Post-hoc edit: I almost wish I had made this as a top level comment to avoid seeming to fixate your reply in particular, because it's by no means alone or the sole focus of my observation.
For example, there is the often cited “1 million Muslims” in jail figure, which seems like a lot. 1 million!
But if know that there are over 2.2 million people in US prisons, then that 1 million figure doesn’t seem so high anymore.
I think providing a full perspective to those who are not as familiar with the topic can add to the discussion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_system_in_China
> I think providing a full perspective to those who are not as familiar with the topic can add to the discussion
I don't think you do. Making such an apples to nails comparison as the US prison system vs secret Chinese re-education camp is counter-productive.
> The number of people in the camps, which had fallen to 7,500, grew again to 21,000 by the start of World War II[8] and peaked at 715,000 in January 1945.[9]
I'm sure people around the world said something similar to "well, it's China and it's THEIR country, so that's up to them and we shouldn't be getting involved".
Want an additional kicker? Watch how quickly we get downvoted for even mentioning this, and typically sans any reply or deeper discussion.
I'm not sure what social phenomena we're witnessing here, but it's very unsettling to me.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18606070
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18612237
I love how all people talking about the second piece refute it, but it has over 30 upvotes.
Maybe it's not a social phenomenon, maybe it's the fact that people can vote and flag without that being public, on a site that requires nothing but a password, posting some generics about programming to get 500 karma and off you go.
The building on the new man, the Party man. It's logical, the Party wants no competition, wants to be the only ideology there. Islam is competition: Muslims look towards Mecca not towards the Politburo palace. So they'll mess with them, anyway they can. It's not personal, it's business (see Falun Gong, Tibet etc)
But my friend from Iran said he likes America and we have it pretty good here. I saw it as a valid difference of perspectives. Later I learned of a massacre in Iran where the government of Iran killed thousands of political prisoners in secret. [1] It helped me appreciate that for all our problems, at least we don’t do that.
That said, we’re currently providing direct support for a war in Yemen where an estimated 85k children have died of in the last three years [2], and countless civilians have been killed by our bombs. We even bombed a school bus full of children [3].
The death toll for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over 200k [4].
So it’s hard for me. Does the US respect human rights? Clearly China is not respecting human rights, but what kind of example are we setting? How can we condemn others for their atrocities when we ourselves commit so many? Could we ever change our ways and set a true good example?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_executions_of_Iranian_p... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/21/yemen-young-ch... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/19/us-supplied-bo... [4] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians