each individual claim. I recognize that Wikipedia articles may have bias, but the bulk of the citations in that article are from recognized news sources.
The Chinese Government is actively committing genocide against the Uyghur people. They literally have internment camps, multiple governments have denounced this, there are photos.
If you insist: how about the Uyghur population decreasing instead of increasing? That would be a good indicator that a genocide is actually taking place.
Anyways, please don't dismiss my comment. What is Beijing's supposed motive here?
>The Chinese government is targetting the Uigher people and their supporters with the intention of destroying the Uigher cultural identity.
This is begging the question -- what are those things that reveal the intent to eradicate?
We both agree that Uighur's are being specifically targeted, of course, but the Wikipedia article is weaseling in the "cultural" qualifier, i.e. "cultural genocidie". That's a comparison to genocide. I still don't see clear and compelling evidence of intent to eradicate.
Evidence of intent to torture? Yes.
Evidence of intent to marginalize? Yes.
Evidence of intent to harvest organs for the benefit of others? Yes.
Evidence that Chinese policy wishes to remove the people from existence? I could be convinced, and it wouldn't surprise me very much, but the evidence is unclear.
The whole idea behind labour camps in Xinjiang is to strip Uyghurs living in China from their independent identity. Take away their history by destroying ancestral graveyards. Rid them of Islam by prohibiting religious practice and "educating" them with communist ideas through loudspeakers. And even end them as an ethnicity, by sterilising some women and raping others to produce Han offsprings.
Genocide describes that perfectly.
P.S. Though better of journalism quality of The Economist.
Curious on what you think of what China is doing to the Uyghur people.
Do you believe that this is fabricated by all these media outlets? I would think that genocide of a particular ethnicity would count as totalitarian and racist.
Replace China with Nazi Germany and re-read your comment. The Chinese are putting Uighurs in concentration camps to destroy their culture (genocide) and harvest their organs.
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