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Comment by em500 | Hacker News Reader

> So is the position of Intel that slave labour in concentration camps is an acceptable means of production?

Maybe their position is that they have not established as a fact that there is slave labour in concentration camps in Xinjiang? Have you considered that as an alternative possibility?

From the article:

> The letter now reads that the company prohibits "any human trafficked or involuntary labour such as forced, debt bonded, prison, indentured, or slave labour throughout your extended supply chains."

That automatically covers Xinjiang is there is slave labour there, in additional to all other instances of slave labour, no? That sounds like a better wording than the original.

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I can believe the Earth is flat if I avoid the evidence and don't care about congruence - especially if financially motivated.

I could not agree with you more, it amazes me the mental gymnastics some will go through in the quest to convince themselves otherwise of something wholly obvious. Sure, you could take the CCP’s word for it (because their behavior is not at all suspicious and they have a great track record when it comes to human rights). And sure, to some that might hold a lot of weight. However, even if rumored, don’t you want to be the one that doesn’t support genocide regardless?

The even bigger tell is when the UN wanted to go into China to independently investigate, the CCP denied access. They don't want to be a team player in the global society/economy.

Intel has no motive to falsely allege forced labor use in China. In fact, Intel has every motive to ignore abuses so as not to alienate the CCP. So, your implication that Intel jumped the gun and made false accusations without proof lacks motive, at the very least.

The motivation was likely some compliance move with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act according to the TFA. There is no indication that Intel's initial wording was prompted by their own investigations in Xinjiang.

Clearly they believe (as do you) that specific mention of Xinjiang was not required for compliance. Is the theory that Intel intentionally added the word to make some moral or at least political point, at China's expense? I guess I don't buy that, because one of the upsides of being a ruthless corporation out only for profit is that you don't do things that risk profit.

Engaging in epistemic and semantic hair splitting does not alter the reality of slave concentration camps or make it any less worse.

Here is a recent article [0] on rape and forced sterilization of Uyghur women.

[0] https://nypost.com/2021/12/18/uyghur-women-recall-horrors-of...

Here's an article on the same thing happening in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_rape_in_the_United_Stat....

sterilization as well: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/16/913398383/whistleblower-alleg...

from the NYPost article

"The year after she was arrested off the street, still in China, she was summoned to a police station and told that she needed to complete her training. "

if it's the same as prison rape in the US then what prison is she in? Further, prison rape is a crime.

"Her story is, tragically, not uncommon for members of the minority Uyghur religion, with Turkish roots, in President XI Jinping’s China. Since around 2016, they have been pulled off the street and sent to reeducation camps — where reports have surfaced about people being tortured, raped and even killed. They are sent there under the auspices of learning a trade and having their patriotism reinforced."

your attempt at equating this with the crime of prison rape in the US is reprehensible.

Interestingly enough, if something is bad in the US, it can also be bad elsewhere.

Even worse though, there are indications that this behavior is institutionally supported and desired in China. After all, if the local governors make rules to force non-Uyghur men to sleep in the bed of Uyghur women (even married ones) and offer forced sterilization otherwise, perhaps - just perhaps - you are peddling a false equivalence.

By the way, the latter meets the definition of genocide. In case you care.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. The parent is talking about rape and forced sterilization by people in positions of power in these camps. Your link is just talking about prison rape. There's no mention of forced sterilization. There is discussion of it talking about guards (4% of inmates are sexuality assaulted and <10% of those cases are by facility members) but the data is both old and low and the article talks about the US extending legal rights to inmates (2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act) whereas China's official claim is that there's nothing bad happening (they're just "reeducation campus"). No one is condoning prison rape in the US, especially prison rape by facility members. But these are drastically different things.

I don't know how someone can compare these things with a straight face.

This is just whataboutism. You can care about both these issues, it's allowed.

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