> Guess it’s the same everywhere. Downvotes if you disagree.
BTW, if you're not aware, I can't downvote you.
I doubt the downvotes are due to an ideological disagreement or anything like that. If I had to guess the reason, it's that the ideas you're expressing here just don't have much merit and are pretty tone deaf to boot. They're not that much different than saying a penniless, starving man should just buy food, which you personally find pretty affordable as a well-compensated software engineer.
I don't think those Uighur camps are exactly comparable to force labor camps on prisoners. If one portrays them as such they are greatly twisting the facts.
Feels like this could well be Falun Gong propaganda. They are known for fabricating stories to discredit the Chinese gov. There are multiple such "notes from prison factory" stories floating around in the media already. It's hard to ascertain the veracity of them, especially as they appear all around the place and seem to suspiciously follow a similar pattern. There are so many coincidences in this story. For example, how would a normal middle-aged Chinese be able to write coherent English after all; how was he able to get pen and paper in the prison, if the conditions were that bad; how, if the prison guard actually found the letter, they didn't know it was penned by him: They might well be unable to read English, but they can definitely read the Pinyin which is used to spell out his name.
I'm not saying that the Chinese government are not capable of streneous labor camps on their prisoners, but Falun Gong is not anything good either. This report made it out as if they were "prosecuted" just because they were growing too large, while the simple fact is that they are essentially a cult organization that swindled millions out of retirees, and organized attacks which destroyed public TV stations and local government institutions which dared to call their bluffs (yeah, sitting in front of Tian'anmen is one thing, but locally they have been much more violent), and therefore was eventually clamped down out of existence in the mainland by the authorities. Ever since then they have been (deliberately) supported by western money to perform anti-China propaganda. Most of what they write on their pamphlets/publications are pure fabrication or at least gross mischaracterizations. Ask 10 Chinese around you and 9 out of them will tell you how laughable and unreliable Falun Gong is. They're definitely not beyond fabricating stories and creating characters just to feed the anti-China rhetoric.
The fact that the Chinese government is authoritarian doesn't automatically mean that every enemy of it is automatically "good", or that every vivid accusation against it is factual. Anti-China propaganda does exist, and unfortunately it more usual than not doesn't get distinguished in the western media.
Also the end of the article which links this incident with the internment camps in Xinjiang is unreasonable. Prison labor camps are one thing, while the main purpose of the re-education camps in Xinjiang is not to hold those youths forever and use them as cheap labor, but rather try to ensure that they don't get easily swayed by extremism. Whether the program can achieve its end and whether the format in which it's carried out is suitable, is debatable, but to equate it with brutal prison labor camps is just deliberately misleading and dishonest. Also the Chinese government doesn't deny their existence at all so to call them "secret detention camps" is just simply false.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 21.2 ms ] threadBTW, if you're not aware, I can't downvote you.
I doubt the downvotes are due to an ideological disagreement or anything like that. If I had to guess the reason, it's that the ideas you're expressing here just don't have much merit and are pretty tone deaf to boot. They're not that much different than saying a penniless, starving man should just buy food, which you personally find pretty affordable as a well-compensated software engineer.
I'm not saying that the Chinese government are not capable of streneous labor camps on their prisoners, but Falun Gong is not anything good either. This report made it out as if they were "prosecuted" just because they were growing too large, while the simple fact is that they are essentially a cult organization that swindled millions out of retirees, and organized attacks which destroyed public TV stations and local government institutions which dared to call their bluffs (yeah, sitting in front of Tian'anmen is one thing, but locally they have been much more violent), and therefore was eventually clamped down out of existence in the mainland by the authorities. Ever since then they have been (deliberately) supported by western money to perform anti-China propaganda. Most of what they write on their pamphlets/publications are pure fabrication or at least gross mischaracterizations. Ask 10 Chinese around you and 9 out of them will tell you how laughable and unreliable Falun Gong is. They're definitely not beyond fabricating stories and creating characters just to feed the anti-China rhetoric.
The fact that the Chinese government is authoritarian doesn't automatically mean that every enemy of it is automatically "good", or that every vivid accusation against it is factual. Anti-China propaganda does exist, and unfortunately it more usual than not doesn't get distinguished in the western media.
Also the end of the article which links this incident with the internment camps in Xinjiang is unreasonable. Prison labor camps are one thing, while the main purpose of the re-education camps in Xinjiang is not to hold those youths forever and use them as cheap labor, but rather try to ensure that they don't get easily swayed by extremism. Whether the program can achieve its end and whether the format in which it's carried out is suitable, is debatable, but to equate it with brutal prison labor camps is just deliberately misleading and dishonest. Also the Chinese government doesn't deny their existence at all so to call them "secret detention camps" is just simply false.