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What exactly is the situation of the Uyghur in China's Xinjiang since 2014 up until now?
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2025
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There was a really good BBC documentary on this 6 years ago which takes a look in one of the facilities from both and official visit and visiting unannounced. Also using satellite footage to demonstrate changes made prior to journalist visits...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmId2ZP3h0c
High recommend watching it.
Man... China really handles these things in eerie ways, watching this feels like reading "20th century boys" (manga). I can see why the Chinese would think this is merciful, but personally it only convinces me even further that Uyghur deserve their own nation. Situation doesn't seem as bad as India, but this response is like how they deal with aliens or something.
This is a propaganda video where most of the "erie" parys are just video editing and commentary, not demonstrated through evidence or interviews. It is a good example for developing your own media criticism skills. I'll make note of one outright falsehood and invite you to critically analyze the video further.
They lied when they said those attending didn't go home. They literally show them arriving and going home on buses multiple times. Rather than note their own inconsistency in narrative, they try to characterize this as erie and scary as well. Oh people line up to get on buses! Follow that bus! Oh it just goes to a "government facility" and they leave to do whatever they want to afterwards? What government facility? They say they are "processed" first. Where is the evidence of this? All they show is people leaving while the bus they were on is stopped.
The BBC has a history of pushing this kind of bad faith propaganda. They even do things like get down into ditches to make "scary" angles for boring things and desaturate the videos like it's reality TV and you need to emotionally manipulated to know what the bad things are.
The problem is not with the editing. The problem is that men and women dancing and singing together in happiness is literally just appealing to westerners, being of similar culture to Uyghurs I'd only be part of this practice as a humiliation ritual. If they knew what "harmony" looks like to Muslims, the atmosphere would have been at least similar to Taliban's propaganda videos, where women have their own space where they have their own practices and taught by a fellow woman, or they appear in videos with their scarf.
Another thing that went passive but is really huge is when the guy at 00:32 was asked how often he prays and he answered with the playbook "China's laws define schools as public places. And in public places religious activities are not allowed". Anyone familiar with Muslims knows that they pray 5 times a day as obligation, like at the very least 200 million Muslims keep this defining practice, the guy being made to answer like this is straight up persecution for his religion,
and it shows the Chinese officials don't even know what they're dealing with, they're like "yeah it's another religion where they have a day of practices every week".
The worst part is that the officials basically admitted that they took these people based on predictions ? Like even if we ignore the ethical dilemma, you want me to believe that statistics&probability predicts which person will commit crime with ? That's like a book example of bad math imo.
Uyghurs traditionally do both coed and segregated dancing depending on the event, the locale, the families, etc. Trying to shoehorn them based on your claims about your aculture is a form of tokenization, projection, and even islamophobia, given how you characterize this as universally muslim, whereas islamic practice is actually rich with cultural variety over geography and time.
Perhaps you should recognize your own ignorance in this matter. Are you here asking questions about people in a large and populous region with which you are unfamiliar, or are you here to lecture others about it? Does your culture promote speaking authoritatively about things you do not understand, to the detriment of others?
Suddenly you are familiar with "the playbook"? How long have you known this "playbook"?
But really, you started by saying it is not editing, but at 00:32 there is literally a jump cut between question and answer, with an entirely different camera angle for the presented answer. Do you know what was said before and after, or is 5 seconds of selective BBC editing enough? What has given you this confidence?
If you listen to the answers and not the narrator, you wipl find they sound exactly like progressives in the West trying to use preventative approaches and actually describe rehabikitating people who have committed minor crimes. Like the one literally says they want to rehabilitate those who commit minor crimes. You have come away with the impression that it is some claim about Minority Report-esque precog crimes because the narrator told you this, but not the the interviewees.
This is actually a fairly rosy picture. As I have already explained, social networks also led to people being required to attend these facilities. It is true that radicalizatikn is more frequent within social networks, it is literally a method used by all competent organizers to grow their impact. That does not mean it is good or right for a state to use this to coerce or punish (though they are not prisons), of course. But one must have perspective. What did the US and its friends do to muslim-majority nations after 9/11? Surely building skills and competency is a much less bad thing to coerce than death and disposession.
