Talk:Persecution of Uyghurs in China/Archive 11

Archive 5

←

Archive 9

Archive 10

Archive 11

Archive 12

Archive 13

→

Archive 15

The highlighted policies by the Government of China ??

The lead speaks of "The highlighted policies by the Government of China include the holding of Uyghurs in state-sponsored internment camps … " it continues with pretty much all the accusations made against the govt - (some of which appear to be fairly indisputably real, like internment through to a fairly poorly sourced accusation of infanticide) .

What are "highlighted policies" ? Does it mean WP asserts that these policies are actually being implemented (like camps) or what? The wording has a weaselly, "hedge our bets" feel to it. If "highlighted" is what is actually meant, who has highlighted these policies? If we mean a list of accusations, perhaps we should just say that. Pincrete (talk) 18:23, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

That appears to have happened here. @My very best wishes: appears to have been trying to remove WP:SYNTH, though I agree with you that the sentence was better when "highlighted" was a verb rather than an adjective. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 01:48, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

The text is now certainly less ambiguous, BUT, the problem now is that no distiction is made between very strongly sourced allegations and fairly poorly sourced ones. WPVOICE is now being used to say that the Chinese Govt is practicing infanticide (the ultimate source for this appears to be a single individual Uyghur medic now living in Turkey). Accusations of forced sterilization/abortion/contraception seem 'in-between-y', ie that very considerable pressure is applied to Uyghur women (such as the threat of fines or detention) to comply with 'child limits', seems almost indisputable - to an extent that no one in the West would accept - but it is hardly a secret that China has long pursued extensive pressure on its citizenry to limit family size. Is this 'forced sterilization'? The AP source used as the main source for this claim speaks of "the country’s efforts to … … sterilize, … … large numbers of Uyghur people". No mention there of forced sterilization, though elsewhere there are plenty of accusations of very considerable pressure being applied and some accusations of literal 'forcing'.

As a 'stop-gap' I intend to rephrase the later 'sins' of the govt as accusations, I think we need to be more sure of our ground before the more extreme claims in that list are in WPVOICE. Pincrete (talk) 09:27, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Mikehawk10, Re this edit. Are you seriously saying that the claim of a single Uyghur-medic now living in Turkey (that is who all the sources used refer back to) is sufficient to put in WP:VOICE that the Chinese govt has a conscious policy of infanticide towards Uyghurs exceeding their 'baby-quota'?

The coerced/pressured/forced contraception and abortion I think is more problematic - that I concede indicates a high level of coercion being reported across multiple reliable sources, though many are predicated on the improbability of such birth-rate drops being voluntary, or tiny sample sizes (30 women in the case of the 'major' AP series of articles) rather than positive evidence and high levels of coercion are not quite 'forced' abortion/sterilization etc, particularly in a state where punishment of those exceeding 'baby-quotas' has long been the norm. The main source used makes no such claim, though it is clear about strenuous govt efforts to implement 'baby quota' policies. Pincrete (talk) 15:46, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes forced sterilization in China is commonplace and also happens outside of this specific context, what exactly are you getting at? High levels of coercion fits the definition of force in the state-citizen relationship, a coerced abortion/sterilization and a forced abortion/sterilization are literally the same thing. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:14, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Since you ask the question so bluntly. 1) Are you serious about using the claims of a single ex-pat medic to say in WP:VOICE that China has a conscious policy of infanticide? … because that is the text which you are defending. 2) I don't agree that laws with financial, or other penalties are inherently the same as being 'forced' ... but more important in WP terms, why does the primary source being used to support the claim of forced sterilization not mention forced sterilization anywhere at all? Nor any synonym, even on your terms, simply that the country "makes efforts to … sterilise". Ultimately are we going to 'beef up' already fairly wild claims or are we going to err on the side of caution? In so far as it is relevant, I think it probable that the 'forced' claims have a high degree of truth, I just happen to think that we should marginally understate, not blindly assume that every claim is proven. Pincrete (talk) 16:49, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

I must have missed something, I wasn’t aware that we had an expat medic making claims of infanticide. Which sources cover this?

I also think you need to read the AP source again... They do explicitly talk about force being part of the equation beginning with "While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to an AP investigation based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members and a former detention camp instructor. The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of “demographic genocide.”” In all they seem to explicitly mention the forced nature a dozen times in the article... Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:58, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

I read the AP carefully - "according to an AP investigation … based on Govt statistics … interviews with 30 ex-detainees etc … is leading to what some experts are calling" You see the certainty of the claims, I see the qualified, and necessarily limited, nature (one investigation, 30 witnesses?) and this leads me to think we should be stating CLEARLY that these are well sourced accusations not established facts.

The infanticide claim is part of the same para "Chinese government policies have included the arbitrary detention of Uyghurs in state-sponsored internment camps,[30][31][32] suppression of Uyghur religious practices,[33][34] political indoctrination,[35] severe ill-treatment,[36] forced sterilization,[37][38][39] forced contraception,[40][41] forced abortion,[42][43][44][45] and infanticide.[46][47][48][49][50]. - ie Govt policies include infanticide.

Sources 46-50 all lead back to the claims of a single named Uyghur doctor/medic living in Turkey. Hasiyet Abdulla is variously referred to as a doctor/hospital worker/obstetrician who made these claims in a Radio Free Asia interview and, apart from a few passing inferences in other sources, I know of no other sources. Pincrete (talk) 17:33, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

30 witnesses is an absolute ton, I’m not sure whats leading you to characterize this as limited. The AP seems to be treating the existence of forced birth control as a fact not an accusation, they appear to have corroborated the allegations and arrived at a clear understanding of what is taking place. Its not our place to second guess the AP. If we’re talking about Abdulla then you mean exile or refugee not expat, nobody has called those groups expats for at least a hundred years although they did once. I do wish we had better sources for the claim of infanticide but the ones we have now are good enough and do say infanticide. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:40, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

According to this source, "For babies who had been born at the hospital outside of family-planning limits, she said, “they would kill them and dispose of the body.”. Other sources (e.g. [1]) do consider the infanticide (rather than forced abortion) claim to be true, but I would check what the Amnesty report [2] say about it. It says "only" about forced abortions and sterilizations. All other claims except the actual infanticide seem to be strongly supported as de facto government policies by RS. My very best wishes (talk) 18:42, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Horse Eye's Back, I've no idea what Ms Abdulla's migration status is, you appear to be certain that she is necessarily exiled or a refugee (she couldn't have chosen to work or study outside her native country for non-political reasons - too implausible to even consider?). Nor is her migration status relevant and I therefore used a perfectly standard, neutral UK term for someone living fairly permanently outside their native country. I am an ex-pat in Europe, my brother is an ex-pat in the US, and we happily refer to ourselves thus and neither of us is either an exile or a refugee. Ms Abdulla is much more likely to be a refugee or exile than I am of course, because of her origins, but I don't assume she must be.

There really is no point in arguing with someone who thinks a single interview with a single person from fairly prejudiced sources amounts to a verifiable fact of infanticide being official Chinese govt policy. I'm old enough to have encountered 100s of such emotive claims - some a good deal more reliably sourced than this one, some turned out to be partly true and some pure bullshit, a few even turned out to be understated, but we can only work with what is known at the time. I'm sure AP did their best to verify the claims they make - which is why their claims are worthy of inclusion AT ALL. I cannot agree that a statistical study based on the unlikelihood of changes being voluntary, coupled with 30 interviews and some leaked - possibly authentic - documents passes the WP:VOICE threshold - but then I'm prejudiced because I think even slightly overstated claims weaken, not strengthen the case being made.

My very best wishes, you may realise, but 'your' source is Ms Abdulla again. I agree that the claims other than infanticide are much stronger - I think they are necessarily still claims though. Pincrete (talk) 19:17, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

• Well, maybe these are not official policies, but state-endorsed practices. Does it really matter? Sure, the claims by witnesses can be a matter of concern. They need to be carefully recorded, cross-verified, compared with known facts and interpreted in context of well known policies by this state. That is exactly what the "Amnesty" does [3]. When published by such reputable organization, these are not just mere allegations, but results of published research. Do you have doubts these claims are true? My very best wishes (talk) 19:44, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

"There really is no point in arguing with someone who thinks a single interview with a single person from fairly prejudiced sources amounts to a verifiable fact of infanticide being official Chinese govt policy.” I’m not arguing anything close to that, what gave you that impression? I don’t know what "statistical study based on the unlikelihood of changes being voluntary” you’re referring to, can you link it? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:59, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

@Pincrete:Again, there are plenty of WP:RS that place these things in their own voice. The occurrence of forced sterilization, in particular, is widely accepted among reliable sources. A short list of such news reports is below, though I could expand upon it if you would like:

1. CNN reports: CNN's reporting found that some Uyghur women were being forced to use birth control and undergo sterilization as part of a deliberate attempt to push down birth rates among minorities in Xinjiang.
2. The Associated Press, in its highly regarded investigative report, concludes that China regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show.
3. The Wall Street Journal writes that the campaign against the Uyghurs includes political indoctrination, mass internment and forced sterilizations.
4. The New York Times reports that While the authorities have said the birth control procedures are voluntary, interviews with more than a dozen Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim women and men from Xinjiang, as well as a review of official statistics, government notices and reports in the state-run media, depict a coercive effort by the Chinese Communist Party to control the community’s reproductive rights. The authorities pressured women to use IUDs or get sterilized.
5. In the first piece of a Pulitzer-winning investigative series about the Xinjiang internment camps, BuzzFeed News wrote that the camps are part of the government’s unprecedented campaign of mass detention of more than a million people, which began in late 2016. That year Chen Quanguo, the region’s top official and Communist Party boss, whom the US recently sanctioned over human rights abuses, also put Muslim minorities — more than half the region’s population of about 25 million — under perpetual surveillance via facial recognition cameras, cellphone tracking, checkpoints, and heavy-handed human policing. They are also subject to many other abuses, ranging from sterilization to forced labor.
6. Coda Media (RSP Entry) notes that For Uyghurs in Xinjiang, mass imprisonment and surveillance, the separation of families and forced sterilization of women are all part of a grim reality.

Regarding individual instances of sterilization, Nikkei Asia, in 2019, reported on the case of one Uyghur woman, writing: Mehrigul said she felt "tired for about a week, lost my memories and felt depressed." Doctors in the U.S. later said that she had been sterilized. Scholars also widely accept that forced sterilization is occurring. Some scholarly articles of this sort include these three sources. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 02:52, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Mikehawk10, I agree wholeheartedly that the forced removal and incarceration sources are as solid as a rock and the forced abortion/sterilization/contraception sources are much stronger than any infanticide claims - I still don't think that the second group justify WP:VOICE, but I would be content to defer on that. You don't even attempt to answer why one medic's interview on Radio Free Asia (is that a State Dept vehicle? It sounds it), echoed on Fox News and a Catholic News Agency plus one other outlet (all of which attribute the claim ) is adequate to justify WP saying that the Chinese govt has a policy of infanticide against Uighurs, which is the only possible reading of the present text and is a truly extraordinary claim.

My very best wishes, does it matter whether these are govt policies or not? Yes because we say they are. Do I doubt that these things are happening? No I don't particularly, but I care about WP's reputation for neutrallity and whether we are talking about an individual or a state, we have no business framing accusations as facts unless we are on 100% solid ground. The probability that something is occurring is an allegation not a fact. I don't say this because I care a fig about the Chinese govt, which I'm sure is big enough to look after itself - I say it because it discredits WP wholly to print as facts what - for very sound reasons, like difficulty of access - can only be verified as probabilities.

Horse Eye's back - there is no other possible reading of a sentence that begins "Chinese government policies have included … " and ends with "infanticide", (with a long list of 'sins' in between), other than that infanticide is Chinese govt policy. I regard a Radio Free Asia interview, echoed by Fox and a Catholic agency + one other (all of whom attribute anyway, ie accept no responsibility for the truth of the claims they are repeating) with a single individual medic as being about as lousy sourcing as it is possible to get. The reference to statistics was to the study by the man with a German name, which of course points very strongly to coercive methods being employed - but by definition, a statistician in one country cannot do better than point to the probability of something happening half-way across the globe. The study indicates much, it proves nothing IMO. I'm old enough to have read the statistics about Saddam's weapons of mass-destruction and 100s of similar piss-poor claims. Pincrete (talk) 06:41, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I don’t see that study linked as a source for this statement. What is the point of bringing it up? Note that I have not ever given an opinion on whether infanticide should be in the lead all I’ve said is that the sources seem adequate and do use the word, we can take it out of the lead but not the article body. If you’d asked rather than assumed I’d have told you I agree with you. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 06:57, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I started this section, which is about ALL the claims made about the Govt of China's policies, because the pre-existing text barely made sense - it was not comprehensible English, wtf are "highlighted policies" and who has highlighted them and are the claims about policies listed true or not? Now that list of Chinese govt policies is phrased as though all of those policies are equally verifiably true, which is now comprehensible, but hardly subtle or complete. I contend that some of those policies are nigh-on indisputable (detention camps and other targetted punitive measures). Some (IMO) should be framed as allegations, since the sourcing though serious is still inherently unverifiable (neither academics nor journalists nor agencies can get access and thus have done the best they can, which includes limited interviews and statistical analysis leading to conclusions about probabilities and likelihoods, but limited factual info). I contend that the sources are more equivocal than our text summarises, we are 'beefing up' IMO. Finally, one claim, the infanticide claim is so piss-poorly sourced that almost no reputable news outlet appears to have touched the story with a barge pole - but here it is on WP phrased as fact, and you have defended both the text and the sources.

