“Let’s be careful with our language,” advises Stapleton Roy, former U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China.
Very careful. Totally careful. Totalitarian-ly careful.
Speaking to students earlier this month in a Zoom meeting as part of Pomona University’s Model United Nations, Roy took issue with Hong Kong students and protesters for “provoking mainland intervention,” arguing the millions who marched for basic democracy “went too far” and should have used more “self-restraint.”
The U.S. foreign affairs veteran even decries the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which he also concludes “set back the cause of reform in China for decades.”
And here I was thinking that the massacre of an estimated 3,000 to 10,000 unarmed Chinese civilians by the People’s Liberation Army is what detoured that noble cause.
“China has come under criticism from U.S. officials following revelations of mass forced sterilization of Uyghur women, as well as the internment of over one million Uyghurs in camps where detainees are forced to learn Communist Party ideology. Reports of torture, rape, and other abuses have emerged from these camps,” writes National Review’s Zachary Evans.
“Genocide is generally used to refer to the extermination of a people or nation,” Ambassador Roy explains. “Genocide is not taking place in Xinjiang.”
Yet according to the United Nations, the Chinese Communist Party’s manner of oppression does constitute “genocide.”
“More accurately,” even Roy acknowledges, “there is what can be called ‘cultural genocide.’”*
That is merely the extermination of a people’s customs, religion, ethnicity and, imperatively, their freedom … but kindheartedly not murdering all of them.
Okay, Mr. Ambassador, let’s choose our terms precisely. Protesters in Hong Kong have a word for the Beijing government: “ChiNazis.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* What a coincidence! “China seized control over Tibet in 1950 in what it describes as a ‘peaceful liberation’ that helped the remote Himalayan region throw off its ‘feudalist’ past,” notes a recent Al Jazeera report. “But critics, led by exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, say Beijing’s rule amounts to ‘cultural genocide.’”
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4 replies on “The Culture of Genocide”
[Cultural genocide] is merely the extermination of a people’s customs, religion, ethnicity and, imperatively, their freedom … but kindheartedly not murdering all of them.
A distinction without a difference.
Absolutely!!! Thanks, Pat.
Ambassador Roy has clearly bought into the new world order where the first and primary Commandment of secular government is “I am the government and thy god, and will have no authority before me.” Religious beliefs and the moral precepts which come from them are a hinderance to such organizations, and must be eliminated.
The former Ambassador not concerned with the actions of China because he is a believer, and is working towards the same goal in the US and worldwide. Such beliefs and advise, especially when taught to youth, are not in accord with the Constitution he swore to uphold and defend — they are the path to its destruction.
Spot on. That is intended for America as well.