Am I using the word in a wrong way ?
I don't know. You didn't answer my questions.
This answer is like a bad apple in the bunch, you know this is Lemmy and not Reddit, and I'm coming from dbzer0 not lemmy.world? I don't know if it is my weak knowledge on English or you don't realize, but this answer seems to me unnecessarily aggressive, and assuming that I'm pro amerikka or something.
If I don't like how something looks, I'll just say it, I don't care if the AIPAC empire did worse. And I expected fellow muslims to look like: they're described in Qur'an, Hadith, and my daily life in Algeria. I see the same atmosphere present in Afghanistan's videos so I naturally assume it is the norm. I wish you supplied source instead of insults.
It is not unnecessarily aggressive, it is honest and challenging. When did I insult you? Challenging you to be consistent and forthcoming and to question what you have said is not an insult.
What sources would you want? You are perfectly capable of asking for sources if you are curious.
Regarding muslim dancing behavior, you may want to inform itself about the variety of Islamic practices in Central Asia. Afghanistan even internally pretty different practices that include Kazakhs and Turkmens, not just the freshly imported Salafism and the Talaban and so on.
Islam is not monolithic and treatments of the meanings in the Quran and how Hadith are considered vary. Surely you are aware of this, everyone knows the salient distinction made between Sunni and Shia and how they understand these things. I have already explained that Uyghurs have traditional coed dancing traditions as well as segregated. You can easily verify this if you would like. So, given that you were completely wrong about this fact, what do you think about how you described the video? Were you using strong information or guessing to look for a negative interpretation in line with the spirit of the narrator? Are you immune to propaganda? What is the right and honest way to handle this?
the fact that you think Taliban and Salafism are related is being uninformed. Taliban follows the Hanafi jurisprudence and the Maturidi school of theology, both are from the first three centuries of Islam, while salafis are kind of recent reformists who think nobody understood monotheism in the last millennia (the perfect example of western fabrication).
Also Taliban expelled both USSR and USA, both were colonialists to the people of Afghanistan. While ISIS only ever fought against Muslims (their first enemy was The Free Syrian Army which was actually close to ending the conflict in Syria years ago). Aren't you now putting labels on people cuz they look similar ?
and I ask for source, doing simple search for "Uyghur weddings" brings me to this project: https://www.youtube.com/@uyghurmeshrepproject8697/videos , and I don't see an example of coed dancing. In my view you see people dancing together and you think "yeah they're treating them well, building some integration for the individual", but I see only shame, humiliation and erasure of culture in that, almost like a scene from the manga that I mentioned. And now that I think about it, if China wasn't so idiotically secretive and closed, my search would have been easier.
I don't know.
I noted them as two different things present in Afghanistan, actially. The Taliban and Salafists fought one another in recent history. The Taliban won, but there are still Salafist elements present in Afghanistan. You have simply misunderstood, perhaps being too eager to fight rather than seek understanding. I am giving you many, many opportunities to seek understanding.
Note that you ignored essentially everything else I said, only focusing on whete you thought you had caught me being wrong. So eager to lecture and dismiss! But where is the rest? Like I said, please be direct and honest.
Not really true for either case. The USSR provided support to an incompetent socialist Afghan state on its border that asked for help. The US funded the proto-Taliban and others to make this more costly for the USSR at the expense of Afghan lives and prolonged war. They left after it was clear the incompetent socialist state would fall. There was no colonization by the USSR whatsoever.
Later, the US invaded as part of ita pretextual response to 9/11, which was reallt just islamophobic imperialism. It did not actually do any collaborative, it neither extracted much from Adghanistan nor built anything there. It just occupied and killed, leaving Afghanistan on a constant low boil of war for two decades.
I haven't said anything about Daesh so I have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe it is because they are Salafists? They are not the only ones. Your attempted point here is fairly ironic.