I'm not sure what you are now agreeing with me about with regard to infanticide. You appear to agree with me that a single interview (on a state dept funded vehicle) repeated in attributed form on a small number of piss-poor partisan sources is about as dreadful as it is possible to get, yet also appear to be saying that the claim must remain and be phrased in WP:VOICE. I'm sorry, but this makes no sense to me at all. I don't believe the infanticide claim belongs in the article at all, it's SO WP:FRINGE and SO WP:EXTRAORDINARY but if it remains it should definitely NOT be in the lead, should NOT be in WP:VOICE and should be attributed to an individual medic and news outlet (Radio Free Asia) which originated the claim - in order to give some context. Pincrete (talk) 11:19, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I do not think the claim of infanticide is fringe or extraordinary based our general knowledge of such policies in this country (and I think it is almost certainly true; we just do not have any actual data), but I would be inclined to remove this claim from the lead simply because it does not appear in the report by Amnesty (this is a kind of a bright line for me). My very best wishes (talk) 16:12, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree that “infanticide” should be dropped from the sentence in the lead, however I think you’re jumping the shark by calling it fringe/extraordinary and saying it shouldn’t be in the article at all. Also just a slight correction... You keep calling RFA “state dept funded” when we all know that isn’t true, they’re funded by the U.S. Agency for Global Media. I know you keep referencing things from the past but lets not live in the past, the state department hasn’t funded RFA for two decades. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:52, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

You realise that's not better right? Every problem introduced by State Department funding is still introduced by USAGM funding. Their CEO is appointed directly by the president and before that their board was composed of the Secretary of State and 8 others appointed by the President. BSMRD (talk) 20:45, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

If you have questions about RFA’s reliability you can raise them at the relevant noticeboard. Until then we have a clear consensus that RFA is generally reliable. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:50, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

We had an RfC on the question of Radio Free Asia's reliability earlier this year, at WP:RSN, which resulted in a consensus that Radio Free Asia is a reliable source. And, noted on WP:RSP, editors have established that there is little reason to think RFA demonstrates some systematic inaccuracy, unreliability, or level of government co-option that precludes its use. and the source is generally reliable. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 23:36, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I think many editors would agree that the RFA RfC's consensus was woefully shortsighted. Paragon Deku (talk) 03:29, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

And the consensus wisely disagrees with them. Despite having one of the most non-neutral leads I have seen in one of these sorts RfCs, the community wisely found a consensus by analyzing coverage of and use of RFA's journalism in reliable sources. The New York Times has even directly republished their reporting that described the 2008 execution of two Uyghurs who allegedly were a part of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. I don't see a need to re-litigate this. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 04:32, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Then what benefit is granted by constantly pointing to the RfC when the source is analyzed on a case by case basis? Paragon Deku (talk) 04:50, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

There are many benefits of WP:RSP. The most applicable benefit in this specific case is that there's a community consensus on the question of whether its funding model/structure amounts to government co-option—the consensus is that it does not. The existence of centralized consensus on this point ought to avoid (or at least should significantly reduce) scattered discussions related to that particular question, since consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 06:51, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Frankly I would argue that the RfC on RFA WAS an example of consensus among a limited group of editors at one place and time. Discussion involving several editors who did not take part in that discussion on this and related pages tells a different story. Paragon Deku (talk) 19:40, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that a request for comment that took place on the highly trafficked reliable sources noticeboard, which by the way involved over twenty different editors and was closed by an administrator, falls in the bucket of local consensus. The deprecation RfC for HispanTV, for example, had signifiacntly fewer editors participate, and the deprecation discussion for CGTN had slightly more. In any case, El_C's close of the HispanTV RfC is correctly viewed as a close on an RfC that determined community consensus regarding HispanTV, and Usedtobecool's close of the CGTN RfC is correctly viewed as a close on an RfC that determined community consensus on the reliability of CGTN. I don't see why we would view this differently; if it is the community that achieves a consensus on the unreliability a source on WP:RSN, then surely it's also the community that achieved consensus on the general reliability of Radio Free Asia on that same noticeboard. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 23:16, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

I went ahead and removed 'infanticide' from the lead as there seems to be consensus here that the infanticide claim is not supported as well as the other claims in that sentence. It's also not referenced anywhere else in the page as far as I can see; I'll add it later below unless someone beats me to it. Retswerb (talk) 23:27, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I've no opinion whatsoever about the general reliability of RFA. Clearly, like BBC world service, it is not WHOLLY independent of the country that funds it, and whose values it exists to promote, but may ordinarily be accurate in what it does report - but reliability somewhat misses the point.

When any news source interviews a subject, the only thing that they NEED to verify is that the 'witness' has really made whatever claims they have made, and ideally that the 'witness' is who they say they are and is credible. RFA could not possibly verify, or even meaningfully attempt to verify, whether infanticide was being practised without wider access to hospitals/medical witnesses, which it appears not to have had. So RFA (and WP), are wholly reliant on the honesty of a single individual, about whom we know almost nothing apart from her name. Pincrete (talk) 08:04, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

What gives you the idea that verification by reliable sources can only be conducted in person on the ground? You keep saying that but I’m not so sure its true. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:38, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't assume that verification has to necessarily be 'on the ground', though that is the simplest, most certain and most reliable verification. If RFA had verified in ANY WAY the claim made by the medic, it is reasonable to assume that RFA would have told us. They don't, so we can only assume that no validating evidence has been found by RFA - yet at least. Also, since at other times we rely heavily on women witnesses' testaments - if infanticide were occurring wouldn't some of these women have known about it, or at least known that they/their friends had given birth, but for some reason never seen the baby therafter? Maybe the medic is telling the truth, and in 9 months time we will all know, or maybe it's simply a sensationalist claim of the kind that often appears in such situations, with which RFA might be complicit, or simply being gullible. We can only work with what is known at the time, but my caution/scepticism is obviously echoed by the 99% of media outlets that have thus far NOT reported this 'scoop'. Pincrete (talk) 17:18, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

One of the most common criticisms of RFA by media analysts and editors here is that most of their reporting relies on the testimonies of expats or political exiles, people who by a default might have a bone to pick with the governments in question and who cannot be verified easily to be honest individuals with their testimony. Furthermore, even on the ground reporting is sometimes exaggerated or makes leaps of logic to make claims about foreign nations that are not easily verifiable or disprovable. While I do think plenty of articles they run on more blatant and readily apparent aspects of human rights violations are accurate, case by case analysis of some of their stories shows their claims are not strong enough to put into wikivoice. Constantly referring to the overall reliability of the source does not help in determining what exactly the goal of a government funded institute is when running barely verified stories on bad things “the other guy” did. Some of the claims such as infanticide largely look like “throwing anything at the wall to see what sticks” reporting, and some editors have innocuously over the months added many of these claims that make large parts of the article look like unverified hodgepodge. Paragon Deku (talk) 18:25, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

• The question here is not about testimonies by exiles, but about some info being "independently confirmed" by journalists or human rights organizations. Apparently, the infanticide claim was not independently confirmed with regard to Uyghur children. That would be very difficult to confirm of course.My very best wishes (talk) 02:46, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

• And I can tell you what the official Chinese line is thereupon: "We have enforced the one-child policy upon all Chinese citizens, Uyghurs not exempted. That would be genocide if we were doing it only to the Uyghurs, but we do it to every Chinese citizen." AFAIK, the one-child policy has been relaxed to two-children policy and some say it will be relaxed in the future to three-children policy. The Convention against Genocides is not about forced abortions but about forced abortions which are ethnically discriminatory. There is a ban upon breeding like rabbits, and this ban is not ethnically discriminatory. So, have been there forced abortions and sterilizations? The Chinese government says yes, because that is mandatory and non-discriminatory law of the land. That isn't genocide if they treat everyone equally, regardless of ethnicity. So, the Chinese news agency may well say "Forced abortions, sterilizations, that's all true, but we're not discriminating!" So, if each Uyghur couple wants to have five children, that's problematic, but stopping them from having five children cannot be called genocide. So, let's say Han Chinese are 98% compliant with two-children policy, while Uyghurs are 45% compliant. Do you see the problem? Uyghurs will complain more (as percentages of their population size), but it is the same non-discriminatory policy. tgeorgescu (talk) 12:46, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

• Oh no, the selective incarceration of Uyghurs, for example, is clearly discriminatory. Same with Female infanticide in China. And they clearly are not just enforcing the "N-child" policy. My very best wishes (talk) 19:18, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

tgeorgescu, that's why under the one child policy, Uyghurs were allowed to have three children.[4] TFD (talk) 01:05, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps the consensus was clear already, but I just came to say that the current first sentence is a very odd way of phrasing it. Wikipedia pages are not usually supposed to be put in meta terms; they are about actual topics. Some topics only exist as "what people have said about X," but this is not one of those. It would be preferable to rename the page to "PRC Actions Against Minorities in Xinjiang" and just open the article with what those policies are and how they have been characterized rather than this. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 23:59, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Cleopatran Apocalypse you're right, and a requested move is needed here – somewhere within the walls of text on this talk page are several threads discussing this. The current first sentence is the result of a recent RfC, and the result of that RfC was messy because the current title is "locked in" by several previous RfCs that would need to be overturned by a new consensus. It's just a case of it taking a long time to make controversial changes to a controversial topic, and consequently nobody's yet taken the necessary step of opening the RM that's now needed. I'll eventually get round to doing it if nobody else does so first. Jr8825 • Talk 00:14, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. Well, I would support that. But no doubt others have pointed out that the Holocaust page doesn't start with "actions that have been characterized as..." I guess that is the real challenge we have - of figuring out what a true scholarly consensus consists of and how we would recognize it. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 23:39, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 10 August 2021

This entire article is political propaganda. There is plenty to be said about the PRC's practices of population control and counterterrorism. That these are equivalent to genocide, functionally or otherwise, is absurd. For comparison, hundreds of thousands of civilians, mostly Muslims, have borne the human costs of the United States' so-called "Global War on Terrorism." How many can we say have been slaughtered by the Chinese counter-terrorism machine, and if the answer is orders of magnitude fewer than that of the United States, ranging from none to a statistically insignificant few, explainable not as systemic effort to eliminate a people but of natural causes, due to enforcement of laws, etc., then where is the article headlined, "U.S. Genocide of Muslims in the Middle East After September 11th, 2001"? ZvZisTrash (talk) 00:09, 10 August 2021 (UTC) ZvZisTrash (talk) 00:09, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:17, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Change all references of "Uyghur genocide" to "allegations of human rights abuses". If the article is going to include "non-binding motions recognizing China's actions as genocide", shouldn't it also be noted that in many of those countries, for instance, Canada, that other legal bodies voted down those same motions, and that executive branch officials spoke out against such labeling? https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/senate-canada-vote-china-genocide-1.6084640 ZvZisTrash (talk) 03:46, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. (pinging ZvZisTrash) — Lauritz Thomsen (talk) 16:32, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

consensus? The existing page content is so blatant a form of propaganda as to be obviously in need of edit. It asserts a very specific political agenda, that the alleged human rights abuses occurring in Xinjiang are genocide, when even Adrian Zenz, the progenitor of the case, himself even stated that he believes what is happening in Xinjiang is a "cultural genocide" and not "literal genocide." Anyone with a functioning brain can see that China isn't loading people onto railcars bound for gas chambers, destroying or expropriating property, causing mass starvation, etc., on the basis of ethnicity. What is happening in Xinjiang very well may be a form of ethnoreligious, ethnonationalist suppression, but only a propagandist would argue it is genocide. ZvZisTrash (talk) 16:52, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Please stop reopening the request or you'll be reported for disruptive editing. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 17:00, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Alternative name solution

I just want to point out that IF the moratorium is lifted and IF a new name (of the "Repression of the Uyghurs" kind or similar), is agreed, there is no reason that an alternative name could not also be in the opening sentence i.e.

"The repression of the Uyghurs sometimes called the Uyghur genocide is an ongoing series of human rights abuses … … ".

This acknowledges that "Uyghur genocide" is a term used to describe the event, without claiming in WP:VOICE that these abuses are genocide, or that "Uyghur genocide" is the WP:COMMONNAME.

For wholly different reasons, this form is adopted on Srebrenica massacre (on that article, WP:COMMONNAME had formed before the legal ruling that genocide had occurred). Pincrete (talk) 09:59, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Since there is no consensus on whether genocide occurred and there is no common name, a descriptive title is more appropriate. I would however change your phrasing to "which some observers consider to be a genocide." TFD (talk) 21:32, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Another note is that more than just Uyghur are targeted (which is why Uyghur genocide is doubly a poor name choice). I think something like Sinicization of Xinjiang in the line of Sinicization of Tibet would be good. Paragon Deku (talk) 04:57, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

TFD, I agree about a descriptive title being more apt- I disagree strongly about your 'new wording'. The whole point of my suggestion was to acknowledge that this event IS SOMETIMES being called the "Uyghur genocide" - it is fairly indisputable that it is being called this - while delaying any discussion of who thinks this, why they think the word applies (mostly a specific reading of the UN Convention definition regarding population suppression, or sometimes an explicit 'cultural genocide' - one of these two meanings rather than the more common understanding of "mass ethnic murder"), ie the intention is to have that more nuanced discussion LATER in the text, rather than thinking that article title and opening sentence needs to settle subtle arguments in an is it/isn't it manner.

However, I only floated the suggestion to see if it helped, if it doesn't, so be it. I'm not going to press the matter. Pincrete (talk) 05:15, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

• Yes, I do agree that we have to mention that somewhere in the lead in some form. At a bare minimum the debate over whether to call it a genocide is a significant part of the topic, so if the title does end up changed then we still have to make it clear that many people do. --Aquillion (talk) 18:26, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Why the title should change

I might as well cite WP:IAR and fully explain why I think we need to overturn the previous consensuses and change the title. Discussing the moratorium is just beating around the bush and several editors in the above conversation suggested that an agreement on a new name was needed to lift the moratorium. (Catch-22?)

At the moment, "Uyghur genocide" doesn't fit our naming policy because (1) it isn't yet the WP:COMMONNAME for the topic in RS (there isn't a consensus among academics, as shown by JSTOR results and this analysis by Aquillion, and quality news media very rarely call it "genocide" in their own voice, preferring to attribute the description) and (2) it goes against the section on using non-judgmental descriptive titles.

The policy is actually pretty clear on this, and it spells out two alternatives: either we rename it to Allegations of... since "the topic is an actual accusation of illegality under law, discussed as such by reliable sources even if not yet proven in a court of law" or we avoid using "genocide" in the title altogether because it's being applied in this context as a specific crime. A particular issue with genocide is that the general reader's understanding of the word (in its non-legal sense) might not match the UN's legal definition (a number of mainstream dictionaries describe it narrowly as the mass murder/killing of a group). "Uyghur genocide" will become appropriate in any of the following scenarios: (1) it has become the most commonly recognisable name as demonstrated by frequent/preferential use across RS, (2) it's no longer an accusation of a crime, but one proven in a court of law or (3) editors have agreed to establish a specific naming convention for articles on genocides (by all means go ahead and start that conversation). As an individual, I'm quite happy to express my view that China is committing genocide, but, in the absence of an agreement among editors to apply the UN's definition as soon as reputable human rights lawyers have levelled such an accusation, as a reference work we're supposed to be letting the weight of sources make that judgement for us.

In contrast, Repression of the Uyghurs (or my preference, Repression of the Uyghurs in China/Xinjiang) are appropriate encyclopedic titles because they're easy to understand, there's clear unanimity among quality sources that's precisely what it is, and there's no potential confusion about it being a specific legal crime, proven or unproven. While this seems to me to be the best alternative, I'm open to other people's ideas if they can think of other options.

