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China Launches New Wave of Uyghur Cultural Erasure After “Ethnic Unity Law” (uyghurtimes.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/globalnews@lemmy.zip
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[...]

Starting around March 27, Uyghur Times reviewed multiple videos from Urumqi and Kashgar showing city management workers removing Uyghur-language signs from shops, restaurants, supermarkets, and even private businesses. In many cases, only Chinese-language signage was left behind.

One widely circulated video on the Chinese version of TikTok shows the demolition of Uyghur-style architectural elements at a major transportation hub in Urumqi, known as Uchtash Qatnash Bikiti (also referred to as Sandongbi Transportation Station).

In the footage, a Uyghur man standing in front of the site expresses deep sorrow:

“Today we are witnessing the destruction of one of the most iconic cultural landmarks in Urumqi. It held our memories. For many of us, our journeys began here and ended here. Now, it is gone.”

[...]

Other videos show workers dismantling Uyghur-language signage across urban areas. One sign reads “ئۆي مۈلۈكچىلىك، ئىلىم سېتىم,” meaning “Real estate Sales & Transactions.” Another removed sign identifies a construction materials supplier. In the clip, a bystander can be heard lamenting:

“It is not over. One day, it will come back.”

Observers say the campaign reflects a broader effort to eliminate visible markers of Uyghur cultural and linguistic identity under the framework of the new law.

When the law was passed, experts warned that it would legitimize cultural destruction and forced assimilation. Uyghur activists also condemned the law.

[...]

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[–] -3 points 7 months ago (7 children)

Love it. Now we're talking! This law you posted, is NOT a law that is used to discriminate. In fact, in order to discriminate, US politicians are seeking to REPEAL this law. Curious isn't it? In one example, we have a law that was recently passed to protect minorities by a political body while we are told they actually passed it to harm minorities. In the other example, we have a law that was passed decades ago to protect minorities by a political body that was actually trying to address a real harm to minorities and that law is effective enough that politicians are looking to repeal it so they can harm those minorities.

Do you see the difference here? Both in the history and the reporting?

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    You've completely missed their point. They're saying that the words of the law are meaningless and not actual evidence. The Civil Rights Act also didn't end racism, discrimination and cultural oppression in the US.

    Who's to say that the Chinese government actually enforces this as written?

    On paper it says it promotes integration among the recognized ethnic groups, but some of the wording is much more dubious. For example, children won't receive their education in their native language anymore; they must now learn Mandarin (which is the classic tactic to erode other languages, inspired directly from the west). There's also text in there that may be used to justify breaking up certain ethnic/minority neighbourhoods.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (4 children)

    Bilingual education is a far cry from what the West does. You're making entirely false equivalencies. Yes. The law can be subverted. When the Voting Rights Act was passed, it was NOT passed as a lie but an aspiration, and then the racists in power worked to get around it and built up rhetoric for decades to get to the point where they would have the momentum to repeal it. There is no equivalent movement in China. This is a new law, built on the recognition that disunity and ethnic strife is BAD for the country. You have to identify a Chinese right wing reaction to this law before you can claim equivalency. You have to look for the political movement in China that is upset about the idea of ethnic diversity and co-existent and find their rhetoric saying "Thos dirty islamists believe in the devil and want to destroy our civilization and install Sharia Law!"

    You will not find that in China.

    The problem is that you imagine China has the same drive to dominate that the West does, but you can't actually find evidence for it, so you deliberately latch on to any narrative that can make it seem like there's an equivalence.

    Where are the religious leaders demanding China return to the one true religion? Where are the politicians saying that non-Han people are savage, backwards, and have to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and deal with their own "cultural underdevelopment" that keeps them trapped in poverty and violence? Where are the think tanks publishing research papers about Uyghur-on-Uyghur violence? Where are the politicians stoking ethnic division by claiming "those people" want to start a "new caliphate" and "bring us back to the middle ages"?

    Paul Fucking Krugman said this shit about the leaders of Iran! The West is foundationally xenophobic, and all of their growth and strength is tightly integrated with their bigotry.

    Meanwhile in China the last 40 years have been built on the recognition that, hey, China fucked up under Mao, specifically with regard to Han Chauvinism. They went through a whole political and social process of acknowledging that they had a bad approach to building a society, believing they knew best for everyone and forcing it on people, and they made structural changes to their government, their cultural narrative, their education, and their legal system to address it.

    There is no equivalent in the West to this. The West still thinks they're carrying out King Richard's Crusades ffs.

    I'm not missing the point. I assure you. I understand laws and enforcement are different. I understand that laws can be written and then undermined. I am painfully aware of it.

