Let’s get one thing straight. China is not committing genocide against the Uyghurs as is being claimed. The word genocide has a very clear meaning, namely the mass murder total elimination of a particular ethnic group. The 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention declared genocide can also apply to targeting part of a race but that is typical UNO nonsense, re-inventing the language. If that definition had meaning there’s hardly a country in the world that’s not guilty, simply through engaging in warfare.
China is not murdering the Uyghurs, rather it has embarked on a large-scale and probably doomed Pol Potish effort of “re-education”, to dissuade them from their Islamic beliefs.
Why? First because the Uyghurs want to form a breakaway Islamic state and second, because in its pursuit over the last decade, there have been a number of bombing incidents by Uyghur fanatics of innocent citizens, mainly in Beijing.
It’s also claimed Uyghurs are being subjected to forced sterilisation, rape and slave labour, the latter mainly in cotton clothing factories.
Rural communities in China all aspire to city living, the first step being factory employment. Only if the Uyghur are not being paid, and no-one has produced evidence of that, does their factory employment constitute slave labour. Currently, shifting from the country to the city in China is strictly controlled for a single excellent reason, namely to avoid the slums of yesteryear. This has been a very successful policy, Chinese cities being tidy and impressive.
The word ‘genocide’ is being bandied about with no regard to the truth.
Genocide has been unsuccessfully attempted in the modern era, first by Nazi Germany against the Jews and Europe’s gypsies and subsequently in Africa with the Tutsis. Then there’s Armenia.
And predictably and oh so tiresomely some no-hoper maori purported “academics” have made the genocide claim re colonisation which brought civilisation to a primitive culture.
Now the ACT Party wants a debate on the issue proposing New Zealand formally declare the Uyghur situation genocide. That reeks of fashion following.
More salient is President Biden’s declaration that Turkey’s large-scale massacre in the latter years of the 1st World War of Armenians, will be recognized by the USA as genocide. It was not. It was attempted genocide, albeit millions of Armenians were murdered and exiled. But what is the point of this gesture which changes nothing?
When the centennial anniversary of this disgrace arose six years ago, despite the Armenians pleas, the world turned a blind eye on commenting for fear of offending the Turks.
Reports from Armenia’s capital Yerevan last week advised masses of people streaming up the hill to the large and rather boring commemorative museum, which is usually empty of visitors, to celebrate Biden’s pointless acknowledgement of the disgrace as genocide.
On a lighter note, this museum has a garden setting, dotted with paths. In their desperation for the (attempted) genocide to be internationally acknowledged, the paths are dotted with small plaques which are a bit of a hoot. They record foreign visitors of the ilk of the Tasmanian Minister of Transport, the mayor of Leeds and such-like.
Past horrors should certainly not be forgotten but they should also not be wallowed in. For example, currently there are 67 Jewish Holocaust museums in the world and talk of creating more. Seven are in Germany and four in Poland but in America with 25 they’re virtually an industry with 3 each in Los Angeles and New York. Surely that’s over-cooking it.
Human history is an amazing cavalcade of extraordinary achievements, many inconceivable not long ago. But the great blot on it is the disgraceful history of warfare and with the massive armaments industry and continuing existence of costly armies, navies and military air forces, on balance it cannot be described as progress.