Speaking to the point Pincrete makes about the first sentence of a renamed article, I think their suggestion ("sometimes called the Uyghur genocide") is fine, although my preference is still against the bolding of any title. Per MOS:BOLDLEAD, we only need to bold the title when it's the "formal or widely accepted name for the subject, and per WP:BOLDITIS, "[bolding] is not mandatory and should be followed only where it lends natural structure to the sentence". The nature of the topic means there'll be clumsy wording if we stick to the bolding convention while using any descriptive title ("the repression/genocide of the Uyghurs is X...") and, more importantly, there's going to be an inevitable trade-off between avoiding implying that it's a genocide in wikivoice (an NPOV issue) and avoiding downplaying the serious (and valid) nature of the genocide accusation. I continue to think the best option is to describe what China has been doing in the first lead paragraph ("Since 2014, China has..."), then explaining why many have called it genocide in the second lead para, but the precise wording is the scope of the (still open) first sentence RfC. Jr8825 • Talk 09:32, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

There's nothing here that I substantially disagree with. I endorse the logic of "the best option is to describe what China has been doing in the first lead paragraph ("Since 2014, China has..."), then explaining why many have called it genocide" . The accusations/assertions relating to enforced contraception/abortion/sterilisation would lead very logically into "genocide because it violates article 2(?) of the UN definition relating to suppressing birth rates". Pincrete (talk) 10:11, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) NPOV means neutral editing, not neutral content. If reliable sources indicate that its being increasingly referred to as a genocide by other countries and experts on the matter, then saying as much in "wikivoice" is a nonissue. It still baffles me that this is somehow still a tempest in a teacup. OhKayeSierra (talk) 10:16, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

OhKayeSierra – I completely agree with the point that essay makes. However, while reliable source do "increasingly" refer to it as a genocide, they obviously don't "commonly" refer to it as a genocide: the clear majority of reliable sources (academic and media) choose not to treat genocide as a proven fact, but rather as an increasingly likely accusation. When the majority of reliable sources take purposeful care to avoid saying China is committing genocide and instead say it has been accused of committing genocide, could be committing genocide, is likely committing genocide we should be following them. When academics say they "argue" that some of China's policies fall under the UN's definition of genocide, we should be quoting them. I commend politicians and newspaper columnists for calling China out and the lawyers who are building a legal case against the Chinese government, but they aren't factual encyclopedias. China has been accused of genocide, a significant number of experts say China is likely committing genocide – those are the facts right now as put forward by the weight of RS, we should say exactly this and not mince our words, but we shouldn't go beyond this. Jr8825 • Talk 10:38, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

That essay reminds us that we need to make efforts to "write for the opponent" we disagree with and ensure "[our] biases do not cause [us] to violate policy", important things here because we have to swallow our desire to do everything we can to highlight the suffering of the Uyghurs and treat it as a secondary motivation, behind following the weight of sources, which reflect the fact that genocide remains an accusation. The opponent here isn't China – all the sources say it's lying – the opponent we're writing for is those who say the evidence that China is guilty of genocide hasn't been objectively proven. I'd argue that telling the reader it's a genocide when most quality sources are more cautious could cause readers to doubt the integrity of the article and will play into the hands of those who seek to portray the article as propaganda or tinted by activism. My belief is that sticking to our rules on non-judgemental titles will ultimately do just as much to help Uyghurs. Think of our article as the court room in which the facts and the weight of expert evidence is carefully presented and made accessible, allowing the reader to quickly understand why experts think it's a genocide and make their own judgement. Telling the reader on our authority that it's a genocide, which is implied by such a title, should wait until a real court makes that judgement a fact, or it becomes the common name. Jr8825 • Talk 11:19, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@Jr8825: Thanks for the reply. Work commitments are going to have me tied up for a few hours, so it'll be a bit before I'm able to reply. But I did want to mention that I read your reply. OhKayeSierra (talk) 11:30, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

• Arguably, this is not just a political repression. As follows from the description on the page, such measures can have only one purpose: to make Uyghur people disappear as an independent ethnic, cultural and religious group. One could say this is a cultural genocide, but unfortunately, the applied measures, such as mass incrceration, are also physical, not just cultural. My very best wishes (talk) 17:02, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

• My very best wishes please substantiate how the Chinese government's goal is to "make Uyghur people disappear". The Chinese government's only concessions have been about how the concentration camps are vocational centres. You say this is more than political repression "arguably", then please argue for why this is genocidal. ButterSlipper (talk) 12:50, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

This line of logic chooses to ignore the fact that most experts have 'qualified' their assertions. That evidence shows this is not the COMMONNAME. That Amnesty and some other sources say that what is happening is grotesquely cruel, but that it doesn't meet the definition. That even experts IN FAVOUR OF THE WORD say it meets a specific clause of the UN definition (intentional suppression of birth rates) - which we do not bother to inform the reader is the meaning of the word we and they are using. Nobody currently here doubts that very credible proof exists that human rights abuses are taking place, probably on a massive scale. We simply disagree about whether we should be 'beefing up' qualified assertions or not. Pincrete (talk) 18:08, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

• A simple Google search shows it is more common than "Uyghur repression". As long as "Uyghur genocide" appears in titles of books and scholarly articles [5],[6], I do not see a significant problem. My very best wishes (talk) 18:58, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

But "Uyghur repression" - or some other purely descriptive title - does not come with all the negative baggage that implying mass murder is taking place does! It does not require us to explain in what sense we mean repression/human rights abuses/oppression/whatever. It does not have specific legal meanings which we are not in a position to justify. It does not require us to do what international legal bodies have been unable to do. Pincrete (talk) 22:39, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@My very best wishes: it's all very well pointing to a list of hits on Google Scholar, but did you actually look at any of them? The first result is "Scholars and Activists Increasingly Fear a Uyghur Genocide"; the second book is self-published (see details on the publisher's website); the third one is some student's powerpoint project(!); the fourth hit is titled "...the Path toward Cultural Genocide in Xinjiang". The fifth and sixth links are the only quality sources that call it a genocide on the first page of hits. The seventh hit is from a website called turkheritage.org and says "the US government declared... genocide"; the eighth hit explicitly argues against the term genocide, although I don't trust it an inch ("flimsy case that mocks real genocide survivors" – the author looks unflinchingly pro-China); the ninth hit is an undergrad thesis, the abstract of which says it "contends that according to the Genocide Convention, China is committing genocide ... However, prosecuting a genocide in court would prove difficult due to China's laws and actions that can be used to defer accusations of genocide and problems with the Genocide Convention in the context of China and the Uyghurs"; the final hit is behind a paywall and its summary doesn't mention genocide. The current title reflects what editors (including myself) think is going on and what they wish the majority of sources said, not what the majority of sources actually say. Jr8825 • Talk 09:04, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

• Here are my points. First, if "Uyghur genocide" appears in titles of multiple scholarly articles and books (see links above such as [7]), why it can not be a title of this page? Second, this is actually the most common or at least most easily recognizable title of the subject, if one looks at publications (most of them are written by journalists of course). Third, these events do fit a typical definitions of genocide provided by Oxford Dictionary, [8], i.e. the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. One can also check page Genocide definitions. This is not just direct murder, according not only to political organizations, but to many scholars. Some believe it can be expanded even to destruction of social groups. Based on that, I do not see any problem at all with the current title. What does it mean exactly? This is described in great detail on the page. My very best wishes (talk) 15:06, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

MVBW, I know all about the various definitions of genocide, and that scholarly use is somewhat broader than "general use". However the blunt truth is that AFAIK there has NEVER yet been in all history, a single instance of an event being designated "genocide", nor more particularly of an event being COMMONNAMEd "the XYZ genocide" even AFAIK among scholars, in which targetted mass murder of the XYZs was not the principal element. There are some instances where that mass murder was social, rather than ethnic, such as in Cambodia, but NONE without mass murder that I know of. A COMMONNAME needs to be a great deal more established IMO than is the case here, or our text needs to be a good deal more explicit to override the reader's understanding that genocide=targetted mass murder. The sources are being fairly explicit about their use on the whole, by qualifying what they mean and being explicit about what they don't mean, but we aren't. As I said on a previous post, you shouldn't need to have read Lemkin or the UN Convention definition in order to understand an article title and the first para of that article. Pincrete (talk) 15:46, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

No, I think there are many such examples, as one can see on pages like Genocides in history (World War I through World War II), etc. Consider Deportation of the Crimean Tatars or even Holodomor (which was officially recognized as a genocide by many countries). Yes, many people died (just as the population of Uyghurs will certainly suffer), but the intentional mass murder was not the stated purpose, and it was disputed. My very best wishes (talk) 16:23, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

That is really scraping the bottom of the barrel! "Crimean Tatars" says specifically that it was "cultural gemocide" in sentence one and cites ONE source claiming 'actual genocide', so it isn't generally regarded by the public or scholars as genocide and isn't called "XYZ genocide". As regards Holdomor, I didn't say something needed to be wholly uncontested. Turkey after all disputes Armenian (and Greek and Assyrian Christian) genocides - Serbia disputes Srebrenica. But mass death was involved in all of these and the only controversies are about the numbers and how targetted and deliberate the dying was, and whether the intention was to destroy the group. In all these examples, there may be people who say mass death took place which wasn't genocide, since the deaths were not targetted or intentional, but no one who says genocide took place that didn't involve mass death. In actual use, genocide=mass killing unless made explicit that another meaning is intended. Pincrete (talk) 17:02, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Cultural genocide is a type of genocide, cultural genocide is *actual* genocide or whatever you want to call it... Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:14, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Then call it "cultural genocide" if that is what is meant. Using what - to most people - is a much stronger term is knowingly misleading and is campaigning rather than informing. It isn't only me who makes the distinction, Zenz (the man responsible for analysing birth rate figures) also says " cultural not real genocide". Pincrete (talk) 18:20, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

He started using the broader term a while ago. See [9]. It seems you are mistaken about a great deal. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:24, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Your source:"ZENZ's first comment: I have long argued that the atrocity in the region is a cultural genocide, not a literal genocide." … … later in the same text "The reason why now this has changed - we do need to probably call it a genocide - is quite simply because the evidence now, for the first time, very specifically meets one of the five criteria set forth by the United Nations Convention for the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide from 1948, which specifically says the suppression of birth" . I haven't THE SLIGHTEST objection to saying that Zenz is one of those who thinks that the event probably meets one out of five specified criteria - the 'suppression of birth' element of the UN definition. I have argued that making clear what those who endorse the term actually MEAN should be done regardless. What isn't an honest or valid option IMO is to use either the "cultural" nor "suppression of birth' assertions OUT OF CONTEXT to imply something which they simply don't endorse. Pincrete (talk) 18:58, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @My very best wishes: While I continue to feel uncomfortable pushing against the genocide title – my heart says that it's obvious that China is seeking to wipe out the Uyghurs and therefore we should call it what it is – the problem is that I think it violates policy as I explained above (I believe there's insufficient evidence for it being the common name and it fails WP:NDESC). I don't see defenders of the title making policy-based arguments. The only policy-based argument I can see for the current title is that we should adopt a new naming convention for genocides, as I mentioned above, possibly citing IAR or setting out a consistent approach as genocide accusations like this that are hard to "prove" without some degree of contextual common sense on behalf of observers (and us as editors). The link you shared to Google Scholar is the same as the one I broke down source by source above to show that a significant majority qualify genocide in some manner, usually as a claim or threat; only two treated it as fact, one a non-peer reviewed student thesis. Regarding common name, I disagree that "Uyghur genocide" is the common name among journalists, as all the non-columnist quality newspaper articles I've seen attribute it as an accusation, claim or the view of others, and the JSTOR results above found "repression" twice as frequently as "genocide". How do we justify doing what the quality newspapers currently don't? Regarding definition, I think you might've made a mistake in naming Oxford Dictionary, since Oxford's definition is "mass killing" (you linked Merriam Webster's definition, which follows the UN definition). Definition matters since if we're following the UN's definition, we're effectively treating the specific crime of genocide as a proven fact, rather than an accusation. Jr8825 • Talk 17:07, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

MVBW, as you are well aware, it is not the role of Wikipedia editors to weigh evidence, form conclusions and state them as facts in articles. Not only is it against policy, but different reasonable editors will come to different conclusions when insufficient facts are available. Your experience of Communism for example may influence how you view the topic. Another editor may realize that misinformation can come from both sides, for example the British ambassador to China provided false information about Tiananmen Square that the Australian PM read out to the public.[10] The only people who use the term genocide believe that a genocide is occurring. But the most common view in reliable sources is that insufficient information exists. Articles should not push views that have not yet gained majority support in reliable sources. TFD (talk) 17:14, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

• This is not my personal view, sorry. This is according to sources [11]. My very best wishes (talk) 17:36, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

• If you favor sources reporting a minority position then it is reasonable to infer it is your view. Only trolls argue in favor of minority views they do not share. TFD (talk) 17:49, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

• @Pincrete: sums up my views fairly well on this issue. It seems to me that most sources using the term genocide have already decided that China is doing a genocide, and are using legal definitions like a checklist to "prove" what they already believe. I feel extremely uncomfortable calling something a genocide when we can't point to any bodies, especially on as weak an argument as WP:COMMONNAME. We aren't here to WP:RGW and "expose" a genocide that might be happening (and even then what evidence we do have points to cultural assimilation, not physical destruction, and I am uncomfortable calling that genocide), but rather to report what academic consensus is, which is against calling this a genocide. BSMRD (talk) 17:53, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

  Common name isn't a weak argument for an article title − if it's the most recognisable name then that trumps title neutrality (see WP:POVNAME). I'm just unconvinced by the evidence editors have put forward to show it's currently the common name. And there definitely isn't an academic consensus against calling it a genocide. My impression is that only a small number of papers have directly discussed whether it's a genocide, and papers discussing other aspects of Uyghur oppression prefer to acknowledge the arguments those papers have made without embracing them, as it's a complex legal issue. Jr8825 • Talk 18:14, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

BSMRD, just to be clear, my position is that sizable numbers of very serious and credible sources are as convinced as they could be (given difficulties of access in China) that serious human rights abuses are almost certainly occurring against Uyghurs and those abuses should be the focus of this article. The 'genocide question' is largely a red herring IMO and is fairly legalistic/academic. It is not reducible to a yes/no and hasn't yet been answered by academics, who only have a consensus that "bad things are happening", not what or on what scale those "bad things" are nor what to call them. The question deserves to be covered in para 2 or 3 of the lead, not 'answered' in the article title or opening sentence. Pincrete (talk) 18:39, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

• I think User:Jr8825 has perfectly stated the reasons why the title should change (my suggestion would be "Repression of Uyghurs in China", without a definite article). I think the untenable nature of the current title has been made very clear by the decent close made to the complex lead sentence RfC above, where discussion was clearly shaped by conflict with the current title. This has resulted in an abnormal result in which the title is in obvious conflict with the lead sentence (NPOV prevents us from naming based on a contentious characterization, except in the rare cases that such a characterization is a COMMONNAME, which the current title is not. Consequently, the lead sentence, by explicitly stating that this is a characterization, implies to readers that we have abandoned an NPOV titling stance).

The closer of the lead RfC has correctly evaluated the consensus against calling this event a genocide in Wikivoice, which therefore rules out any titles that use "genocide" while not also being the COMMONNAME. I am surprised that arguments are being advanced that there is any single COMMONNAME for these events, when there is an unambiguous lack of consensus for such in reliable sources. My surprise is tempered by the fact that the common-sense guidance of that policy is often misapplied in naming discussions for recent/ongoing events, an area of Wikipedia where there is virtually never a COMMONNAME. These events are no exception, and there even may never be one (consider Internment of Japanese Americans, which is a neutral descriptive title). In light of all this, I suggest a move towards a new RM as soon as possible. — Goszei (talk) 23:42, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

I do not know if it was a legitimate closing (the closer was not an admin), but assuming it was, the first, consensus phrase of the lead now say: "Uyghur genocide is the characterization that the human rights abuses ... amount to genocide." Given that, you need either change the 1st phrase again (new RfC?), or the name of the page should still be "Uyghur genocide", just to be consistent with the first phrase. My very best wishes (talk) 01:00, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Like I wrote, what the lead sentence should be is influenced by the title, which I think should change. We should change to a neutral title before we start talking about the lead (I agree with Jr8825 that the lead under my proposed title should be "Since 2014..." with no bolding anywhere in the lead, per WP:BOLDTITLE and WP:BOLDITIS). — Goszei (talk) 01:36, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

My very best wishes: Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/Archive_12#Review On the question of whether an RFC close by a non-admin can be summarily overturned by an admin, in most cases, no, and never if the only reason is that the closer was not an admin. Non-admin closes are a thing and anyone, including non-admins, are able to close discussions listed at Wikipedia:Closure requests, as this one was. I hope that answers your implied question. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 01:37, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you! I should say though such closings without obvious consensus are very arbitrary. That one I think resulted in a poor outcome. The subject of this page was described as "the characterization" of something. The subject of this page are very real and serious human rights abuses that exist as a matter of fact, not a "characterization" of anything. My very best wishes (talk) 18:50, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

My very best wishes, to some greater or lesser extent, all closes are arbitrary. They are an attempt to distill multiple voices into a single summary and so require decisions about what points to include, what voices to paraphrase, what policies are invoked, etc. This exercise of discretion is explicitly called for by the closing instructions Please also note that closers are expected and required to exercise their judgment to ensure the decision complies with the spirit of Wikipedia policy and with the project goal. To ensure such compliance, I try to be as conservative about such decisions as possible.

