Talk:Xinjiang

see also: Talk:Xinjiang/Archive

"Fake News"

Content around the Chinese crackdown on Uighers was removed in this diff - I do not believe this crackdown is fake at all, however the content was not exactly travel relevant. Should it just be rewritten or returned to the original text? Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:12, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't think it's travel-irrelevant that thousands of people are being rounded up and put in concentration camps. WV:Be fair suggests reverting this edit. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:13, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

And reverted accordingly. Let's watch to see whether this user also tries to whitewash the situation in Tibet. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:37, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Is this really travel-irrelevant?

Mr Bekali’s case stands out because he was a foreign citizen, of Kazakhstan, who was seized by China’s security agencies and detained for eight months last year without recourse. Although some details are impossible to verify, two Kazakh diplomats confirmed he was held for seven months and then sent to re-education.

I rest my case. Muslims travelers are travelers, too, right? Ikan Kekek (talk) 16:31, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

I agree, it's definitely travel relevant, especially for Muslims. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:52, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

I'd say the edit that originally removed the content is disruptive editing. It's the only contribution the IP address has made, and therefore it doesn't look like the IP user is interested in contributing. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 16:53, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

The IP address is, unsurprisingly, a Chinese one. I agree with restoring the text, but think it should be worded differently. Pashley (talk) 01:19, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

What wording would you like to use? Reports like this one have been posted on the BBC website lately, so the repression is getting more and more severe. Note the term "cultural genocide" and the description of how the Chinese government is perpetrating it:

Back in Xinjiang, the research shows that all children now find themselves in schools that are secured with "hard isolation closed management measures." Many of the schools bristle with full-coverage surveillance systems, perimeter alarms and 10,000 Volt electric fences, with some school security spending surpassing that of the camps.

The policy was issued in early 2017, at a time when the detentions began to be dramatically stepped up. Was the state, Mr Zenz wonders, seeking to pre-empt any possibility on the part of Uighur parents to forcibly recover their children?

"I think the evidence for systematically keeping parents and children apart is a clear indication that Xinjiang's government is attempting to raise a new generation cut off from original roots, religious beliefs and their own language," he tells me.

"I believe the evidence points to what we must call cultural genocide."

Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:35, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

May 2020

I've made some further adjustments. Unfortunately, it's very hard to verify things these days because Chinese media will naturally downplay the Chinese government's human rights abuses, but Western media will also exaggerate it. I've looked at a number of travel blogs, and from those blogs, it looks like Uyghur culture is still very much alive, while the much feared "cultural genocide" in Kashgar appears not to have happened; Uyghur families have already moved back to the renovated parts of the old town, and Id Kah Mosque is still in operation.

I'd like to point out that there are Uyghur vloggers who are active on Chinese social media and openly sharing their language and culture, so while it's certainly true that the Chinese government can be really harsh on separatists and wants to force the ethnic minorities to be loyal to the Chinese state, it is not true that the Chinese government is Han supremacist and seeks to eradicate minority cultures. That's certainly an exaggeration by the Western media. For that matter, ethnic minorities, including the Uyghurs are and have always been exempted from the one child policy. The dog2 (talk) 18:04, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

I read the edit summaries. I think the current text softpedals things at least a bit by not mentioning any figures of how many civilians have been detained in "re-education camps" in Xinjiang, but I trust you guys and accept the bases of your edits. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:58, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

The "one million" figure is something that was come up with by Uyghur independence activists. Nobody knows the real number. It could be more or less, so I think it's best to just leave that out. At this point, we don't have any way to independently verify. The dog2 (talk) 23:14, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

SCMP (Hong Kong's main English newspaper) has "The UN has estimated that up to a million members of Muslim minority groups are being held in the camps." Quite a few other media give similar numbers & by no means only western media; here's Al Jazeera talking about a million in camps & half a million kids separated from their parents so they can be indoctrinated more easily.

I do not think there is any doubt at all we should mention the one million figure, albeit labelling it as an estimate. It is important for anyone considering a trip to Xinjiang to have some idea of the scale of repression there. Pashley (talk) 09:33, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, have a look at [1] and [2]. And perhaps have a listen to [3] as well. The dog2 (talk) 10:25, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

This is a time when reliable sources need to be considered. What does AP say? I’m not sure YouTube videos are the best sources of information. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 10:48, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't see any numbers. There's no doubt that the detention camps exist, and there's no doubt that the Chinese government can be very harsh in it's crackdowns on political dissent. I'm not disputing either of those things. But read the articles I included, and have a look at their scrutiny of the "one million" number. Maybe I'm missing something, but I do think they raise some serious questions on that number. The video is just to help to put the articles into a broader context. I wouldn't necessarily consider her authoritative, not do I agree with her on everything, but I think she makes good points. The dog2 (talk) 11:10, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

To me SCMP is usually the best source in English for anything about China & Al Jazeera is another highly reliable source, except perhaps for some Middle East matters where their biases interfere. Pashley (talk) 11:29, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