Uyghur weddings are often segregated in seating, then later when dancing starts they begin dancing along those same lines. Then, later, it is not incommon for the larger group to dance together. You should note that the channel you posted is from Kazkhstan and Uyghur practice varies even within Xinjaing, and of course between countries.
You seem to have (awkwardly) asked for a source od Uyghur coed danxing, possinly. It is honestly not clear. But I'll give you an example from just one day ago by a popular travel blogger who constantly shows regular people living their lives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IciipByFPoE.
Note that it progresses exactly how I described: segregated seating, then separate dancing, then people come together and keep dancing and having a nice time. There are also more traditional Uyghur dance performances that are coed, usually performed by peolle who train - dancers, amateur or professional. And of course other eventa where people dance.
The question I asked is related to what I had said just before. I said you were wrong about something and explained how. You should ask how you arrived at not just false beliefa but ones you are willing to share and argue about.
I guess it can't be helped with the tone of your answers. I can't deny your evidence, but it is really weird that they serve wine "traditionally !?".
Silk road cultures often made wine, much of the region is arid and carefully cultivated through shared ancient techniques, often from Persia. Not all muslims avoid alcohol, including those from grapes, if that is what you are thinking. In fact, among islamophobes in the West, a presumption of complete avoidance is used to bully and harass muslims. Of course those islamophobes deserve any bad things that come their way.
You may be familiar with Shiraz, for example. This is a Persian style of wine whose production has been banned since the revolution, but the entire eastern area from Iean and beyond has often made and drank wine, including muslims. Though it was not just Persia where muslims in the middle east produced and consumed wine. Many scholars wrote of doing so and of leaders partaking.
Many people know only modern Maghreb and western Middle Eastern cultural practices but these are not all universal for muslims.
leaders partaking doesn't mean it stops being a sin, it is a common occurrence in Islamic history that leaders lean to forbidden earthly pleasures ---> the state gets unjust and weak --> falls. And you can find a scholar's opinion that makes anything acceptable by now, I wouldn't take that "many" is an accurate use of the word here. The idea of "Islam ==> wine is forbidden" is not Islamophobia, harassment is bad of course. Of course not that I'm saying "drinks wine to intoxication ==> out of Islam", it is a matter of jurisprudence, not theology.
TL;DR: Common Khomeini W.
The knee-jerk assignment of never drinking alcohol is an actual islamophobic trope and is used by people unaware of the diversity of thought I described that goes far beyond a handful of past leaders.
I'm bored with your selective and bad faith responses. Please do self-criticism on how to be honest in conversation, as you are not responsive when I point it out.
A big part of the subjects in our long subthread is speculation. I speculated that the procedures seem ignorant and unnecessarily oppressive, while you speculate the opposite. I admitted that I can't deny your claim that I'm pretty unaware of the different colors of culture in Xinjiang, but I still view my assumptions as justified.
As a side note: Even if China actually dealt well with the problem, which the results do seem to suggest, the practice of censoring should be met with suspicion and doubt.
You may consult: Qurβan 2:219, 4:43, 5:90β91, in my view you are treating Islam as "culture" instead of "religious science". If you think it normal for Muslims to drink Alcohol, you need at least some kind of school of juri ("fiqh") to support this. I said that I'm from Algeria, and it is the norm that whoever you meet never drunk wine (well, now this country is getting ruined with drugs though). I don't see how "Muslims never drink alcohol ==> Islamophobic", like when I accuse someone that they abstain from harming their mind, is it a bad thing to say about them ?
Yes I am being selective, since you seem to punish speculations I tried to answer only things that I'm confident of.
I need to point a reason why I might be getting aggressive here myself: you have the habit of throwing insults when you "correct" the other party like a punishment, I see why you would pick that habit for debates, but not for conversations. And I admit that my responses were harsher though.
I am not speculating, I am actually informed about Uyghur culture. You were speculating by extrapolating from your personal circumstances.
Anyways, I don't think I was unclear that I'm no longer interested in talking to you. You're on your own to do self-improvement now. Most people will not be as patient as I have been.