Them not being equivalent is also, literally, the US state department line. The CPC has been trying to equate their handling of Uighur seperatism in Xinjiang with the US “war on terror” since 2001. It kind of worked too. They got Uighur seperatist groups designated as terrorist organisations, did international anti-terror collaborations against them and until 2009 there were even Uighur seperatists imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay.

What should and have happened, as was suggested in the paper I quoted, was a crackdown on everyone advocating for or planning terrorist acts or violent seperatism while addressing the blatant inequalities between the Uighur people and Han Chinese via affirmitive action and ending the systematic discrimination that was spurring radicalization in the first place and leaving the vast majoriy of the many millions of Muslims and Uighur’s who weren’t violent or even ideological seperatists to practice their culture and religion in peace.

Why do you think it’s ok for an ethnic and religious minority to be discriminated against systematically and that when that discrimination radicalises a tiny minority of that group into seperatism to address this and double digit numbers of that minority commit terrorist acts in the name of separatism that somehow justifies banning outward expression of that religion and culture practiced by millions and imprisoning everyone who resists?