She doesn't have to be a liar -- she could just be mistaken. Was she with her father when he died?
when you question testimonies like this, you are heartless
It might help to bring up the tension between having a heart and being a sucker. You want to take serious claims seriously, but that doesn't mean that all of those claims turn out to be 100% true. People sometimes make mistakes, people sometimes misremember, and people sometimes lie. The conversation doesn't end at the initial claim.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/02/china-confirms-death-of-uighur-man-whose-family-says-was-held-in-xinjiang-camps - this was the story, struggled with a friend with this one.
i think thats good advice. like for me, im not dumb, i know these camps probably aren't great living conditions (tho, ... arne't most of them closed at this point?), and i am sure there are decisions made by people who don't have the lives of muslims' best interest at heart, and decisions made by people who do. its just when its been amped up to "its a genocide and there are more than 30% of all uyghurs in camps and they're all being sterilized" all nuance has already been sucked dry from the conversation...
As tedious as it is, I think you do have to dig into the details of stories like these to show that they're not fully reliable. For instance:
Abdulghafur, a poet and activist living in Australia, said she last heard from her father in April 2016 when he left her a voice message on WeChat saying: “‘I have something urgent to tell you please call me’, but when I called him back he wasn’t there.”...
Abdulghafur believes her father was sent to the camps in March 2017...
One of thousands of Uighurs now living in Australia, Abdulghafur said it’s not safe for her to contact her family in Xinjiang directly
How does she know where her father was in March 2017 if she hadn't heard from him since April 2016? And what does she mean by "it's not safe to contact family directly" when she's reporting WeChat calls between her and her father?
These aren't "gotcha" questions. They're not conspiracy-brained overthinking of irrelevant details. They're basic follow up about how she knew what she's claiming to know and how consistent the main narrative of her story is. It's rudimentary factual stuff like "if you were on Baker Street at 7:00, how did you see what was going on five blocks away at 7:05?" The explanation for these discrepancies doesn't have to be her lying, either. Maybe she was understandably fucked up over a parent's death and -- because the whole Anglo world is beating the "China bad" drum and she lives in Australia -- her response was to look for someone to blame.
"If he died of anything it would have been diabetes."
Oh for fuck's sake: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5240796
“I know my father’s health and I’ve been talking about his health issues. He had a (tuberculosis) shot.”
TB Vaccine (BCG) does not always protect people from getting TB. (via CDC.gov)
With basically all vaccines, some cannot be immunized (allergic, too young, or too old) and sometimes a vaccine randomly fails, so a high percentage of the population needs vaccination to achieve herd immunity and protect them. (short animation)
Authorities gave no information about his burial, or the location of his body.
TB infected cadavers can remain infectious at least 48 hours even after embalming.
When there is no family that medical staff can contact, burial is not worth the cost or risk of infecting and killing other people, so he was obviously cremated.
The sad thing about this Uighur genocide propaganda is that people outside of China develop paranoia about it.
These people act like it is the Chinese government's responsibility to find their lost contacts; as if family members do not have a right to privacy either.
She doesn't have to be a liar -- she could just be mistaken. Was she with her father when he died?
It might help to bring up the tension between having a heart and being a sucker. You want to take serious claims seriously, but that doesn't mean that all of those claims turn out to be 100% true. People sometimes make mistakes, people sometimes misremember, and people sometimes lie. The conversation doesn't end at the initial claim.
no, she was in a different country.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/02/china-confirms-death-of-uighur-man-whose-family-says-was-held-in-xinjiang-camps - this was the story, struggled with a friend with this one.
i think thats good advice. like for me, im not dumb, i know these camps probably aren't great living conditions (tho, ... arne't most of them closed at this point?), and i am sure there are decisions made by people who don't have the lives of muslims' best interest at heart, and decisions made by people who do. its just when its been amped up to "its a genocide and there are more than 30% of all uyghurs in camps and they're all being sterilized" all nuance has already been sucked dry from the conversation...
As tedious as it is, I think you do have to dig into the details of stories like these to show that they're not fully reliable. For instance:
How does she know where her father was in March 2017 if she hadn't heard from him since April 2016? And what does she mean by "it's not safe to contact family directly" when she's reporting WeChat calls between her and her father?
These aren't "gotcha" questions. They're not conspiracy-brained overthinking of irrelevant details. They're basic follow up about how she knew what she's claiming to know and how consistent the main narrative of her story is. It's rudimentary factual stuff like "if you were on Baker Street at 7:00, how did you see what was going on five blocks away at 7:05?" The explanation for these discrepancies doesn't have to be her lying, either. Maybe she was understandably fucked up over a parent's death and -- because the whole Anglo world is beating the "China bad" drum and she lives in Australia -- her response was to look for someone to blame.
Oh for fuck's sake: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5240796
TB Vaccine (BCG) does not always protect people from getting TB. (via CDC.gov)
With basically all vaccines, some cannot be immunized (allergic, too young, or too old) and sometimes a vaccine randomly fails, so a high percentage of the population needs vaccination to achieve herd immunity and protect them. (short animation)
TB infected cadavers can remain infectious at least 48 hours even after embalming.
When there is no family that medical staff can contact, burial is not worth the cost or risk of infecting and killing other people, so he was obviously cremated.
The sad thing about this Uighur genocide propaganda is that people outside of China develop paranoia about it.
These people act like it is the Chinese government's responsibility to find their lost contacts; as if family members do not have a right to privacy either.
Here are two highly illustrative stories from CGTV:
Lost contact with family and Uighur burial sites. Also follow up via BBC.
Using a drowned child for propaganda, this one is hard to watch.
The only heartless people here are those imperialist propagandists.