Closing almost any discussion a "no consensus" is, of course, always a possibility but consensus is not perfect agreement: Consensus on Wikipedia does not mean unanimity (which is ideal but not always achievable), nor is it the result of a vote. Decision making and reaching consensus involve an effort to incorporate all editors' legitimate concerns, while respecting Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. and also The desired standard is rough consensus, not perfect consensus. In other words, "obvious consensus" is not the standard that is applied. Furthermore, closing a discussion as "no consensus" does not bring any clarity to the discussion nor to the article. The purpose of an RfC is, after all, to be a dispute-resolution mechanism. If there is a reasonable way to summarize the discussion, that is what a closer is supposed to do.

The view that you and others expressed that there are real abuses was not really the issue as other editors saw it, the issue is whether a Wikipedia article should say that these particular abuses are genocide. The majority of opinions that were not superficial felt it should not, at least not at this time, and there are no policies or guidelines that would overrule these opinions. This is after taking into account the Closing Discussions instructions The closer is there to judge the consensus of the community, after discarding irrelevant arguments: those that flatly contradict established policy, those based on personal opinion only, those that are logically fallacious, and those that show no understanding of the matter of issue. While there were such "irrelevant arguments" expressed by editors favoring many of the options presented, the consensus of the community was that using the label of genocide without qualification was not acceptable.

As it is my obligation as the closer to explain my reasoning, I am happy to answer any further questions about the process you have, but perhaps this could be better-placed at my talk page. This has become enough of a digression to this discussion as it is. I hope that helps. If another editor wishes to collapse this side-discussion, I have no objections. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:02, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

"the consensus of the community was that using the label of genocide without qualification was not acceptable.” Thats not what we were there to decide, I didn’t have an issue with your close originally but I sure do have an issue with your close as you’ve elaborated on it here. You took an off topic discussion and made it the core of your decision, that does not appear to be kosher. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:07, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Horse Eye's Back, I used "...using the label of genocide without qualification..." as an alternative way of stating, "that the proper way to define the scope of the article in the lede sentence was '...genocide is the characterization that the ongoing series of human rights abuses perpetrated by the government of China...'". I believed that the lengthier and more-convoluted phrasing was a desirably substituted and an obvious-enough shortening but I misjudged. I am sorry for muddying the waters further. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:20, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Eggishorn didn't close the discussion the way I would've liked, coming to the conclusion that there was a rough consensus for an option I personally opposed. That said, I accept their close as an appropriate reading of that discussion and I appreciate the effort they made in what was essentially a thankless task. The close may well have been the best outcome possible in the current circumstances, given that the article currently has a policy-violating title which was beyond the RfC's scope yet directly affected the discussion. Some editors here don't seem to "get the point", which is that while they may personally support calling this is a genocide (I do too, as I've said many times), doing so in wikivoice is clearly unsupportable on the basis of policy as the sources stand – a point the RfC consensus reinforced. This is entirely relevant to, and within the scope of, the close of the lead sentence RfC. "Uyghur genocide" is equally an inappropriate article title according to the title policy, and no editors in favour of maintaining the current title (or in the previous RMs, for that matter) have provided a policy-based counter argument to this. It's not fair to attack the closer because you disagree with their judgement when they stepped up to make a difficult close of a complex RfC and, quite possibly, came to the only compromise solution that didn't violate policy. Jr8825 • Talk 00:49, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I’m not aware of a consensus that the title of this article violates policy, can you link it? Our current title would appear to reflect a policy based consensus. Using a discussion about the opening line to ram in your POV about the page’s title is the definition of off topic btw. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:24, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Personally, I disagree with the idea by Eggishorn that closing as "no consensus" is unhelpful (Furthermore, closing a discussion as "no consensus" does not bring any clarity to the discussion nor to the article.). No, it does brings some clarity. If there is "no consensus" (that would be my conclusion if I closed this discussion), it simply means that the previous consensus version remains. My very best wishes (talk) 17:15, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

@My very best wishes:, that presumes there was a stable prior version to revert to. The long and overlapping edit wars that preceded the RfC show that there was not, nor was there one discernible at the time on the talk. I can only presume that is why MarkH21 felt it was necessary to create the RfC in the first place. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 17:29, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I do not think that defining previous consensus (if any) is a task for a closer. A closer should simply evaluate the consensus solely as follows from the RfC discussion including the strength of arguments, etc. If people edit war before is even less relevant (this is a behavior issue). I think there was a previous de facto consensus version, but again, this is not relevant to closing. My very best wishes (talk) 17:50, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I would agree with My very best wishes, the idea that a “no consensus” close should be avoided for the purpose of clarity is foreign to me and I don’t think it has any basis in policy. There does also appear to have been a stable version, Option 1 in the RfC which was explicitly put forward as the status quo by MarkH21. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:36, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Note that in Eggishorn's closing statement they clearly acknowledged that there was a stable version: "Overall, it is clear that the lead sentence as it existed prior to March of this year does not have a consensus for continuing.” but they dismissed it using some weird reverse no consensus argument. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:47, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Horse Eye's Back, it was identified by the RfC starter as such but further qualified in the RfC as "status quo pre-March 2021". By the time of the RfC, it was no longer status quo, if, indeed it ever truly was. The edit history shows edit wars in February and January of 2021 as well. If one has to keep looking farther and farther back to find a stable version, it eventually becomes clear that a "stable" version of the lead sentence is somewhat mythical. Both you and My very best wishes I am sure are aware of this because you both show up in that edit history multiple times. With regard to basis in policy, please see the links I provided earlier. WP:CLOSECHALLENGE may also be useful. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 18:01, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Regardless of whether thats true or not if thats what you were basing your decision you should have said that in your close, you said something very different. I’m not seeing anything linked which addresses avoiding “No consensus” closes, can you be more specific? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:05, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

At the risk of restating myself: "Overall, it is clear that the lead sentence as it existed prior to March of this year does not have a consensus for continuing." That does not mean, nor did it imply, that there was a consensus prior to March. It means the exact opposite, in fact. You are taking a remark about the discussion (where it was very clear that "Option 1", which was labeled as the pre-March lead and was referred to by the discussion participants and therefore referred to in such a manner in the close) and trying to make it about the article. That isn't what I said nor what I based the decision on. I refer you again to WP:CLOSE and WP:RFCEND. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 18:13, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

What does "does not have a consensus for continuing” mean then? I’ve never seen that in a close before and it seems to be the difference here between a no consensus and a rough consensus close. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:20, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Also I think I asked for policy about avoiding no consensus closes, not information pages (not that I see it there either). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:22, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Horse Eye's Back, My very best wishes, as a non-admin closer, it is my responsibility to answer questions about the close I wrote and I have done so here but it is clear that this discussion is greatly side-tracking this section. I will be happy to continue the discussion there but real life (a flooded basement, in fact) calls me away at this time. Thank you in advance for your understanding. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 18:35, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

@Horse Eye's Back. I do think Eggishorn misinterpreted consensus. Here is why. They say in closing: In fact, almost no respondents favored Option 1 as previously written. Even those that !voted for Option 1 expressed the need to edit it down mostly calling for removing the Holocaust comparison or for "blending" it together with options 4 or 5.. My reading would be very different because when someone votes option 1 I believe they actually vote for option 1, even if they provide any qualifications, i.e. "option 1, but...". That's why I think this boils down to "no consensus". My very best wishes (talk) 19:22, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

@My very best wishes:, for an editor as experienced and tenured as you to post a statement so fundamentally at odds with the policies that have already been linked and quoted here and above is a bit incredible. Very simply: They weren't votes. I didn't count votes because they aren't votes. Furthermore, I don't have to believe their votes because they gave explanations for their statements, which I read. This is the policy supporting my close you should be familiar with. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 00:11, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I do agree that such closings are highly subjective. I also agree that a closer should strive to select a version that would be an improvement. But I think it was the opposite because the subject of this page is quite obviously not a "characterization" of anything. Sorry to disagree if you think otherwise. My very best wishes (talk) 16:59, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I see a lot of what amounts to WP:OR and WP:SYNTH by some editors in support of keeping the name "Uyghur Genocide", which are generally arguments to avoid. I'm not sure what the best title would be - perhaps "allegations of" would be an appropriate header, but it's increasingly clear even from just the lede, that there is no international consensus on whether or not the definitions of genocide are met, and the titling of the article as if it were is therefore inappropriate. 69.172.145.94 (talk) 07:15, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

About the recent edit about removing "estimated".

Jr8825 on your recent edit you removed the term "estimated" and you cited an individual source, but there is an academic consensus that these numbers concerning the amount of persecuted Uyghurs is only an estimation because there has been little on-the-ground investigation on these camps to confirm these numbers. Leading organisations making the estimations like the CHRD have had to conduct interviews with Uyghurs in Xinjiang but can't totally verify a number. Maybe we can keep the estimated part. ButterSlipper (talk) 23:50, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. Even a widely shared/accepted estimate is still an estimate. Until actual on the ground investigation can come up with numbers, the numbers we have will be based on extrapolation and estimation. That doesn't make them bad or less worthy of inclusion, but we should call them what they are. BSMRD (talk) 23:53, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Please go ahead and re-add if you're confident academic/human rights group sources are more cautious than news media, I was going off the Reuters Al Jazeera and Guardian articles. Jr8825 • Talk 01:19, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

It is also worth noting that many of the estimations, including those of Adrian Zenz, indicate that far less than 1 million Uyghurs/Muslims are interned: "We don’t have hard data on the actual internment numbers, those are of course estimates and interpolations from smaller data sets, regardless if it’s 800,000, 1.2 million, or 2 million, we know it’s mass internment." I am of the view that it is better to err on the conservative side with our "estimates" here, as we would with anything where exact numbers are not known. Anotheranothername (talk) 00:53, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

If you're being serious then I don't have any contentions, but if you're making a lighthearted mockery then I'll continue. One of the most prominent proponents of the Uyghur genocide Adrian Zenz admits to the figure being "estimated at just over one million”, then he inflated the number up to 1.5 million in March 2019 and he boosted the number again in November 2019. In most other cases too, academia is usually more reliable than the news they're reported in as news organisations will write provocative and sensationalistic statements to attract more viewers and filter the studies through their own biases. ButterSlipper (talk) 04:51, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

@ButterSlipper: I wasn't mocking you (or anyone), I agree this particular change may have been too bold on my part. Jr8825 • Talk 17:44, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Oh, okay, thanks for telling me. My bad for misinterpreting the message. ButterSlipper (talk) 22:13, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

References

"amounting to" in first sentence

The first sentence in the article currently says (my emphasis):

The Uyghur genocide is the characterization of the human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang as amounting to genocide

My question, is what purpose do the words amounting to serve here? Do they actually serve any useful purpose or mean anything? What is the difference between amounting to genocide and just plain genocide? I understand some editors believe that WikiVoice should not declare genocide as a fact, but merely as a characterization. But doesn't the phrase is the characterization of earlier in the sentence do that sufficiently? Wiktionary defines amount (verb) as (sense 2) To be the same as or equivalent to. If we understand it as meaning the same as, it is adding literally nothing to the sentence–"the same as genocide" is, quite literally, "genocide". If we understand it as meaning equivalent to it means something slightly different – but who is actually claiming "it isn't genocide but it is equivalent to genocide"? It seems to me the actual real world positions here are:

1. "it isn't genocide" (position of the Chinese government and its supporters)
2. "it is genocide" (position of a number of academic researchers, the Washington Post editorial board, the US government, among others)
3. "not yet enough evidence to confidently say whether it is or isn't genocide"

I don't think anyone really believes "this isn't actually genocide but it is equivalent to genocide", and even if some rare person does, I don't see that viewpoint represented in reliable sources. So why not just delete the amounting to and make the first sentence read instead:

The Uyghur genocide is the characterization of the human rights abuses committed by the government of China against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang as genocide

(I know some editors disagree with the "characterization of" part, and would like the first sentence to say something more definite, but can we leave that discussion out of this section and just discuss the words "amounting to".) Mr248 (talk) 11:09, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

“Amounting to” seems a bit awkward, I’d agree. If there isn’t a substantial difference in meaning (there isn’t), then I’d recommend to just go ahead and make the change. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 13:14, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

There is a fourth camp “genocide is a legal determination not an academic one,” this would for example be the official position of the British government. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:04, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Horse Eye's Back, Yes, something along those lines is the current position of the British government. But, I don't think that position makes any difference to the phrase "amounting to". I think that position is really about the "characterization" part – people from that camp believe that the genocide has to remain a "characterization" until some court rules it exists – not the "amounting to". Mr248 (talk) 16:44, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

"amounting to" is actually perfectly in line with the arguments of the pro-genocide camp (that's poor phrasing, in-favor-of-labeling-as-a-genocide camp). The argument is not that one single action/series of actions constitutes a genocide (for example the mass killings of the Rwandan Genocide), but rather that all of China's policies in Xinjiang when taken together lead to a conclusion of genocide, cultural or physical. Hence, "amounting to" is useful for the "unique" nature of this genocide. This is why so many of the articles in favor of genocide rely on specific legal definitions instead of just pointing to something obvious that would make any rational person conclude it is a genocide, because that one obvious thing doesn't exist. It's only a genocide through a holistic lens, whereas just looking at a single one of China's policies in Xinjiang would not lead to a conclusion of genocide. At least that's what I see as the purpose of the "amounting to" BSMRD (talk) 15:14, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Almost right, the conclusion is of *intent* not of genocide itself (which is a foregone conclusion once both intent and effect have been establish). Remember that you can still do all the components of a genocide but if you did not intend to then its not a genocide, for example this is why it was so important to prove intent in Rwanda because mass killings (or any single action/series of actions) on their own don’t a genocide make. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:28, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

