I have always told my children to use the verb ‘hate’ sparingly to express their feelings for people. To say I hate Mondays, or I hate broccoli, or I hate constant rain is one thing, but to say ‘I hate such-and-such a person’ is very serious. I could ‘not like’ or ‘dislike’ someone, but to hate someone means that I want every harm and torture onto him/her, and that should be reserved for very few people. Yes, I hate Hitler, but then again, he is dead. There are few people alive that I can say I hate. Right off the bat, I can think of 2 people. But my post today is not about ‘Hate’, it is about using the word ‘Genocide’ with respect to what is going on in China’s Xinjiang province and the Uyghur people.
You see, the European and the US politicians are pushing for boycotts and other (lightly) constraining measures, because they are accusing the Chinese government (state) of genocide and internment of the Uyghur population, living mostly in the Xinjiang province. Now before I go further, I would like to remind you of the definition of Genocide, taken from Merriam Webster:
Genocide is the deliberate killing of people who belong to a particular racial, political, or cultural group.
The other day I was reading an article about this situation. The journalist’s (Alex Lo) point was that “either China is committing genocide, in which case the West’s response so far has been inept and inadequate, including the diplomatic boycotts of the Winter Olympics; or it is not, and in that case, Western propaganda is disgraceful and risks rendering meaningless a term for the gravest of crimes.” Not to mention that it promotes hatred as I see it
Whichever way you look at it, what the west is doing is wrong. And no, the standard line of “well it is politics” does not work. Now let me say that I am no fan of China, but I am no robot nor a parrot who repeats what he reads and just follows order. I try to think and make sense out of things that are happening around me.
In this case, my view is that: “hey democracies, either put your money where your mouth is, or shut it, some things are too serious to become geopolitical tools and buzzwords.” By the way, I do not recall the West holding out against Augusto Pinochet in Chile in the 70s when he ordered systematic killing of leftists, because they had Marxist views. And believe me by then the international convention on genocide had been put in place.
Paris, January 31, 2022
Zeejay
1 Alex Lo, South China Morning Post (SCMP)