In this case, SCMP made a mistake. The 1 million figure was not an official UN estimate. It was from a statement made by one member of UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in his capacity as the American representative, and we don't know his methodology for arriving at that number. The UN never released any official estimates. As for the Al Jazeera article, Adrian Zenz is a far-right Christian fundamentalist, and the only reason why he is so well-respected in the West is because of his anti-China stance. So I don't trust his figures either. Ultimately, we know that the camps exist, but we don't know what the real numbers are, and it's not for us to speculate. Let's just stick to the facts that are known. The dog2 (talk) 15:50, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

“Far right Christian fundamentalist”? Wikipedia doesn’t say so. Are you sure you know that for a fact? --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:48, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

You can have a look at a book he wrote and if you look at this tweet. He has espoused homophobic and misogynistic positions, and he's a conspiracy theory there's a double standard when it comes to terrorism that supposedly discriminates against white Christians in favour of Muslims. There are many such people who will exaggerate China's human rights abuses against Muslims, but go back to their own countries and advocate for Islamophobia. The dog2 (talk) 18:30, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Huh? The dog2, that tweet seems to be by Burmese activist Maung Zarni, not by Adrian Zenz. —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:39, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Sorry, maybe I copied the wrong one, but this should be it. The dog2 (talk) 18:46, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

If the figure of 1 million might not be accurate, is "in the hundreds of thousands or more" really controversial with anyone of good will (i.e., not self-serving Communist Party officials knowingly lying or their supporters who are uninformed due to censorship and/or want this covered up)? I recall reading that estimates have been made based on the number and capacity of facilities photographed by satellites and the amount of traffic to them. And I don't think being fair requires that officials or supporters of a dictatorship agree on facts. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:37, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

I haven't seen any good estimates, so perhaps the word "many" would be appropriate because for that, we don't really need precise figures. By the way, the "one million" figure seems to be in the stay safe area. If we say that "Western sources" claim that over 1 million were detained, I think that's probably fine too. For obvious reasons, it's probably close to impossible to get good estimates. The dog2 (talk) 04:14, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Maybe I'm quibbling too much, but "many" could mean 1,000. Perhaps an expression like "a very large number" or some rough equivalent could be used. In terms of the figure of 1 million, since it's being attributed in this thread to independence advocates, those aren't Western sources except inasmuch as they're from (North)western China. I think it's better to say quite a lot and remove the number if it's very unreliable as an estimate. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:59, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Amnesty International says "hundreds of thousands". We should use that. Pashley (talk) 08:21, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

In another article they have "the estimated 1 million or more people". Pashley (talk) 08:31, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

I'd be more comfortable using Amnesty International's figures. The WUC is an Uyghur separatist group, so I don't know how reliable their figures will be given that they have a political agenda, and they're very much closely linked with regime-change arms of the US government, whose goal is to preserve US hegemony, and with Turkish far-right groups. So while I understand people being concerned about the plight of the Uyghur civilians detained by China, the claims made by some of these groups should be scrutinised. It is very common for US media to label people or groups as "human rights defenders" or "freedom fighters" (like they did with Muslim extremist groups in Afghanistan in the 1980s) as long as they're fighting against a geopolitical opponent, only for their ideology to turn out problematic on proper scrutiny. The dog2 (talk) 16:59, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

I think you should be more careful labelling groups on the political spectrum, such as “far left” and “far right.” It doesn’t contribute to the discussion and immediately becomes highly controversial, as political alignments and their causes vary from country to country. --Comment by Selfie City (talk | contributions) 17:12, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Just to say, I'm fine with using Amnesty's estimates and agree that they are less likely to be biased than organizations dedicated to independence for Xinjiang or opposition to China, as Amnesty simply opposes abuses, regardless of which government is doing them. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:29, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Borrow some text?

This is a paragraph I wrote at Tibet#History:

To a considerable extent, the issues in Tibet are the same as for indigenous peoples anywhere, such as Uyghurs in China's western province Xinjiang or the native peoples in North or South America. The government points proudly to development work such as mines, railways and highways; locals complain that those facilities are all owned by outsiders, outsiders get most of the good jobs while locals do most of the heavy work, and environmental consequences are often ignored. The government say they are improving education; locals complain that the system aims at forcing assimilation by using a language foreign to them. Immigration is encouraged and sometimes subsidized; locals complain of an influx of outsiders that do not want to adapt to local culture and often do not even bother to learn the local language. When the locals get really agitated, the government does not hesitate to send in troops to "restore order"; generally the locals see this as vicious repression, but the government claim they are only dealing appropriately with "hostile Indians", "reactionary elements" or whatever.

Would something similar be useful here? Pashley (talk) 09:54, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps, but the situation is different, so we can't just copy it wholesale. The forced immigration of Han Chinese to Xinjiang was mainly during the cultural revolution, and to my knowledge, such a scheme no longer exists today. Perhaps the issues on language are similar, but while it's true that the Uyghurs are forced to learn Chinese, there are actually Uyghur-medium schools where they study Chinese as a second language. The main issue is that the job prospects are not as good as for those who graduate from Chinese-mediun schools, and some Uyghur parents are opting to send their kids to Chinese-medium schools instead because of that, so that has been a cause for some resentment. The dog2 (talk) 10:42, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Huh???

red water??? —The preceding comment was added by Highjumpermsu (talk • contribs)