BSMRD, That's certainly not the position of everyone in the labelling-it-as-genocide camp. Consider for example doi:10.1353/gia.2021.0000, a paper by a Holocaust studies professor and a law professor. It quotes the Genocide Convention with regard to the five specific acts which can constitute genocide (when committed with genocidal intent), it says "Some reports suggest that each of the five acts constitutive of genocide may be occurring in Xinjiang..." but then says that for many of those five acts the evidence is unclear. But the authors zero in on one of the specific acts under under the genocide convention, the fourth act (article 2(d)) of "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group", and for this particular act they argue that "To date, the most compelling and credible evidence for an act committed with specific intent to physically destroy the Uyghurs, in whole or in part, is the Chinese government’s efforts to impose measures intended to prevent births within the group". They say "The well-documented campaign of suppressing Uyghur births leaves no doubt that the material element for the crime of genocide is present in this case. As for the mental element, direct evidence of China’s genocidal intent in the targeted geographic zone of Xinjiang is clear..." and go on to quote Chinese government publications which they argue demonstrate the genocidal mental intent of Chinese government officials. They conclude their analysis with "both the material and mental elements for a determination of genocide are in evidence, as revealed in the intent to destroy the Uyghur group, in whole or in part, through a well-documented campaign of suppressing Uyghur births in Xinjiang". So this paper at least is not arguing that "all of China's policies in Xinjiang when taken together lead to a conclusion of genocide", it is specifically arguing that China's forced abortion, forced sterilization and forced birth control, constitutes the material element of the crime of genocide of "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group", and that the ethnically targeted nature of the material element, combined with statements about their own motivations from Chinese government officials, meets the mental element. Their argument is not about a "holistic lens", it is arguing that "just looking at a single one of China's policies in Xinjiang" leads to a conclusion of genocide. Mr248 (talk) 16:18, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

• @Mr248: I have no strong view either way on those two words – I don't think they alter the meaning of the sentence, so if you think it's an improvement go ahead. I think "amounting to" might improve the readability a little bit by making the subject of the sentence a tad clearer, but it's by no means essential and does make it more wordy. One thing I'd add (a point I made in the lead sentence RfC), is that by maintaining the current title and opening with the title in bold, we're shoehorned into having a first sentence which says "characterisation of". I've said all along that I don't think this is the best solution, because I think it adds unnecessary doubt to the real human rights abuses. The sentence is there on the basis of the (weak) consensus of the last RfC, so there's not much to be done about it right now. One advantage, as I see it, of moving to a better title is that it'll allow us to open with a first sentence which focuses more squarely on the abuses themselves, similar to the current second sentence. If we get to the stage where there's strong enough sourcing to call it a genocide in wikivoice (without "characterisation") then it would once again be the ideal title and the first sentence wouldn't be so problematic. Jr8825 • Talk 17:40, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

don't give a rat's ass what the "reliable sources" that all trace back to (cite) American propaganda outlets like RFA and "academics" like Zenz cook up. I'll change my mind when I see Chinese state media stating to refer to Uyghur by degrading euphamism instead of the proper ethnonym or celebrate a Uyghurless Xinjiang 18 May style. But of course, wel all know that will never happen, because Uyghurs are one of the 56 flowers and a China without Uyghurs is not in line with that.--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 23:35, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

@PlanespotterA320: Did you mean to insert the above comment in the RfC discussion above? It doesn't seem to pertain to the "amounting to" discussion. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 00:51, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 5 September 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move, just like the last time, and a significant opposition to another move given the moratorium. While I don't have the power to extend the moratorium, I should remind editors that any move request before March of next year — and realistically, for a few months after — will be seen as somewhat disappointing. (non-admin closure) Sceptre (talk) 20:17, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

---

Uyghur genocide → Repression of Uyghurs in China – The current title fails the naming policy on non-judgmental descriptive titles (NDESC) because it is not the WP:COMMONNAME, as shown by the lack of usage in RS news media, which only refer to it as genocide with qualification ("alleged") and/or attribution, and frequently prefer alternative terms such as "oppression"/"repression". The NDESC violation is particularly unambiguous as "genocide" in this context is a criminal allegation (the term "genocide" is being applied in the context of the UN Genocide Convention, not in the frequently narrower dictionary definition of mass murder) which has not yet been proven in a court of law, a scenario which NDESC explicitly covers. A minority of RS have argued against using "genocide", such as The Economist, which makes the lack of firm consensus behind the opposing view (that it is a genocide) even more problematic.

Some editors have made compelling emotive arguments for maintaining the genocide label, and the literature to this effect is slowly growing. However, these arguments still rely heavily on non-expert sources such as Uyghur rights activists, a number of newspaper opinion columns and statements/non-binding motions made by politicians in various legislatures. There is no obvious, clear academic consensus: very few reliably published books/papers call it "genocide", and pending the future outcome of the Uyghur Tribunal, there has been no legal testing of the claim (the tribunal's outcome, and how RS report it, will be worth examining – I'd fully support a restoration of the current title if 1) it becomes the COMMONNAME, or 2) it's widely reported as a proven crime). There's an academic consensus that the crimes constitute a "cultural genocide" (as demonstrated by the majority of results for "Uyghur genocide" on JSTOR; for an example see [12]). Recent sources have begun to extend this by arguing that it's simply genocide, saying they "argue [that measures] signify an intent to destroy the group" [13]; at this stage high quality sources feel unable to call it an established fact. There's another pool of academic sources which include more unambiguous statements, such as "reports of [crimes]" carried out in Xinjiang "fall within genocide conventions" [14], also [15]. Other articles argue that cultural genocide is not covered by existing intl. law; see [16]. Papers which support the "genocide" label to varying degrees were collected by Mikehawk10 in the previous RfC (they can easily found in the second green collapsible section), including the above articles. The majority are from low impact journals (or ones so minor I cannot find an impact factor) and it's unclear how rigorous the peer review processes are in a number of cases. The tone of some articles (but not all) suggests they are adopting an activist approach to the topic, rather than a scholarly or legal one. The fact that that all quality newspapers have not followed these sources in calling it a genocide strongly indicates there is not yet a widespread consensus for the term across sources, including academic ones.

As a tertiary source, Wikipedia should not advocate for issues, even if editors personally believe it's self-evident that the abuses constitute genocide. Although this can be uncomfortable and morally challenging, it's our job to avoid this in order to maintain the integrity of the encyclopedia – our policies dictate that we must follow the weight of sources, which does not currently support calling it a genocide without attribution. This was reaffirmed by the previous RfC, which found a consensus that "genocide" is unsuitable for wikivoice per WP:NPOV, again demonstrating that the title fails NDESC. The closest policy-compliant titles to the current one, such as "Allegations of Uyghur genocide" or "Alleged Uyghur Genocide" would in my view be too weak and ambiguous, as RS are unanimous that severe human rights violations have been taking place.

I propose two alternatives:

• A: Repression of Uyghurs in China
• B: Uyghur cultural genocide

Collections of sources which demonstrate my argument can be found in the RfC on the lead sentence, also linked above, which ran from April-July, particularly in the two green collapsible sections. The discussion leading to this RM can be found here. The 5 previous RMs are linked from the talk page banner at the top of this page. Jr8825 • Talk 20:14, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

• Procedural and substantial oppose. Nothing fundamental has changed versus the previous two move requests. This is just a rehash of the same conversations we have had twice before now. Morgengave (talk) 20:27, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

  @Morgengave: "see previous consensus" is not a policy-based response to my argument that those previous discussions did not reflect our policy on article titles, and I don't think this argument was made in those discussions, so it's not a rehash. Jr8825 • Talk 20:33, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

  @Jr8825: I assume good faith, yet in my view it is exactly a rehash. I don't see new arguments being brought to the fore. It looks like a new cycle of the exact same conversation. Morgengave (talk) 20:37, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

  I don't think these points were made before, but if you're talking about opposition to the current title in the broader sense, then the reason this keeps resurfacing is because there's probably a policy violation, and quite a few editors have noticed it doesn't seem right but haven't pointed to the relevant policy. I think I'm making that argument more clearly than previously by pointing to the policy section it goes against. If the Uyghur Tribunal says its remit is "to investigate China’s alleged Genocide and crimes against Humanity, how can a tertiary source label it as genocide, rather than alleged genocide? Jr8825 • Talk 20:45, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. The last move request (in which I did not participate) was closed with a "Consensus for one-year moratorium unless substantial new information arises in reliable sources also exists". That was on 1 April 2021 so expires on 1 April 2022. This move request is not arguing that any "substantial new information arises in reliable sources" compared to what was available at the time of the previous one. Hence, I think this move request should be dismissed as contrary to the moratorium established by consensus in the previous one. Especially considering this is the third requested move for this article this year. I think if we have an extended discussion on an issue (like the April one was), it makes sense to give it some space (at least a year) before trying to open discussion yet again, unless there is some compelling new evidence or development, which there doesn't appear to be here. Mr248 (talk) 21:20, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

  Addendum, I don't see the logic of the "Uyghur cultural genocide" proposal. If reliable sources support calling it a "cultural genocide", they also support calling it a "genocide". What is the point of adding the word "cultural"? It seems like just a weasel-word to try to make genocide sound less bad. Under the Genocide Convention, genocide does not require industrial scale murder, which is a fact which anyone who is familiar with the topic knows; if one suffers from the (not uncommon) misconception that genocide only includes industrial murder scenarios such as the Holocaust, as opposed to the rather broader definition of genocide adopted under international law (and always supported by the term's coiner, Raphael Lemkin), the title of this article is not the right place for that misconception to be addressed. So putting aside the procedural issue about the consensus being violated, this move request is ill-conceived anyway. Mr248 (talk) 21:27, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

  This raises the rhetorical question of "why do the sources bother to call it a cultural genocide at all, if that's the same thing as genocide?" The thing is, a much larger number of sources call it a "demographic genocide" or "cultural genocide" than just "genocide" – I contend we should follow them, because of the policy concerns I raised above, which I don't think have been addressed. Jr8825 • Talk 21:36, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

  An electric car is still a car. A "cultural genocide" or a "demographic genocide" is still a "genocide". It is like if we had an article called "List of Tesla cars", and someone demanded we rename it to add the word "electric", because lots of sources call them "electric cars". Mr248 (talk) 21:40, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose and stop as above. Dushan Jugum (talk) 21:23, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

  @Dushan Jugum: @Mr248: I raised the point about the moratorium previously, and in the ensuing discussion editors pointed out that the moratorium was dependent on a continued consensus in favour of it, and in the absence of that it's unenforceable. It would've been helpful if you'd participated in the previous discussion on the moratorium or the conversation leading up this RM (above), instead of simply stonewalling the discussion now I've finally opened a RM, without engaging with the points raised or giving a proper explanation. I opened the RM as the previous conversation was inactive and broadly favourable. What in my analysis is incorrect? Why does this not go against NDESC? Jr8825 • Talk 21:29, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

  I did participate in the moratorium discussion. I might equally validly have stated, "in the ensuing discussion editors pointed out that the moratorium is still in force". The truth is that conversation fizzled without consensus. As is common practice, I'd say that no consensus means status quo (ongoing moratorium) continues. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 21:35, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

  @Jr8825: I don't see a clear consensus in that discussion in favour of your position that the moratorium does not apply. I think it still applies unless either (1) a clear consensus is reached to overturn it, (2) significant new reliable sources are found to challenge it, or (3) it expires. You can't expect people joining this discussion for the first time (and it is always beneficial to get new eyeballs on a dispute) to plow through immense talk page archives; and even if they do, they are unlikely to come to the same subjective interpretation of them as you do. Mr248 (talk) 21:37, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

  I've tried to link the most recent summaries of sources in the most accessible manner possible, I don't think much more can be done in that regard. The moratorium is a case of WP:BURO and I cited IAR to open the discussion at the top of this page. Because the responses were mostly favourable, and because the policy concerns raised there were not addressed/resolved, I believe the moratorium is no longer valid. I strongly oppose a close per SNOW before a wider range of editors offer their input, and more importantly, editors substantively engage with the policy issues raised above, which led me to open this RM in the first place. Jr8825 • Talk 21:50, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose and snowclose. Moratorium is still ongoing. O.N.R. ^(talk) 21:43, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME.--Ortizesp (talk) 23:09, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

  Do you have any evidence for that assertion, Ortizesp? Jr8825 • Talk 00:13, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

• Comment Hi Jr8825 (talk · contribs), what are your thoughts on COMMONNAME and cultural genocide being genocide. Dushan Jugum (talk) 23:33, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

  @Dushan Jugum: COMMONNAME is exactly what is says on the tin – the most commonly used name for a subject, and consequently the most popularly recognisable one. That's why COMMONNAME trumps the ideal situation, where Wikipedia is non-judgemental: it's a solid indication of widespread acceptance, and serves the need for accessibility/recognisability. "Uyghur genocide" is not currently the most frequently used term to describe what has been happening, as is evidenced by a look at RS news media coverage. Let's examine recent Guardian articles, one of the most vocal quality newspapers on this issue: "China is accused of systematic abuses against the Muslim Uyghur population in Xinjiang", "repression"/"Beijing’s crackdown on Xinjiang province", "continuing human rights abuses by the Chinese government". Or The Independent: "the security crackdown in which more than a million ethnic Uyghurs have been detained"/"The west accuses China of committing what amounts to genocide in Xinjiang in recent years". Or the BBC: "the Chinese state has been widely accused of human rights abuses in Xinjiang against the Ugyhurs and other Muslim minority groups". I don't see evidence that "cultural genocide" is the COMMONNAME, despite the academic consensus that the human rights abuses appear to amount to this, and even if it were the case, that wouldn't make "Uyghur genocide" the most commonly used name – in that scenario the only title justified by COMMONNAME would be "Uyghur cultural genocide", not another title that editors think is analogous to it (that would be original thought – WP:NOTESSAY/WP:OR, or WP:SYNTH). Absent a COMMONNAME or strong weight of sources supporting "genocide" without qualification, the policy on non-judgemental titles applies.

