I’m not reducing anything. I’m simply pointing out facts that often get thrown under the bus for the sake of pushing a particular narrative - facts that contradict overly simplistic characterizations of their actions such as “they hate Muslims!” or “they hate freedom!”.
The fact is, the reality is much more nuanced than that. Painting the picture as black and white and then getting emotional over it helps nobody.
> You can't be pro-freedom and put people in concentration camps.
> You can't be pro-Muslims and put them into concentration camps.
> It is that black and white, the things are mutually exclusive.
Yes, you can and no, it isn't. This is essentially the fundamental basis of statecraft - making tradeoffs and weighing the benefits of certain policies over others. Very rarely will you find a problem that has a perfectly packaged solution to it, and this is where historical context and nuance comes into play. Nothing is ever black and white.
Let’s take your example of Muslims and “concentration camps” for example. You and the mainstream media would characterize them as “concentration camps” for its sensational effect (though technically correct, I think we can all agree on its historical connotations - i.e extermination camps). If you were to be charitable, a more accurate description would be to classify them as forced “re-education camps”. We have to keep in mind that there is currently a tidal wave of propaganda from both China and the West that is unfolding right now, triggered by a fundamental shift in geopolitical strategy from the U.S.
Post-1980s, elements of Wahhabi/Salafi Islam were imported into Xinjiang from Saudi Arabia/Turkey and subsequently to mostly Uyghur East Turkistan separatists. This radical version of Islam supplanted the less extreme forms of Islam practiced by ethnic Uyghurs at the time (i.e - Shafi-I, Sufi Islam) [1]. Not only did this erode and destroy traditional Uyghur cultural and folkloric practices, but this led to many violent terrorist incidents inside of Xinjiang and elsewhere in China [2][3]. Regressive constructs of Wahhabism/Salafism such as burkas, suppression of women’s rights, suppression of secular education and jihadist proselytization [4] were perceived as a threat to stability of the region.
The re-education and vocational camps, however ill conceived, were designed to directly address this issue. They were designed to stem the rising tide of unemployed, unskilled and increasingly radicalized Muslim ethnic minorities in the region and to revert it back to its pre-Wahhabi influenced state. They did not just pop up out of nowhere without any historical context like the mainstream media would have you believe.
If the CCP were truly anti-Muslim, do you think they would allow mosques to exist and Muslims to worship freely in them? Don't you think they would have bulldozed every single one of the 39,000 mosques by now?
To reiterate: forced re-education camps are far from a perfect solution (if a perfect solution even exists), but given the authoritarian nature of the CCP, they could have done far, far worse.
The notion that re-education camps are innocuous/a social good is pretty suspect. In the USA and Taiwan, former Chinese people (by nationality, not ethnicity!) say they were pretty terrible. In China, there's demented old people that say life was crazy back then and re-education camps really sucked. There's also non-demented old people who just say stuff like "life was tough back then but it's better now." But nobody has anything actually good to say about that system, more like it was good if you survived and thrived in spite of it.
Also, the uncritical assumption that China should be administering Kashgar! Just like the question of the USA administering little South American/Middle Eastern countries and Russia administering Ukraine.
Re-education camps are certainly a human rights violation; however the important difference to concentration camps is that people are expected to leave the camp alive once they have undergone the re-education. If the Chinese government has some foresight, there'll be some actually useful education beyond regurgitating propaganda and the inmates might end up with decently paying jobs afterwards. Someone with a stable income and a family to feed is less likely to throw it all away to join a terrorist cell, so that would achieve the stated purpose of the camps.
On the other hand, a large-scale government action completed in short time usually indicates that things haven't been thought through all that well. If all they're doing is putting a bunch of Muslims into an adversarial situation with probably racist guards, I'd expect any actual terrorists among the inmates to have no difficulty finding recruits.
I don't think I've pushed the notion that re-education camps are a social good nor innocuous. They are objectively pretty bad. Forcing anyone to do anything against their will is pretty horrible.
All I'm saying is that amongst the terrible things that an authoritarian government is capable of, forcing people to learn vocational skills and sit and listen to corny CCP propaganda for hours every day is not the worse thing that could have happened. The CCP could have easily used the violence in the region to justify much worse things.
That being said, I won’t justify the severe abuses (i.e - torture) that may be taking place there, abuses which naturally arise when one group of humans wield asymmetric power over another. If indeed there are such cases, I truly believe they are by far the minority. Any such widespread severe abuse would trigger the CCP’s red flag of destabilization. It would jeopardize China’s relationship with the world (condemnation, sanctions - which seems to be happening anyway), with its allies like Pakistan and others in the Islamic world, and with its own populace.
As far as I know, the Uyghurs are still allowed to engage in traditional customs like any other Muslim ethnic minorities, just not the extreme Wahhabi/Salafi customs that were were never native to them in the first place.
> Also, the uncritical assumption that China should be administering Kashgar! Just like the question of the USA administering little South American/Middle Eastern countries and Russia administering Ukraine.
Sorry I did not address the administering of Kashgar. It’s a legitimate question and one point of contention amongst many. There is a long and complicated history there with evidence of a vassal relationship going back to the Tang dynasty. I don’t have enough information to form an opinion on China’s claim to the city. If you can point me to some historical references, that would be great.
