• albigu@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    Finally a claim and a source. I recommend you rewatch that BBC video and try to separate the claims from the evidence. The BBC has this great technique where they mix claims backed by some evidence (which might not be good) with a bunch of claims from interviewees backed only by sounding authoritative. You'll probably notice the "evidence" provided is basically:

    • A man claims he was arrested.

    • The main thing, the (racistly named) China Cables, and a bunch of reactions to those documents. You can check the documents themselves here, though you have to weigh the possibility of them being forged or the translation being doctored. Though you'll notice that even this dubious document does not describe anything that looks like a genocide.

    • A woman says she got arrested.

    • Another woman saying her husband got arrested.

    • Yet another claims that she was forced to teach there.

    • That's it really.

    Now, if you pay attention you'll notice the BBC horribly obfuscates their sources, but reading the main document (which they claim to be a concentration camp manual), it reads like a very heavy-handed manual for what they're actually advertised as: vocational training and de-radicalising centres.

    Then later on they say a man was arrested for using WhatsApp, and show some hacker aesthetics version of bulletin 20, but that one describes people who use 快呀 (kuaiya) software (apparently a file sharing app) to spread violent material.

    After that, they do the same thing with bulletin 2, framing the notion that people with passports who can't be ruled out as terrorists needing security checks as a bad thing. Specially considering some of the countries listed have a history of financing terrorist groups abroad. Note that none of the claims by the previous interviewees (cameras checking even which doors you use) are in this source.

    Skipping over all the interviewees again they cite the telegram to say that inmates have to stay at least 1 years and there are some conditions for leaving, such as good scores and less terrorist behaviours. If you ignore the sad music, sounds like a pretty normal thing for a de-radicalisation centre. Then they randomly add that "after that students may have to do forced labour" but cite something else entirely that says that they should be aided and monitored for one year. Weird.

    Then they interview the "Washington-based Uyghur group guy" lol. That's all, really, but with a lot of fancy music and cinematography. I purposefully ignored the interviewees because each of them would be a can of worms that only pad for time in this one, but you can look them up too.


    So to sum it up, their brand new evidence is a purposefully misinterpreted set of leaked documents, which may or may not be real, and which support the narrative of genocide less than it does the official one of de-radicalisation centres. In fact notice that the BBC guy doesn't use the word "genocide" once, but launders his argument through the interviewees. Since you mentioned the scientific method, consider the null hypothesis as China's official narrative being true and the genocide narrative being your hypothesis. This does not make the genocide hypothesis more likely.

    See how much easier it is to examine claims when you provide them clearly and with sources? I may sound snarky but I'm actually glad you did, since this documentary (back when it was hosted on BBC proper, don't know what happened there) was when I started seriously questioning the mainstream narrative.

    Now as a sidenote, note some absences. You have complained about impartiality in this thread, but throughout this whole documentary the Beeb guy does not interview a single Chinese official in good faith, only that shouting interruption with the diplomat. Every single interviewee is of the same position, there aren't even people from the other Muslim countries who have visited and disagree. Are we supposed to believe that this is impartial just because they bring a lot of people but with the same opinions?

    Besides that there is no official number cited from their sources. The guy shouts at the diplomat "hundreds of thousands" but such a number never pops up in the documents. At another point somebody else says "a million" which famously comes from Adrian Zenz.

    Also I think it's cute one of the biggest point in the main document back in 2017 was "prevent epidemics." And point 13 is explicitly saying inmates should be able to contact family to "keep family at the ease" and "make students feel safe." Horrifying.

    And lastly, have this uncited court document that spells CPC wrong and lists as smoking gun a guy being arrested for actual clear-cut religious intolerance. "All people who do not pray are Han Chinese kafirs."

    This was fun.