I have to say I find this pretty self-evident – if the best newspapers consider the term "genocide" to be too uncertain to state unambiguously, then neither should Wikipedia. If editors think the reason is not uncertainty, but that newspapers think it too controversial/damaging to their interest to print (self-censorship), then we're arriving at conspiratorial/OR analysis, unless there are sources which say this is the case. And to be honest, I have a high enough opinion of publications such as The Guardian and The Independent to think that they'll refer to it as a "genocide" without fear or favour if/when their editors determine with confidence the label is factually correct – and if that's not the case now, is the evidence we as Wikipedia editors are looking at really strong enough to come to a different conclusion, without resorting to OR? Jr8825 • Talk 00:13, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for answering my question. I dislike the argument 'we have discussed this before' and have thought the title a tad bold for sometime. I agree that the media and academic consensus is not settled see Uyghur genocide for more info. I see the current name as the best of some bad options. I am happy with taking a year to reassess as I see it as a near run thing eg. as soon as we change it we will need to change it back. Hopefully by then the NYT will either wake up or discover that everything was fine all along. Dushan Jugum (talk) 01:55, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support we shouldn't misinterpret the repression of Uyghurs in China as a genocide because we know that there is no academic consensus and the repression doesn't meet the standards of a genocide, therefore we would (most likely) be misinforming the reader. Only genocides are called genocides, other wise they're called massacres, repression, etc. ButterSlipper (talk) 00:18, 7 September 2021 (UTC) — ButterSlipper (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 17:22, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support A per WP:NDESC. WP:COMMONNAME arguments in favour of the current title are weak, as demonstrated upthread and in the previous move discussion. RS consistently attribute genocide claims. They do not generally state them in editorial voice, and neither should WP. Even the article lead says The Uyghur genocide is the characterization of the human rights abuses committed by.... Well, is it a genocide, or is it characterized by some as one? Parenthetically, I do not understand what the nature of the "substantial new information... in reliable sources" that would bring an automatic end to the consensus-based moratorium on move requests is imagined to be. The New York Times writing that there is no "genocide" after all? The moratorium seems like a can-kick, and the policy-based arguments advanced by Jr8825 are compelling. It seems to me that any moratorium should work in the opposite direction: the article title (and the article) should attribute claims of genocide, erring on the side of caution, barring the emergence of "substantial new information... in reliable sources" (that is to say, non-attributed, widespread identification of what's happening in Xinjiang as genocide in editorial voice). Anotheranothername (talk) 00:26, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
• Strongly Support A Uyghur Genocide is laden with WP:NPOV issues, that have been discussed at length on this talk page, and it isn't even the WP:COMMONNAME. With the current title unusable (we even explicitly refer to it as a characterization in the lead), that leaves the two proposed options. Uyghur cultural genocide is neither the WP:COMMONNAME nor WP:NDESC, so that just leaves Repression of Uyghurs in China which passes WP:NDESC, and includes both genocide and cultural genocide within its descriptor. RS are very careful throwing around the genocide label, and as a tertiary source (hell, in some cases quaternary) WP should not be rushing ahead to label this a genocide in wikivoice, which is what titling the article Uyghur genocide does. We are not here to WP:RGW or to spread the "truth" on a matter, but to say what sources do, and the sources say Uyghurs are repressed in China, with the possibility of genocide (cultural or otherwise). BSMRD (talk) 05:05, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. There is no consensus among news reporters for "Repression of Uyghurs in China" or "Uyghur cultural genocide" either. Seeing as the allegations describe genocide, I could only support changing the title to "Alleged Uyghur Genocide ," or no change. Netanyahuserious (talk) 10:00, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@Netanyahuserious: Newspapers frequently call it "repression" without attribution or qualification (I provided an example of The Guardian doing so in a 25 June article, just above this). I disagree with the idea that there isn't support for "repression" or "cultural genocide" in news media reporting – neither term is the most commonly used name (because there isn't one at the moment), but that doesn't mean there isn't unqualified support for both among sources ("repression" is supported primarily by editorial voice news media usages, which treat it as a factual statement; "cultural genocide" is supported by a considerable number of academic papers). The benefit of those two titles is that neither has been opposed or qualified to any notable extent in serious sources, and they also don't constitute a specific legal accusation under international law that's (as of yet) unproven. Jr8825 • Talk 13:14, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Jr8825, many media sources report that the Chinese government has engaged in forced abortion, forced sterilisation and forced contraception of Uyghur women – to give a random example, this. Article 2(d) of the Genocide Convention says that genocide includes "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group". And there are academic papers arguing that China's campaign of forced abortion/sterilisation/contraception does in fact constitute the crime of genocide under article 2(d), for example doi:10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1834, doi:10.1080/14623528.2020.1848109, doi:10.1353/gia.2021.0000.

When you call the allegation of genocide "(as of yet) unproven", what "proof" are you looking for? Is it that you think there are insufficient reliable sources to justify the claim that China is indeed engaging in forced abortion, forced sterilisation and forced contraception of Uyghur women? Or is it that you think there are insufficient reliable sources to justify the claim that said act constitutes genocide under article 2(d) of the Genocide Convention? And if you think the current level of reliable sourcing is insufficient for either or both, can you quantify how much more reliable sources would be necessary before unqualified "genocide" becomes acceptable? Mr248 (talk) 05:04, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

@Jr8825: both repression and cultural genocide are specific legal accusation under international law. Where are getting this information? You seems so sure of yourself but you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 06:12, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

@Mr248: I'm not looking for "proof" – per OR/SYNTH, it not our job to weigh up a collection of evidence to come to a conclusion on this ourselves – I'm looking for widespread acceptance among RS that they consider the evidence to be proof of genocide. I've already discussed those papers above, and in previous threads. The only one of the three which calls it an unambiguous, ongoing genocide is the IAGS, which has several issues. There's no restriction on IAGS membership on the basis of expertise, despite having "Scholars" in its name – anyone can join – it's not a group exclusively made up of experts, even though it does contain experts. I'm unsure about the quality of its peer review. I've previously found problematic sources linked to it in the Armenia-Azerbaijan topic area, where doubtful exceptional claims about a new genocide were made by members of IAGS and published in a source deprecated at WP:RSP. One of the two writers in this case is a "Uyghur rights advocate", Rukiye Turdush – given the lack of confidence I have in IAGS' peer review, I think its points need to be corroborated elsewhere, and I don't think it indicates widespread acceptance. The other sources don't say it's a proven genocide. I discussed and linked both above, but at the risk of repeating myself, the first says "Scholars and activists increasingly fear a Uyghur genocide" and the second says it "argues that the state’s measures to sterilize Uyghur women and reduce Uyghur birth rates signify an intent to destroy the group, therefore constituting at least one count of genocide — measures intended to prevent births". The latter is the strongest sourcing I've seen to support a genocide label, but if you carefully examine its wording it's explicitly making an argument, not reporting the genocide as an established fact. It's important to keep our eyes open for new academic sources, particularly if they build on the ones above and offer agreement (e.g. "X has convincingly argued"): if these papers become more widely cited it would strengthen the case for repeating their points on-wiki without attribution.

@Horse Eye's Back: you're mistaken, cultural genocide is not a specific crime under the current set of international laws which govern genocide and human rights abuses, largely laid out in the 1940s (e.g. the Genocide Convention). See [17], [18], [19]. The last source is the best, but behind a paywall so I'll quote it: "The complexity of the concept of cultural genocide ... renders its codification particularly arduous, [it is unlikely] that the concept will be reintroduced in the legal category of genocide. Against this background, international human rights law seems to constitute the most solid basis for a comprehensive approach to cultural genocide, as it provides solid primary obligations and mechanisms of responsibility, which can be extended to criminal responsibility for the crime of persecution, and especially reparation for the victims. This result might be disappointing for some, as it ends up placing the term ‘cultural genocide’ outside the international legal sphere. The concept still remains particularly relevant as a paralegal concept" (p.237). 'Repression' is similarly not a specific crime, the relevant legal framework for punishing repressive action is international human rights law, enforced by courts such as the ICC/ECHR etc. Jr8825 • Talk 17:11, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

International human rights law is part of international law, they are not separate bodies of law as you appear to be arguing. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:06, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

@Horse Eye's Back: Umm... I'm not arguing that? Let me rephrase. I'm saying "cultural genocide"/"repression" are not specific crimes that someone can be tried for. Genocide, on the other hand, is a specific crime, and there's not yet certainty that China's human rights abuses amount to the legal crime of genocide. People are keen to point out sources which argue the crimes are covered by existing genocide law, by there are also sources which suggest that the abuses may not be covered by it. Many scholars consider it be a "cultural genocide", a sub-type of genocide (a distinction they make themselves). The key accusation is "intent to destroy", which if proven would constitute genocide – so in this respect cultural genocide is genocide – but "cultural genocide" is not a crime in itself, the crime is genocide. This is the point the source above makes: "cultural genocide" is a "paralegal" label because it relates to law in an auxiliary manner (it isn't a legal concept itself, although it's informed by legal considerations). It's being applied by scholars to describe policies whose effect is the destruction of the Uyghur identity (in particular, accusations of a policy of mass forced abortion, and similar efforts to suppress birth rates – issues I've been wanting to expand coverage on in the article body for some time, as there are strong sources that we're not correctly utilising). Scholars are consequently calling it a "cultural genocide" because the policies appear to signal intent to destroy. This assumed guilt is not yet 'proven' (very difficult, not least because the ICC said it doesn't have a remit to investigate it). Most likely, they best we can achieve is 'widely accepted' guilt, which will be easier to determine if the Uyghur Tribunal says its genocide, and scholars and RS news media frequently call it a genocide without qualification. Calling it a cultural genocide has a narrower, more specific meaning that calling it a genocide. Jr8825 • Talk 18:57, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Unless I am mistaken only individuals are charged with crimes and we’re talking about a country in that sentence. Doesn’t that make your argument moot? Also we don’t use the phrase “the legal crime of genocide” we just use the common “genocide.” I also think that most scholars take the CCP at their word intent wise, language like "bury the corpses of terrorists and terror gangs in the vast sea of the People's War.” “break their roots” “kill the weeds” etc doesn’t need much analysis (see [20] etc). The question some scholars raise is whether both intent *and* effect have been established, those clearly labelling a genocide are contending that both have been established. Nobody is stopping you from improving the article, as long as you’re adding new well sourced content there won’t be much contention. Much less conflict heavy than trying to change the lead or title (especially when there is a move moratorium, thats basically the definition of bashing your head against a wall). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:09, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

China as a country can't be guilty of genocide, it's the Chinese government, and the individual officials dictating and carrying out its policies, who stand accused of genocide. One of the sources I read argued there's a case for holding Xi Jinping accountable because of evidence that he gave his personal authorisation/instruction to policies. I agree nobody's stopping me from improving the article – I've already contributed some of the text, and hope to add more! Unfortunately I tend to juggle a dozen different editing commitments at once. Jr8825 • Talk 19:28, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Jr8825, China as a country can't be guilty of genocide, it's the Chinese government. Under international criminal law as it currently stands, only individuals have clearly established capacity to be guilty of the crime of genocide. (Some argue sovereign states can be guilty of crimes as well, but that contention has thus far seen little acceptance in international law.) But, as well as a crime, genocide is also an internationally wrongful act, and sovereign states can be guilty of the internationally wrongful act of genocide. This was clearly established by the Bosnian genocide case–although in that case, the ICJ held that Serbia was not guilty of the internationally wrongful act of genocide (only of the lesser internationally wrongful act of failing in its obligation to prevent genocide), its ruling clearly established that genocide is an internationally wrongful act of which sovereign states can be guilty. So the sovereign state of the People's Republic of China ("China" for short) can be guilty of genocide under international law. Mr248 (talk) 05:06, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

In the legal sense nobody has been accused of genocide yet (unless I missed a series of indictments somewhere) on either a personal or governmental level. Nobody stands before a court accused of genocide, you appear to be out way ahead of your skis. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:53, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Jr8825, I get the impression you are mixing up what are in my mind multiple issues (1) "cultural genocide"; (2) whether there is sufficient evidence to justify the conclusion that Chinese officials have committed the crime of genocide under the Genocide Convention; (3) whether it is appropriate to state that conclusion in the absence of a court judgement.

The three are distinct. You seem to think that some scholars call it (1) because of concerns about (2) and (3), when in my mind that is actually mixing up unrelated concepts in the scholarly literature.

"genocide" was not originally a legal concept. It was coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944, and he saw it as applicable to a wide variety of historical circumstances – while his primary focus was on the Armenian genocide and the crimes of the Nazis, he also cited the 13th century Albigensian Crusade as an example. The international law of genocide begins with the Genocide Convention of 1948, which was based on Lemkin's ideas, but had a somewhat narrower definition of genocide. So non-legal definitions of genocide are actually older than the legal ones, and are an appropriate subject of scholarly attention. Indeed, most genocide studies scholars would prefer Lemkin's original broader definition (which includes "cultural genocide") rather than the narrower legal one. Why focus on the post-1948 legal concept when evaluating events in the 13th century? It makes little sense. But once you acknowledge you can evaluate pre-1948 events using a non-legal concept of genocide, why not apply the same non-legal concept to post-1948 events too? When you call the original non-legal definition "paralegal", you actually seem to be belittling it in comparison to the legal concept, rather than realising that the broader non-legal concept is older and distinct and just as valid. Genocide studies scholars tend to focus on the original broader non-legal concept, since that is the most important to them, although they are also interested in the narrower legal concept; legal scholars tend to focus on the narrower legal concept, since that is the most important to them, and rarely spend much time on the broader non-legal concept.

Anyway, there are really two different scholarly debates here – (1) is China committing genocide under the broader original definition (which includes "cultural genocide")?; (2) is China committing genocide under the narrower legal definition of the Genocide Convention (which doesn't include "cultural genocide", but does include acts such as forced abortion, forced sterilisation and forced birth control)?. You will find some scholarly sources focus on (1), others focus on (2), others consider both. But the two questions are fundamentally separate, and in your analysis of the issues you appear to be intermingling them. Doubts about (2) are fundamentally independent from the debate over (1), and so don't have relevance to deciding the appropriateness of "cultural genocide" as a label. Mr248 (talk) 04:44, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Jr8825, I see you have some objections to the reliability of Genocide Studies and Prevention Journal as a source. Maybe it would make sense to take that issue to WP:RSN for further discussion? I don't think the fact that IAGS allows non-scholars as members has any necessary implications on the quality of a journal they run; I think learned societies vary widely in their membership criteria, I doubt IAGS is the only one which permits interested non-scholars to join, and I doubt (in a less controversial area) people would think a learned society's membership policy has any great relevance to the reliability of a journal they publish. The important thing is that its leadership is dominated by scholars in the relevant field, which seems clearly true; and that the society is widely accepted by scholars in the relevant field as representing them (which also appears to be true). Furthermore, the fact that some (not all, and we don't even know what percentage of) members of a learned society publish claims – whatever their nature – in an open letter published in an unreliable non-peer-reviewed source, doesn't seem to have any necessary connection to the issue of the quality of a peer-reviewed journal they publish. And is "I'm unsure about the quality of their peer review" grounded in specific evidence that their peer review process is deficient, or simply the other issues you raise above? Anyway, I don't think there is any good reason to question that journal's reliability, but why not take it to WP:RSN?

