> And you don't have to look too many years back in time to find concentration camps for specific ethnicities.
Two things here.
First, 1945 was a long time ago.
Second, the interment of Japanese-Americans was shameful. It was a concentration camp. It was not intended to make them "un-Japanese" or to destroy their culture.
What's happening to the Uighurs is different on both fronts. It's right now. And it's not just "we'll round up these people and put them in a camp to keep them from maybe doing espionage for a country that we're currently at war with". It's "we're going to completely destroy their cultural identity". What China is doing meets the definition of genocide (even if they aren't killing people, they're killing their ability to be part of "a people"). What the US did was shameful and was falling far short of our ideals as a nation, but it was short of genocide.
Two things here.
First, 1945 was a long time ago.
Second, the interment of Japanese-Americans was shameful. It was a concentration camp. It was not intended to make them "un-Japanese" or to destroy their culture.
What's happening to the Uighurs is different on both fronts. It's right now. And it's not just "we'll round up these people and put them in a camp to keep them from maybe doing espionage for a country that we're currently at war with". It's "we're going to completely destroy their cultural identity". What China is doing meets the definition of genocide (even if they aren't killing people, they're killing their ability to be part of "a people"). What the US did was shameful and was falling far short of our ideals as a nation, but it was short of genocide.