CMV: China (CCP) is the greatest threat to the world and is a greater threat to the world and to the United States than Russia, North Korea, and Iran combined

No. You either have a definition of “genocide” that is really out of this place, or you’re trying to sensationalize a problem that is much less severe than you make it out to be. According United Nations Genocide Convention for something to qualify as a genocide, there must be "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such". Let’s break this down, shall we?

  • Uyghurs are a recognized ethnic minority group in China.
  • Uyghurs are citizens of China.
  • The region that they live in is even called the “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” and it is the largest region in China.
  • The chairman of Xinjiang is ethnically Uyghur.
  • One of the executives of the Chinese parliament is ethnically Uyghur.

You would think that if China has a plan to destroy all or some of the Uyghurs, they would not recognize the Uyghurs as a legit group of people at all, much like how Nazi Germany dehumanized the Jews, or how the Hutu regime in Rwanda called the Tutsis all sorts of nasty names on the radio, or how Myanmar still calls the Rohingya people “Bengalis.” Yet when the New York Times reported on the “leaked documents” from Xinjiang, one of the things they uncovered was a speech by Xi Jinping cautioning against wiping out Uyghurs or Muslims.

In several surprising passages, given the crackdown that followed, Mr. Xi also told officials to not discriminate against Uighurs and to respect their right to worship. He warned against overreacting to natural friction between Uighurs and Han Chinese, the nation’s dominant ethnic group, and rejected proposals to try to eliminate Islam entirely in China. “In light of separatist and terrorist forces under the banner of Islam, some people have argued that Islam should be restricted or even eradicated,” he said during the Beijing conference. He called that view “biased, even wrong.”

Even if you dismiss all of China’s efforts to give Uyghurs some autonomy or representation as sheer tokenism, the question remains — if China is trying to show that it respects the Uyghurs’ right to exist as a people, then is it really trying to destroy the Uyghurs as a people? Because if it clearly recognizes the Uyghurs as one of its 56 official ethnic groups (some groups aren’t recognized) while secretly killing them off, that has got to be one of the most bizarre, sophisticated, and dumbest genocides of all time.

Without a proven intent to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group,” the whole “China committing genocide against Uyghurs” claim falls apart. Even if all the stuff below — from “killing members of the group” to “forcibly transferring children from a group to another group” — are happening in China or Xinjiang right now (unsubstantiated claims), there is no genocide if there is no intent to destroy.

/r/changemyview Thread Parent