With regard to doi:10.1353/gia.2021.0000, I think you are putting far too much weight on the use of the rather standard phrase "this paper argues that" in its introduction–in academic English, that standard phrase generally isn't used to express doubt or qualification by the authors with respect to their conclusion. And you seem to be ignoring much stronger language they use later in their paper, such as:

• The well-documented campaign of suppressing Uyghur births leaves no doubt that the material element for the crime of genocide is present in this case
• In sum, both the material and mental elements for a determination of genocide are in evidence, as revealed in the intent to destroy the Uyghur group, in whole or in part, through a well-documented campaign of suppressing Uyghur births in Xinjiang
• their use of the phrase genocide against the Uyghurs in their own voice, e.g The path to individual criminal accountability for crimes against humanity and genocide against the Uyghurs is similarly hindered
• China and its agents should be held legally accountable for the crimes against humanity and genocide they are committing in Xinjiang...
• their repeated use of the phrase China's crimes (which in the context of the article means both crimes against humanity and genocide)

  Mr248 (talk) 05:47, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support A, however it should be emphasized that I agree with the proposer the restoration of the current title if it becomes the COMMONNAME or it's widely reported as a proven crime. Hddty (talk) 16:48, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
• Procedural close: this article is under a moratorium on move requests until March 2022. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 17:35, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

  I believe the moratorium is invalid as it's currently protecting a title which fails the article naming policy, as outlined above and per the two discussions which led to this RM, all linked above. Jr8825 • Talk 17:42, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

  I don't believe a moratorium ends when editors believe it's invalid. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 17:54, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

  Happy with moratorium and close, very unhappy with that argument. We (editors) made the moratorium, we can unmake it, we don't need to get someone to take it to Mordor. This could be used to state that no (Featured) Wikipedia page can be edited from now on because its current state is the consensus of previous editors. To unmake it however we need a sufficient reason and who decides what that is... editors. I think we have said no, but I learned a lot from the chat. Anyway for someone who thinks this conversation should end, I sure do write on it a lot. Dushan Jugum (talk) 21:13, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

  I love "take it to Mordor", so thanks for that. I don't mean to suggest that editors, working together, can't unmake a moratorium. That's exactly how I think it should be done. I just don't think it's happened yet. We had one conversation, and I would say the clear outcome was: no consensus to end the moratorium. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 21:20, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

  @Firefangledfeathers: there was a thread on removing the moratorium (following several similar conversations) and no consensus was found – therefore there isn't a consensus for maintaining the moratorium, as was pointed out by several editors at the time. This RM has not appeared out of the blue, it follows a thread which showed there's still disagreement on the title and considerable support for re-examining it – this RM is the next logical and necessary step following its undecided outcome of that thread and the need for wider participation. There's no basis for closing this discussion prematurely. Jr8825 • Talk 22:19, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

  Jr8825, that's an unusual departure from the way Wikipedia consensus develops. Normally, no consensus closes result in the continuation of the status quo. Are you relying on any particular policy or guideline for this exception? Firefangledfeathers (talk) 22:28, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

• (1) Procedural close. To quote the FAQ for this talk page, Q: If I wish to rename the page, should I go ahead and open a move request? A: No. The closure of the move discussion beginning 1 April 2021 found consensus for a one-year moratorium on moving the page unless substantial new information should arise in reliable sources. Barring substantial new information, editors should avoid requesting another move until March 2022. Absent substantial new information from reliable sources that would justify moving the page, this is exactly the sort of thing that the moratorium was designed to avoid. The proposer does not attempt to present such information, but instead relies upon an analysis of old information and simply disagrees with the prior consensus. Additionally, the FAQ notes that If you believe that you have found substantial new information that would justify moving the page, please create a discussion regarding the moratorium itself, but do not create a move request unless the moratorium is lifted first. We haven't lifted the moratorium, no attempt to lift the moratorium has gained a consensus, and it appears that this condition is also not met.

  and

(2) Substantially Oppose. There hasn't been a substantial shift away from describing this as a genocide. If there is any substantial new information related to the naming of the page, it would be that even more sources are describing this as a genocide. Of particular note in this trend is The Atlantic, which has a highly detailed series of articles written in first-person that have been corroborated by The Atlantic’s fact-checkers that is characterized by The Atlantic as a a rare first-person account of the genocide in Xinjiang.

Additionally, a list of reliable sources describing this as a genocide are below, for your perusal.

---

Examples of RSes that use "genocide" for Uyghurs/Xinjiang in their own voice

• Academic sources (Peer-reviewed journals and law review articles)
  • Turdush, Rukiye; Fiskesjö, Magnus (28 May 2021). "Dossier: Uyghur Women in China's Genocide". Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal. 15 (1): 22–43. doi:10.5038/1911-9933.15.1.1834.

    Newer policies not only include previous measures such as sterilization and enforced abortions under the Chinese family planning policy, but also mass rape and sexual torture in the new concentration camp system built from 2017 onward; state-sponsored inter-racial forced marriages of Uyghur women to Han Chinese men, as well as the state placing Han Chinese male cadres (Party and government staff) in an innumerable Uyghur homes, violating the privacy of Uyghur women. Forced labor camps and factories also segregate Uyghur women and men in different places, thus serving the same purpose. All of these are acts of genocide which meet the Convention’s definition under article 2(b) and 2(d). ... In many cases, systematic mass rape in China’s concentration camps is intentional, conducted from the top-down, and centrally directed as part of the genocide plan to destroy the Uyghur people and nation.

  • Waller, James; Salazar Albornoz, Mariana (27 April 2021). "Crime and No Punishment? China's Abuses Against the Uyghurs". Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. 22 (1). Johns Hopkins University Press: 100–111.

    at least five counts of crimes against humanity—persecution, imprisonment, torture, enslavement, and forced sterilization— are being committed against the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims. This paper also argues that the state’s measures to sterilize Uyghur women and reduce Uyghur birth rates signify an intent to destroy the group, therefore constituting at least one count of genocide

  • Çaksu, Ali (Fall 2020). "Islamophobia, Chinese Style: Total Internment of Uyghur Muslims by the People's Republic of China". Islamophobia Studies Journal. 5 (2): 175–198.

    As it has been clear in the last 30 years since the Tiananmen Massacre, in the Chinese case, economic growth and technological progress do not bring improvements in human rights, democracy and freedom, but rather consolidate control and authoritarianism (and even have brought totalitarianism to the Uyghurs). Today, the Uyghur Region is the living embodiment of the Orwellian dystopia of 1984. The regime with its inhuman policies is currently carrying out genocide through concentration camps, surveillance capitalism and terror capitalism.

  • Radhakrishnan, Adi (Fall 2020). "An Inherent Right to Health: Reviving Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention)". Columbia Human Rights Law Review. 52. Columbia University: 80–139.

    Healthcare denial in Xinjiang violates Article II(c). There is significant evidence published before June 2020 that indicates the treatment toward Uyghur Muslims constitutes a violation of Article II(c). ... Repeated orders, evidenced from the leaked Xinjiang Papers, demonstrate an intent to "break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins," and to round up "everyone who should be rounded up," with the aim of eradicating the Uyghur communities. Such evidence goes beyond allegations of cultural genocide and encompasses harm perpetrated well before the reports of forced sterilization. The health practices and abusive treatment would fulfil the requisite actus reus elements under the originalist Article II(c) framework analyzed by this Note.

  • Eruygur, Adilcan (2020). Çincenin Uygur Türkçesinin Söz Varlığına Olan Etkileri, Uluslararası Uygur Araştırmaları Dergisi, Sayı: 2020/16, s. 1-14. doi: 10.46400/uygur.808151

    Çin Devleti, Doğu Türkistan topraklarını kalıcı ve sonsuza kadar ilhak edebilmek için Uygur Türklerine ve bölgedeki diğer Türk topluluklarına karşı da siyasi, dinî, sosyal ve kültürel baskıve zulmün yanında etnik soykırım politikası da uygulamaktadır. (in Turkish).

  • Gökçe, İsmail (September 2020). "Güneşin Doğduğu, İnsanlığınBattığı Topraklar: Doğu Türkistan". Türkiyat Araştırmaları Enstitüsü Dergisi (in Turkish). 69: 629–652. doi:10.14222/Turkiyat4352.

    Çin polisinin Uygurları fişlemek için kullandığı mobil uygulamadan, gerektiğinde bir eğitim kampına dönüştürülebilen zindanlara, iletişim olanaklarına uygulanan karartmadan, Uygur diasporasının kökten dinci bir terör örgütü olduğu yönündeki kara propagandaya kadar en ince ayrıntısına kadar tasarlanan soykırım planı sistematik olarak işlemektedir. (in Turkish).

  • Balaki, Naved (1 April 2020). "Islamophobia in Myanmar: the Rohingya genocide and the 'war on terror'". Race and Class. 62 (4). SAGE Journals: 53–71. doi:10.1177/0306396820977753.

    In China, structural processes enacted by the state have been implemented to imprison over a million Uighur Muslims in concentration and labour camps. Reports of the experiences of Uighurs under these state measures describe forced labour, the sterilisation of Uighur women, coercive thought-transformation and brainwashing, the harvesting of organs, rape and various forms of torture. Many of these violations fall within genocide conventions to which China is a signatory.

  • Fiskesjö, Magnus (2020). "Forced Confessions as Identity Conversion in China's Concentration Camps". Monde Chinois. 62 (2): 28–43. doi:10.3917/mochi.062.0028.

    Indeed, Chen Quanguo, the Communist Party officer directly in charge of the genocide in Xinjiang, builds directly on his personal experience in force-converting Falungong members in Henan, eastern China. ... Together with measures such as suppressing fertility and depriving children of their mother tongue, the ultimate purpose here is instead the destruction of the victim’s self, their pride and dignity, and their identity as Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and so on, thus destroying their nations altogether, by destroying them one by one and all together — in this genocide with Chinese characteristics, guided by purist, ultra-nationalist ideologues.

  • Finley, Joanne (2020). "Why Scholars and Activists Increasingly Fear a Uyghur Genocide in Xinjiang". Journal of Genocide Research. doi:10.1080/14623528.2020.1848109.

    [T]he suppression of Uyghur births on this scale, in concert with the Chinese state’s other efforts to eradicate the Uyghurs as a distinct ethnic group, amounted quite simply to a genocide-in-process

• The Atlantic (RSP Entry)
  • Mimbs Nyce, Caroline (14 July 2021). "The Atlantic Daily: One Man's Story of Escaping Genocide". The Atlantic.
  • "The Experiment Podcast: A Uyghur Teen's Life After Escaping Genocide". The Atlantic. 19 August 2021.
• Axios (RSP entry)
  • Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany (28 July 2020). "China's consulates do a lot more than spy". Axios.
  • Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany (31 July 2020). "U.S. sanctions China's paramilitary in Xinjiang". Axios.
  • Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany (11 August 2020). "The American blog pushing Xinjiang denialism". Axios.
  • Allassan, Fadel (22 August 2020). "Supply chain disruptions, sanctions threaten school shortage of 5 million laptops". Axios.
  • Allassan, Fadel (22 September 2020). "House votes to ban U.S. products made with forced labor in Xinjiang". Axios.
  • Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany (14 August 2020). "Lawmakers demand answers from World Bank on Xinjiang loan". Axios.
  • Perano, Ursula (12 September 2020). "Members of Congress demand answers over Disney's filming of Mulan in Xinjiang". Axios.
  • Basu, Zachary (8 October 2020). "More countries join condemnation of China over Xinjiang abuses". Axios.
  • Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany (22 February 2021). "Norway's youth parties call for end to China free trade talks". Axios.
  • knutson, Jacob (24 March 2020). "Facebook says Chinese hackers used platform to target Uyghurs abroad". Axios.
  • Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany; Baker, Kendall (31 March 2020). "FIFA's corruption and authoritarian regime problems". Axios.
• Deseret News (RSP Entry)
  • Romboy, Dennis. "What should U.S. do to shine light on Uyghur genocide during 2022 Beijing Olympics?". Deseret News.
• Foreign Affairs
  • Coca, Nithin (10 September 2020). "The Long Shadow of Xinjiang". Foreign Affairs.
• Just Security
  • Van Schaack, Beth (25 August 2020). "Policy Options in Response to Crimes Against Humanity and Potential Genocide in Xinjiang". Just Security. New York University School of Law.
• MIT Technology Review
  • O'Neill, Patrick Howell (27 May 2021). "Chinese hackers posing as the UN Human Rights Council are attacking Uyghurs". MIT Technology Review.
• National Catholic Register
  • Liedl, Jonathan (13 March 2021). "'Total Control': China Regime's Communist Ideology the Common Thread of Web of Human-Rights Abuses". National Catholic Register.
• News Co. Australia
  • "Chinese embassy release propaganda film riddled with misinformation on Uyghur genocide". News.com.au. 7 April 2021.
• The New Yorker (RSP entry)
  • Khatchadourian, Raffi (1 May 2020). "Surviving the Crackdown in Xinjiang, in Mandarin". The New Yorker.
  • Khatchadourian, Raffi (5 April 2020). "Surviving the Crackdown in Xinjiang". The New Yorker.
• Society + Space
  • Klimeš, Ondřej; Finley, Joanne Smith (7 December 2020). "China's Neo-Totalitarian Turn and Genocide in Xinjiang". Society + Space.
  • Green, Penny (7 December 2020). "Reflecting on the persecution of Uyghur Muslims from the perspective of the genocide of the Rohingya". Society + Space.
• The Taiwan Times
  • Conklin, Lisa (29 January 2021). "Biden Pressured to Act on Genocide Ruling, China Reacts, China Reacts, China Reacts!". The Taiwan Times.
  • Buckton, Mark (11 May 2021). "China Tries To Kibosh Wednesday UN Event On Uyghur Genocide". The Taiwan Times.
• World Politics Review
  • Ferguson, Kate (7 September 2021). "Genocide Designations Aren't Enough to Stop Mass Atrocities". World Politics Review.

Notes

---

What's more, the proposed names are not precise. The first option leaves this page open to containing the whole history of the repression of Uyghurs by China, which would substantially expand the scope of the article to include activities that date back far earlier than 2014, which the article currently frames as the beginning of the ongoing Uyghur genocide. Should we pick option A, The substance of the article would naturally be changed; an article with such a title should include events that have occurred prior to the 2010s, including the first decade of the 2000's. Should we pick option B, the title would exclude the demographic and physical components of the ongoing genocide, which include forced sterilizations, forced contraception, and forced abortions.

On the other hand Uyghur genocide is a recognizable, precise, natural, and concise, title for the ongoing human rights abuses that's consistent with how the genocide convention lays out the definition of genocide. In my view, and as has been discussed to death in previous move requests, the title "Uyghur Genocide" is both a WP:COMMONNAME and a title that suits the criteria of the article titling policy.

— Mikehawk10 (talk) 04:43, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing your take on this, Mikehawk10. I've already explained above my view regarding the sources/COMMONNAME, so I'll leave it to others to decide who they agree with. One thing I do want to note though is that yes, I do "simply disagree with the prior consensus" – that's the basis for my opposition to the moratorium, as I believe it's obstructing discussion and improvement by locking in the current title, even though the last two threads have shown there isn't a continuing consensus that the title is unchallengeable. I suspect editors wanting to keep the current title will be happy to let a year pass, as they think the sourcing will be more explicitly favourable for "Uyghur genocide" in the medium-term future, and we won't have to rely on a smattering of sources and synthesis. I hope this becomes the case, but unfortunately it's WP:CRYSTAL. I contend the title fails the naming policy as things stand today, and it should change to comply with policy until the sourcing is clear, not in the hope it becomes more clear soon. Jr8825 • Talk 17:29, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Mikehawk10, I think your point about The substance of the article would naturally be changed is a good one. The current article title gives it a specific scope – focusing on recent events, rather than the entire history of PRC government policy towards the Uyghurs – most sources which state that it is a genocide, are primarily focusing on recent events in making that statement – whereas you are right that changing its name to Repression of the Uyghurs would remove that recent temporal focus. Similarly, a title Uyghur cultural genocide excludes physical genocide, such as forced abortion, forced sterilisation and forced birth control from the scope, when many of the sources saying that it is a genocide focus on those physical aspects. I oppose moving this, but if it is going to be moved, it really needs to be moved to a title which keeps its scope the same, such as Uyghur genocide controversy. That title would keep the scope unchanged. However, among other objections, that is definitely not the COMMONNAME – I can find zero sources using that phrase.

