I could go on and on about Adrian Zenz, his terrible methodologies; about terrorist groups trained by Isis and utilized by American for creating unrest in Xinjiang; stats about real population numbers in Xinjiang; about differences between American and Chinese anti-terror efforts regarding radical islamic terror groups; about infrastructure building in the area, investment by China; about the number of mosques per capita; about the preservation of regional identity that Xi is working towards; etc. Etc.
But, regardless, just saying that I don't believe that there is religious persecution in Xinjiang means, in their eyes, that I don't care about our Muslim brothers and sisters.
It's similar to talking about Hong Kong.
Libs use these places as tools to spread liberalism, so caring about the actual policies, people, and reality is a disadvantage to conversation.
How can I approach these subjects?
I'm not the person you're replying to. I can completely empathise with you about how grating it is that people keep recycling the same old talking points about organ harvesting, Nazi comparisons etc. I'm an Australian-born Chinese and here in Australia, the atmosphere this propaganda creates, we pretty much have straight up McCarthyism (just today, an Australian-born Chinese academic was told to denounce the CPC during a Senate inquiry). In my experience, people who are liberal types are just straight up not worth the type to engage with in this topic. They don't understand the sort of intellectual vanguardism of US think tanks etc and have way too much trust in US institutions. The best you can do is to probably sow doubt into the obviously messed up characters like Zenz.
In terms of sources, I have found good articles written in the Made in China journal. In Australia, there is a historian of Xinjiang, China, and the Soviet Union, by the name of David Brophy whose opinions I really respect. He has emphasised repeatedly the importance of recognising the human rights violations in Xinjiang without lending support to cold warriors like Zenz or the ASPI and the US sanctions regime.
Thanks, I'll check out his writings.