    But you don't see Chinese newspapers in 1964/65 writing articles that say "The Civil Rights Act / Voting Rights Act is a law designed to assimilate ethnic minorities into white supremacy and eradicate them entirely", like we see here. You don't see a right wing movement in China screaming about the poor and the browns and the islamists. You don't see politicians running local or national narratives on the basis of fear of the other.

    Just because you want to believe that any government would act the way your government has in the past (or the present, depending) doesn't make it true.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (3 children)

    Bilingual education is a far cry from what the West does

    It's not bilingual education, it's Mandarin only:

    Article 15: The state is to fully promote the spread of the nation’s common language and script. Citizens’ learning and use of the nation’s common language and script must not be obstructed by any organization or individual.

    Schools and other educational institutions are to use the nation’s common language and script as the basic language and script for education and teaching. The state is to promote preschool students’ learning of Mandarin, so that youth who have completed compulsory education have a basic understanding of the nation’s common language and script.

    But you don't see Chinese newspapers in 1964/65 writing articles that say "The Civil Rights Act / Voting Rights Act is a law designed to assimilate ethnic minorities into white supremacy and eradicate them entirely", like we see here.

    The CRA doesn't include similar provisions that are being criticized in the new Chinese law.

    You don't see a right wing movement in China screaming about the poor and the browns and the islamists.

    China is not a democracy, the CPC doesn't allow any other movements to scream about anything.

    You don't see politicians running local or national narratives on the basis of fear of the other.

    They don't have to, it's an election tactic used everywhere in the world but the CPC doesn't really have to worry about elections.

    You seem to be under the strange delusion that there's zero racism, discrimination or xenophobia in China. If you want to believe that, fine, but it also tells me you never actually visited and properly spoke to the locals.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    And you clearly have no concept of what actually happens in Chinese politics. There are absolutely factions in the CPC with different opinions on what should be done and why. There were, for a long time, Han Chauvinists and it was a major driving force of CPC domestic and foreign policy. There were debates within the party, factions espousing different positions, and they resolve them through intra-party elections. Those candidates debate publicly and privately. They write their positions down. They share them. The people understand them. There are 100M members of the party, which is more people than turn out for US elections. There is absolutely a culture of debate and discourse that you can tap into.

    As for xenophobia in the population, of course there is. But when the CPC applied the one-child policy, do you know who their target was? Han Chinese. That's right, the dominant culture was the most heavily restricted. Not the other way around. Go read about it.

    Yes, the new law states clearly that Mandarin will be implemented everywhere. That's specifically to establish literacy for the purposes of unity across ethnic lines. The law does NOT have any requirements that schools STOP educating in their ethnic language. There are other laws on the books that establish those programs as protected. This particular law reinforces those other laws by establishing that discrimination against existing ethnic practices is illegal for all levels of government and will be overseen and addressed by the CPC to ensure local governments aren't discriminating against ethnic practices.

    I love how you tell on the West, though. I never said there's no xenophobia or racism. I said that the government policies and decision making process don't have these as elements that we can clearly observe. Then you say of course not because China isn't a democracy, which means you think that Democracy must include some form of xenophobic populism. Then you say that the people of China are also xenophobic and racist.

    Connect the dots? 100M party members, mostly Han Chinese, with various factions (and 8 other parties mind you), and a population that has xenophobia and racism throughout BUT.... Laws written to constrain the dominant ethnicity, laws written to protect ethnic minorities, multiple centuries of autonomous and peaceful coexistence with large ethnic groups, integration and respect for multiple languages, religions, and cultural practices that vary based on the population...

    it's almost like China has absolutely more people participating in elections, absolutely more political engagement, and has managed to not let the lowest and ugliest forms of popular opinion drive their foreign and domestic policy.

    But you're right. The US is way more democratic. That's why we protect the right to free speech and free assembly of neo-nazis and the KKK. Because we're a Democracy goddamnit.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    The law does NOT have any requirements that schools STOP educating in their ethnic language.

    That's literally the requirement in the law. You have no idea what you're talking about. There's no point in discussing the law if you don't even understand what it says.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Show the place in the law that says that. My reading of the law is the Mandarin is now both required and required to be the primary language, but Tibetan is still taught and still protected and required for government functions. The reason for this is that Mandarin is the primary language for business and commerce. For young Tibetans and those in rural areas, the inability to speak, read, and write in Mandarin acts as a significant barrier to employment, particularly for higher-paying or administrative jobs. Requiring that all schools thoroughly educate children in Mandarin is NOT equivalent to outlawing instruction in their native tongue.

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