Thread by @drStuartGilmour

This table shows the rate of imprisonment of minorities in a couple of different countries. Let’s talk about genocide denialism among China “experts” who are laser-focused on proving genocide in Xinjiang while they ignore the legacy of genocide in their own countries.

These China “experts” are intent on uncovering these statistics and on activism in international forums to challenge mass imprisonment in China. Meanwhile their own countries are imprisoning indigenous people or minorities in huge numbers but they say nothing. Why?

For example in this figure we can compare imprisonment rates in Xinjiang with rates for indigenous people in Australia (where @ASPI_org is active), Canada (@projectxinjiang) and the USA (@adrianzenz). Where do you think the problem is biggest?

e.g. @grosetimothy is based in Indiana, with black and indigenous imprisonment rates of 2900 and 750 per 100k respectively. These are much higher rates than any credible estimate of rates in Xinjiang, but he never talks about the mass imprisonment happening on his doorstep.

Meanwhile @aspi_org in Australia refuses to make moral judgements about the detention without trial of refugees in one of the cruelest concentration camp systems on earth. Indigenous people in Australia are imprisoned at far higher rates than any credible estimate from Xinjiang!

Aboriginal people suffer from high rates of death in prison, a problem that has not been resolved in Australia even though it was first identified in the 1980s. Prison is deadly for Aboriginal people, but these anti-detention crusaders never mention it.

Meanwhile the University of British Columbia hosts the Xinjiang Documentation Project (@projectXinjiang). This campaign against mass detention in Xinjiang ignores the incredible rates of indigenous incarceration in Canada.

In British Columbia in May, 215 unmarked graves were found in a former native school, where Indigenous children were buried without record. There is a campaign to properly investigate the deaths and disappearance of Indigenous women in Canada. tinyurl.com/6kkm34da

But @projectXinjiang is focused on proving genocide in China, while Aboriginal people in Canada experience some of the highest imprisonment rates anywhere in the world, and are victims of violent crime at far higher rates than most Asian countries.

In Washington D.C., @jimmillward at Georgetown uni is griping about Mandarin language requirements for public servants in Sichuan, while his own university is built on land stolen from an Indigenous people whose language is extinct.

Complaints about language restrictions are common in this field. China hands will campaign for the protection of dialects in China but don’t care about preserving indigenous languages in their backyard. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_A…

This isn’t just whataboutism: these decisions matter to the rights of black and Indigenous people in settler states. These China hands are powerful voices: white, wealthy, often academic, well-funded. Where and how they use their voice matters.

Indigenous people are facing the consequences of a very real, historically proven past and ongoing genocide. Imprisonment, child abduction and language destruction are at the forefront of that genocide.

These China hands live in a democracy, their voices can influence policy. They think of themselves as experts on imprisonment and language destruction. But they won’t use their voice at home.

Instead they ignore the very real genocide and mass internment happening at home and spend their time with fake statistics trying to change policy in a country on the other side of the world.

They’ll even go the UN to campaign against mass internment they can’t prove in China, while their home country is needlessly imprisoning tens of thousands of Indigenous people who they could be actively working to help.

The most effective way to reduce needless suffering in prison globally is to shrink the US prison population, but they won’t mention it. There are far more precarious Indigenous cultures in their home countries than Xinjiang, but they’re happy for those cultures to die.

These China hands aren’t ignorant of the issue. They are happy to weaponize the language of anti-colonialism in despicable and gross ways in support of their campaign against China. They just won’t stoop to help end the legacy of genocide in their own country.

White silence and white complicity sustains the legacy of genocide. When you yell about genocide, minority internment and language loss overseas but ignore them at home you are a genocide denialist.

[Epilogue]: Data used here isn’t always comparable and data sources on prison esp. in America are difficult to obtain. Some of these figures are incidence and some are prevalence, and it's difficult to compare countries at annual scales. These are the best I can do given this.