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this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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There are multiple ways of making a people disappear
All three are considered genocide but the gravity of each can be debatted.
As I understand in Xinjiang, the third one seems confirmed, the second one possibly, and the first one probably not. Feel free to correct me.
Is it a genocide if genes are not destroyed? It is forceful cultural assimilation. Not everything bad has to be called genocide. There are other evils in the world, some of them are similar.
I think all that needs to happen is cultural erasure, which is different from assimilation.
But I am not sure if cultural erasure is called genocide by most people. I also do not think that complete cultural erasure is what China is doing. It erases only religious portion.
In USSR religion was forcefully removed. But nobody called that genocide.
I think religion is a package with multiple components. Core components are certainly contentious: belief you might not share, philosophy to which you might not adhere, myths and stories where you might value historical truth, rituals that might be harmful, and often the most problematic, power structures.
But there's also aspects linked to religion that can be considered valuable (or at least harmless): clothing, names, architecture, various art forms, sometimes language, etc. So, even if only religion is targeted, there's a lot of baggage linked to that. I don't know enough about the situation to say how China is handling this intertwine between religion and culture.
I agree, that's up to debate. Genocide is killing the "genus", the family in latin. In plain english, it's killing a "people". But what's a people? The individuals that compose it, or its culture, traditions and memory? That's subjective I'm afraid.
At least I hope we can agree that both are pretty bad.
What if we talk about jihadists? ISIS? Such people are often jailed, and it is considered humane if they are convinced to drop their ideology. Are we doing genocide too?
The issue most people have with jihadists and ISIS is that they abuse many human rights, first among them murder. Not beliefs, acts. And human rights is exactly what people are blaming China for, too.
Now jail is contentious. Freedom is a human right. How much and how should we deprive someone's rights to protect the rights of others? I don't have the answer
Who defines human rights? Why human rights are greater than religion? And if they are, then should we round up most of the Islamists, which is significant part of Muslim population? If not, then we are OK with them violating human rights (and women rights specifically, too)? But not with China?
I didn't know the concept of human right was not consensual, thanks. Despite you opening that topic, I notice that you still use the concept in your argument, you must have a personal definition in your mind.
That:
is a strong statement that requires a very large study across the very diverse muslim populations in the world. Gonna need a citation on this one.
And most westerners that accuse China of human right abuses are equally not okay with islamists' abuses, so there's no dichotomy.
The definition of who Islamist is is often vague so providing exact number there is difficult, however well more than 50% of Muslim wants Sharia law to be the law of the land: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/
When you say “are equally not ok” when did the last time you hear criticism of Islam? And also if is not China is simply doing re-education to remove this component of the culture? They are doing forcefully, sure, but people are not going to give it up voluntary.
Shhhh. It's called a motte and bailey tactic. Come out strong with claims of genocide, but when you can't back them up, oh no, it was alwyas a Cultural genocide. Then when an actual genocide happens in Palestine, you can deflect by saying Let's not forget about the other "genocides"! All Genocides Matter!