Since there is no alternative title which (a) keeps the scope unchanged (Repression of the Uyghurs and Uyghur cultural genocide do not), and (b) cannot be objected to on other grounds (as Uyghur genocide controversy can be), that's a very good argument for keeping the current title unchanged. Mr248 (talk) 02:26, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

• Strongly Support A I agree with all points that Jr8825 has made. It has been quite ridiculous from the very beginning to attribute the 'genocide' label when it has always had the word "alleged" or "other sources claim" attached to it -- as such, I believe that this discussion is valid, and moreover the moratorium was only an effort to stifle constructive discussion to begin with. Dazaif (talk) 01:18, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
  • AMEN. ButterSlipper (talk) 02:07, 10 September 2021 (UTC) — ButterSlipper (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 17:22, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support A, for reasons I've written in these pages. 71.191.48.126 (talk) 03:01, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
  • @71.191.48.126:, you've made five other edits than the one to !vote, one of which could possibly be related to this. The edit was to put an edit request template on top of content that had been written by ZvZisTrash If you indeed are ZvZisTrash, then I don't think that an unsourced rant with no reference to wikipedia policy is any more a valid rationale to move the page than WP:IDONTLIKEIT. If you aren't ZvZ, then I have no clue what edits you are referencing. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:21, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support A but there are preferable alternatives. The title and lead have been constructed in a way that plays on the reader's emotions. They serve to push anti-China POV instead of presenting the facts to the reader. I find it preposterous that we're starting this article off with this so called "characterization of the human rights abuses as genocide" instead of just stating some of the allegations. We shouldn't be interjecting some opinion (people characterizing these events as a genocide) in the first sentence. As for actual substantiation for the supposed genocide there is none whatsoever. The Uighur population is rising, allegations of internment camps continue to be discredited (often by the Uighurs themselves in interviews), and even the US state department admitted that they have no evidence whatsoever of a Uighur genocide. A better title for this article would be "Uighur genocide conspiracy theory". 2001:1970:564B:4700:4084:EA11:6E2A:5252 (talk) 02:40, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

  As for actual substantiation for the supposed genocide there is none whatsoever... even the US state department admitted that they have no evidence whatsoever of a Uighur genocide When did they "admit" this? Your argument is just a bunch of opinion-based assertions with no sources provided in support of them. The US State Department declared it to be a genocide under the Trump administration, and under the Biden administration it has continued has continued to support that determination–see 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: China (Includes Hong Kong, Macau, and Tibet) (although the report has 2020 in its title, it was published on 30 March 2021, under the Biden administration), Promoting Accountability for Human Rights Abuse with Our Partners (22 March 2021; quote: "Amid growing international condemnation, the PRC continues to commit genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang"); Secretary Blinken’s Roundtable with Xinjiang Internment Camp Survivors and Advocates (6 July 2021). The first two state department publications I cited specify what evidence they view as justification. So where is this "admission" you claim exists? Mr248 (talk) 03:02, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

  To add on to what Mr248 notes above, the notion that allegations of internment camps continue to be discredited seems to be without backing from any reliable sources. A Pulitzer prize was given for reporting on this topic this year, and there's quite a lot of detailed reporting on the camps themselves. Do you have reliable sources to support your claim? — Mikehawk10 (talk) 03:55, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

  @Mikehawk10: When did they "admit" this? They admitted it back in January or February and it was widely reported by the media at the time. Here are two sources for that event if you still don't believe me [21] [22]. The article's lead and title are the real "opinion-based assertions", not my argument. It's clear that there is no media consensus of China's policies in Xinjiang constituting a genocide. Sure, some elements of the US government are indeed calling this a genocide in order to justify sanctions and for other reasons, however its absolutely ignorant to claim that there is no opposition to the notion of a Uighur genocide within the US political apparatus. @Mr248: I certainly do have sources, a few of the so-called "internment camps" turned out to be vocational training schools that students voluntarily attended and benefitted from [23] [24]. Another time the CIA took aerial photographs of known schools in Xinjiang and claimed they were concentration camps [25]. Many foreign sources supposedly "documenting Uighur camps" get their information from fabricated photographs and fake testimonies paid for by the west [26] [27]. 2001:1970:564B:4700:4084:EA11:6E2A:5252 (talk) 22:12, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

  The first source you cite in your response is "globaltimes.cn", which is not accepted as a source on Wikipedia–see WP:GLOBALTIMES which states The Global Times is a tabloid owned by the Chinese Communist Party. It was deprecated near-unanimously in a 2020 RfC which found that it publishes false or fabricated information, including pro-Chinese government propaganda and conspiracy theories.. Another source you repeatedly cite is CGTN, which is also not accepted as a source on Wikipedia–WP:CGTN states China Global Television Network was deprecated in the 2020 RfC for publishing false or fabricated information. Many editors consider CGTN a propaganda outlet, and some editors express concern over CGTN's airing of forced confessions. If you are relying on deprecated sources such as Global Times and CGTN to make your argument, it should not be given any weight. Mr248 (talk) 22:41, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

  @Mr248: You are being disingenuous by entirely disregarding the information I have presented based on it being published by what you call "Chinese propaganda outlets". There are a whole range of non-Chinese sources from multiple countries including Turkey [28] and Philippines [29] reporting the very same findings that were in the CGTN articles and even if the Chinese sources are deprecated the burden of proof is still on you to address the evidence I have brought forward. Not to mention you ignoring the non-deprecated source I cited in reference to what I said about the US state department. Completely reprehensible. 2001:1970:564B:4700:3C3D:DBAA:A70A:AC5 (talk) 01:06, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

  (edit conflict)To add on to Mr248's comments above, there are problems too with Aydınlık and with the archived Globalresearch.ca sources. For the latter, as noted on its RSP entry, the website is known for its wide dissemination of conspiracy theories (just look up its writing about WTC 7 and the September 11 attacks). The former is the official newspaper of a small left-wing political party in Turkey, and it... appears to be really clickbaity and has gone after Buidhe in the past for describing ethnic cleansing during the Turkish War of Independence (as noted at this RSN archive. It hasn't been discussed as thoroughly as the other sources on this wiki, but it sure looks like a Turkish left-wing version of the Global Times. And, even if it were reliable, the source seems to be mostly focused on rebutting a series of Turkish-language tweets than actually rebutting the detailed reporting on abuses in the area. The article also alleges that The New York Times is launhching an international campaign of fake news with its "key country" being Turkey, which... I don't think I've even seen that bizarre claim in Chinese state media. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 01:23, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support A. Our naming policy holds that if there is no common name (WP:COMMONNAME) for an event demonstrated in reliable sources, we are obliged to come up with a neutral descriptive title (WP:NDESC). "Uyghur genocide" is plainly not a common construction used in RS, so it is not the common name (many or most recent/ongoing events do not have a common name; some may never gain one: consider Internment of Japanese Americans as a likely example of this). When there is a common name, it will be obvious: source analysis in the previous RfC ([30]), as well as a cursory search of newspapers and academic journals, clearly demonstrates that there is not one. As for whether "genocide" is usable for a neutral descriptive title, the evidence similarly demonstrates that the label is rarely used without attribution in reliable sources (e.g. in "newsvoice"), especially in academic ones that we should weigh the most. This stands in contrast to events like the Genocide of Yazidis by ISIL, which all reliable journalistic and academic sources universally describe in their "newsvoice" or academic voice as a "genocide". As the same is not true for this set of events, where the situation is far more murky in and contentious among RS, we must reflect that. Since as of right now there is instead a universal agreement that China is repressing/oppressing/perpetrating human rights violations against Uyghurs and their culture, which can be confirmed by reviewing the terminology used by RS, I think that A is a good choice for a neutral descriptive title. — Goszei (talk) 08:29, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

  Goszei, Do you have a response to the argument that "Repression of the Uyghurs" substantially changes the temporal scope of the article? Most of the sources which use the term genocide are referring to recent events in Xinjiang, not the entire 70+ year history of PRC government policy towards the Uyghurs. Changing the title to "Repression of the Uyghurs" risks losing that recent temporal scope and talking about things which happened decades ago, which may not be considered to be genocide by authors which do consider more recent events to be genocide. To give a good example, doi:10.1353/gia.2021.0000 is an academic paper arguing that recent changes in the application of Chinese birth control policies in Xinjiang constitute the genocidal act of "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group", but it cites those acts as having begun within the last 10 years, it isn't trying to label whatever things the Chinese government did to the Uyghurs in the prior decades is genocide, even if some of those things may have indeed been repression.

  As I said above, if it really can't stay at its current name, something like "Uyghur genocide controversy" or "Uyghur genocide allegations" would do a better job of keeping its scope intact than a broader term like "Repression of the Uyghurs". (I'm not saying I support either of those alternatives, I don't, I support the current title only, but if we have to change it I'd view either of those titles as better than "Repression of the Uyghurs" in keeping the scope intact.) Mr248 (talk) 22:24, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

  User:Mr248 You make a good point, but I don't think the damage to the scope under option A is fatal. It could be ameliorated with some reorganization: the last two paragraphs of "Background" (which cover post-1997 events) could be moved to the start of "Government policies" (which right now only cover post-2009 events); many longer histories of Uyghur repression focus on 1997 as a turning point in the ramp up in human rights violations, and frame the repression as somewhat of a continuum (post-1997, post-9/11 anti-Islamism, separatist terrorism and anti-terrorism in the 2000s, post-2009, and then the post-2014 campaign). I do like the title "Uyghur cultural genocide" because clearly sets the scope as post-2014, but I shied away from this in my !vote since it failed to gain consensus at the last RM and has gained little support so far; to be clear, I support both A and B in about equal measure. What about the title "Repression of Uyghurs in China (2014–present)"? I note that the corresponding coverage of previous repression is sort of spread out over two articles right now: Racism in China#Conflict with Uyghurs and Xinjiang conflict#20th century. Maybe one of those could be turned into a solid coverage of 1949–2014 repression (or even just 1997–2014 repression) that we could link to as a "Main article" within "Background", and then this article could serve as the counterpart. — Goszei (talk) 00:20, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose for the following reasons.

1. The title "Uyghur genocide" was used in numerous RS, including academic ones - see list of RS by one of contributors above in this thread [31].
2. It does fit classic (and UN) genocide definition, i.e. " the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group" [32]
3. This is a concise and telling title. Something like "repression", "oppression", "persecution"? Yes, this is all happening, but it misinterprets the scope of the forced incarceration of a more than a million people. Just a "cultural genocide"? No, various measures to forcefully decrease the population of a certain ethnic group is not anything just "cultural". This is genocide. That's why it typically appears as such in RS.
4. The procedural reasons (already described by several participants above). My very best wishes (talk) 13:28, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

• Strong support for A. As I have expressed before, calling policy in Xinjiang dilutes the meaning of the word genocide to the point to belittling actual genocide victims. Unless we see some kind of significant policy change in the future (ex, dissolution/downgrading of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region into a non-titular entity, explusion of the Uyghur nation from Xinjiang, derecognition of Uyghurs as a distinct ethnic group/one of the "56 flowers", etc) it is downright irresponsible to use the word genocide. The sources claiming genocide as opposed to simply repression or surveilance are fringe with major COI.--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 14:25, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

@PlanespotterA320: are you under the impression that the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region is autonomous or run by Uyghurs? Also I think you might want to review the sources again, thats a lot of mainstream academics you’re saying are fringe with major COI. Also note that just on a basic level none of the things you’ve named would be necessary components of a genocide, for instance the Nazis made putatively “autonomous” Jewish areas and ghettos, they never derecognized than as an ethnic group, and they never expelled them from Germany. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:01, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

@Horse Eye's Back: I don't disagree with most of your comment, but your last statement that the Nazis never expelled Jews from Germany isn't true. See for example USHMM page on German Jews during the Holocaust which says (for example) "Upon Hitler's authorization, German authorities began systematic deportations of Jews from Germany in October 1941..." Now there are multiple ways to commit genocide, deportation is only one of several, so it would be a mistake to say that "China isn't deporting the Uyghurs so it cannot be committing genocide against them". But still I felt I had to correct this mistake of fact. Mr248 (talk) 22:54, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

I’ve really appreciated your contributions but given that they were deported from Germany proper to German occupied territory I’m not really seeing that as a real distinction... Especially as Xinjiang is 4.5x larger than Germany all on its own and larger than the combined area of Germany and all the occupied countries in which they operated camps. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:49, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

This is getting somewhat off-topic, but when genocidal deportations happen, they almost always are to occupied territories. If you don't occupy the territory, you are unlikely to be able to deport anyone to it – the territory's authorities will likely say "we don't want these people, we are sending them back to you". So if we say Germany deporting German Jews to German-occupied Poland doesn't count as deportation because the later was German-occupied, then we are narrowing our definition of "deportation" to the point that deportation as a form of genocide will almost never occur. However, it really is irrelevant to Xinjiang, since nobody is claiming that China is deporting Uyghurs to somewhere outside of China. Mr248 (talk) 00:23, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@PlanespotterA320: Here's a journal article doi:10.1353/gia.2021.0000 coauthored by a Holocaust studies professor and a law professor – and published in a respected peer-reviewed journal of international affairs, the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs – which argues that the Chinese government is imposing forced abortion, forced sterilisation and forced birth control on the Uyghurs, that those acts are being disproportionately applied to Uyghur, that the disproportionate application of those acts to the Uyghur is motivated by a desire to limit their population, and that this constitutes the crime of genocide under article 2(d) of the Genocide Convention, which includes "Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group" as a form of genocide. Is that article "fringe with major COI"? Mr248 (talk) 22:43, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Invoking Holocaust (real genocide) comparisons with to describe the situation in Xinjiang (not genocide at all) throught use of outlandish Nayirah 2.0 to claim there is persecution doesn't cut it. The Zenz miscalculations of birth contral stats have been repeatedly debunked. Uyghur population continues to grow, not plummetted. It is only a matter of when, not if, this article will be renamed, because there is no Uyghur genocide in the first place and sooner or later the propaganda will die down and it will be remembered as the new WMD's story.--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 23:08, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

PlanespotterA320, I'm citing an article in a respected peer-reviewed journal, you are just making uncited claims. Why should anyone reading this prefer your viewpoint to one which is based in reliable sources? Mr248 (talk) 23:26, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

• There is nothing wrong with making Holocaust comparisons. Holocaust museums do it [33]. Jewish leaders do it [34]: “Two key aims of Holocaust education today are encouraging young people to speak out against all forms of discrimination at the first signs, and sounding a warning that the Nazi persecution of the Jews didn’t start with the gas chambers. This is why survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides can play such a key role in speaking out in support of the Uighurs, and why their children and grandchildren feel such a strong impetus to do so.” My very best wishes (talk) 18:19, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

• Weak Oppose & Procedural Close As others have brought up, the Uyghur Genocide page is move protected until March 30th next year. As this is a 'touchy subject' to say the least, it has and will continue to be the subject of controversy. Those who favor a very narrow definition of 'genocide', those who believe more specific information on the repression is required to warrant the name, and of course those sympathetic to the Chinese regime, will always wish to see the article renamed, and for the opening sentence of the article to describe the label 'Uyghur Genocide' rather than describe the Uyghur Genocide. But there has simply been no substantial shift in available scholarly consensus (that repressive government policy in Xinjiang since the mid-to-late 2010s constitutes genocide, but that specifics regarding the total scope, nature, organization, and intent, of said genocide remain highly ambiguous) since the moratorium was established which would justify cutting the moratorium short and changing this article's title. Discussion of the characterization and alternative labels are much better suited to the 'classification' section, rather than its title or opening sentence. --Thereppy (talk) 21:03, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support A, at least until sources come around to a broader consensus. Benjamin (talk) 05:04, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.