(links are removed but its all just links to news articles, Zenz reports, and youtube)
Here’s former chief of staff to Colin Powell discussing the United States military interest in the Uighur situation.
The story about the Uighur genocide originally stems from one source. A dude named Adrian Zenz, who is a racist fundamentalist Christian who wrote a book about how the end of capitalism will be the end of the world as foretold in Revelations, and he is on a mission from god to stop China from taking over the world and ushering in the communist apocalypse. Seriously. Furthermore, he was funded to research the topic by the National Endowment for Democracy, a known CIA front. Here's a piece about the NED's involvement in Latin America. Telesur is a socialist news outlet supported by the Cuban and Nicaraguan governments, but the role of the NED is hardly a secret if you look around. The CIA is involved in other ways too.
Here's an intelligence agent disseminating anti-Chinese propaganda on Reddit, she gets caught and goes on to defend Gitmo. (I saw the original thread on this one, it was really funny. The commies had a field day in the comments.) I had written a big, long thing about Adrian Zenz but when I was putting it together I came across this article that was recently put out by The Grey Zone. It basically covers everything that has been making the rounds in the last couple of years.
So, we’ve got a big bag of shit sponsored by the CIA to get this party started. But, just because Zenz sucks doesn’t mean his methodology is bad, right? Karl Marx had some pretty cringe ideas about the Jews after all. Here's the study. Keep in mind that NCHRD is another NGO like the National Democracy Endowment, eg sponsored completely by the CIA. He interviewed 8 people, from 8 places, and extrapolated out the number of 1 million interred Uighurs. Now, I’m not a doctor, but that doesn’t seem very scientific to me. The Grey Zone article goes into more details about exactly why his research is mostly nonsense.
Most of the news stories you read all stem from this highly questionable research. Here’s some “legitimate news sources” that are reporting on it:
Canada's parliament says China committed genocide against Muslim minorities - CNN
Velshi: Stop the Uighur Genocide (msnbc.com)
The starkest example to me is the claims of forced sterilization. Here's just one example from NPR. They say,
“A researcher published a report in Foreign Policy last summer saying that China's suppression of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other groups meets the U.N. definition of genocide, citing a campaign of mass sterilizations, forced abortions and mandatory birth control.”
That researcher is Zenz. Here's a link to Zenz's actual study. In it he makes the claim that 80% of Uighur women have been sterilized, but this “discovered evidence” comes from the 2019 Chinese Health and Hygiene Statistical Yearbook. It’s in Chinese, but the number on page 228 clearly reads 8% (a normal number for voluntary and medically necessary birth control). In a move right out of a 19th century race realist playbook, Zenz just moved a decimal place. And then AP reported on it. Absolutely insane.
Zenz is just a part of the picture though. Here are a couple of things that have been circulated around social media as proof.
The prisoners in blue uniforms. This comes from Chinese news story from 2017, in a soft piece about the success of the vocational/deradicalization school.
Hooded Chain Gang (link goes to Chinese website). This was yoinked from Chinese social media, it’s a bunch of MLM scammers going to prison, not Uighurs. Hardly something to cry over, look into what Herbalife did in Mexico.
The biggest and most damning claim comes from Tursunay Ziawudun, a woman who fled China after being released from a facility. She also has ties to Zenz, being the one who compiled the testimony and broke the story to the media. I don’t know if she was abused and if she was I hope the bastards are prosecuted to the full extent of Chinese law. I do think it’s strange that the most advanced surveillance state would systemically rape and torture someone but somehow allow them to escape the country to tell the story to Adrian Zenz of all people.
One of the more credible sources comes from New York Times. But even the Xinjiang Documents by themselves don’t indicate genocide. It’s just a whole lot of President Xi talking about dealing with terrorists as severely as necessary. But the documents are never presented without Zenz’s claims of genocide, so reports are always only half true but paint a compelling story. In fact, read the article, without genocide as part of the equation the Xinjiang Documents propose a far less violent alternative to what America did in Afghanistan and Iraq under the very same pretense.
The last big piece of news about the Uighur situation comes from the ICIJ, which even a brainwashed communist toady like myself can’t really discredit. I mean, they broke the panama papers. This pretty much confirms all the bad totalitarian police state accusations. It’s cut and dry about racist AI algorithms, quotas, and rounding people up. Too much to dismiss as the standard ghoulish state document language everyone uses. It’s the same kind horrible bullshit we do here in our prison system, and a human rights violation is a human rights violation. Still, I can’t stress this enough, not a genocide.
Xinjiang isn’t a giant ghetto, the Uighur people aren’t as a whole being oppressed. It’s a tourist destination. You can see it for yourself in their tiktoks, videos about their night life, and the hundreds of people took to social media to refute Mike Pompeo’s allegation of genocide. And the Chinese are free to practice Islam, here is a great overview of the constitutional rights of religious and ethnic minorities. I suppose all of this could just be propaganda, but that suggests a state conspiracy way bigger than the state department trumping up some claims to justify the US destabilizing Asia. Which they do literally all the time, all over the world. There is one journalist who did this, I forget his name, but he put out this big piece about how China was replacing Uighurs with Han like pod people and he knew this because he has a gigantic brain and noticed they don’t dress like the “real” Muslims farther west. Just trash.
I think it’s far more likely that China is running true to their word education facilities that have a dual function as prisons, and your experience varies wildly depending on whether you are convicted of a crime or not. And by convicted I mean accused, because China has a shitty acquittal rate. Not a good look, but without concrete evidence of genocide I think China said it best in their semi-official statement on the matter. (I’ve avoided linking CGTN but this one is a banger).
There’s just not enough credible evidence to call it a genocide. If it wasn’t for that part of the whole equation, and the clear imperialist motives of Zenz, you would get absolutely no argument from me that the situation in Xinjiang is shit. And the only reason its even worth discussing is because genocide accusations are the perfect thing to drum up support for a war, and nobody wants a war (economic or otherwise) with China. I know you don’t think it’s possible, but a lot of people do, I mean just google “china cold war”. We should be working together with China to save the stupid planet, not fighting over East Asia.
Bonus points, here's a popular Marxist-Leninst response to John Oliver’s episode on the subject. It’s very, very left.
Is your aunt patient enough to read all that?
On the forced sterilizations narrative, it's important to note that universal 2 child policy was put into effect in 2015 which would account for decline in birth rates and increase in IUDs (which are removable) as prior to that, ethnic minorities were exempt from the one-child policy. Think what you will of population control, this wasn't something that was targeted specifically towards Uyghurs.
You could also mention how the US State Department lawyers said that they couldn't prove there was a genocide going on.
Another thing that might be helpful would be showing videos of Xinjiang:
- I think this unedited visitation to one of the camps gives a good indication of what they're actually like: https://hexbear.net/post/33959
- Series of food vlogs done in the region (turn on CC with autotranslate) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoW6f-uH7MHBw-sus0KdClk8bQCDOBLum
- Another vlog
She will! She's the one who taught me about lib left politics and she is very sympathetic towards Cuba and other SA socialism. She's an "I am very smart" type lib but she respects me and I generally respect her. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered.
I will send her the 2 child law info in a follow up if I need to. What I sent her actually does have some links to night life in Xianjing and some foodie blogs.
I haven't heard back in like a day so either some of it sunk in and shes too proud to admit shes been owned by state propaganda, or she thinks I'm a brainwashed psycho.
Thanks for the input!