MoA - Why Do These Uighur Witnesses' Stories Constantly Change?

February 04, 2021

Why Do These Uighur Witnesses' Stories Constantly Change?

Two months ago we documented astonishing changes over time in the testimony of a Uyhgur woman who had claimed to have been incarcerated in China:

Over the years [Sayragul] Sautbay has given several interviews. The details of her story continued to change in anti-Chinese directions.

In early interviews Sautbay claimed to have been an instructor working in a re-education camp. In later interviews she claims to have been a detainee.

In more recent interviews she claims that she had seen torture and violence in the camps. In earlier interviews she had refuted such claims.

In one story she claims to have observed mass rape. In older interviews she insisted that she had observed no violence at all.

While she now claims that detainees in the camp were forced to eat pork she had earlier claimed that no meat was served in the camps.

The changes in her story came after Sautbay had fallen into the hands of a propaganda group:

After she had gained asylum in Sweden Sautbay joint up with a U.S. financed Uighur organization. Her story then changed dramatically. The party member and language teacher had became a detainee. There was suddenly extensive violence in the camp and people who earlier never got meat were suddenly made to eat pork.
...
The Swedish Uyghur association is part of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, a CIA affiliated organization that has in recent years gained prominence as part of the U.S. driven anti-China campaign.

A similar change can be observed in the testimony of another Uyghur woman who currently makes the rounds through the media. Tursunay Ziawudun, a Uyghur woman who last year moved to the United States, now claims to have observed mass rape in Chinese detention camps.

The BBC headlined yesterday: 'Their goal is to destroy everyone': Uighur camp detainees allege systematic rape

First-hand accounts from inside the internment camps are rare, but several former detainees and a guard have told the BBC they experienced or saw evidence of an organised system of mass rape, sexual abuse and torture.
Tursunay Ziawudun, who fled Xinjiang after her release and is now in the US, said women were removed from the cells "every night" and raped by one or more masked Chinese men. She said she was tortured and later gang-raped on three occasions, each time by two or three men.

Ziawudun was first interviewed (video) at the office of the Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights organization in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on October 15, 2019. An English summary of the interview is here. There are no allegations of rape or overly harsh treatment. The biggest problem seem to have been 'urinary disorders' which some people developed because the camp buildings were new and the concrete had not yet completely dried out.

The organization which did the first interview with Ziawudun acted as a broker between such persons and 'western' media:

The Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights Organization has provided enormous amount of information about the Chinese concentration camps and the dystopian regime in Xinjiang. We have hosted journalists from all around the world including Hong Kong, Japan, Russia, the United States, Canada, Britain, France, and Germany, among others.
...
Leading media outlets including CNN, the BBC and the New York Times had all visited Atajurt’s office in Almaty; journalists and human rights activists were aware of how valuable a source of information Atajurt was.

Atajurt had also propagandized the case of Sayragul Sautbay who later continued to change her testimony:

I knew about the trial through the efforts of a group called Atajurt, cofounded by Serikzhan Bilash, a Chinese-born ethnic Kazakh, one of more than 200,000 oralmandar, or ‘returnees’, now living in Kazakhstan. Atajurt was set up in 2017 with the purpose of defending the human rights of ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang. Sauytbay’s husband, an oralman who, like Bilash, was now a Kazakh citizen, had at first been reluctant to publicise her case, but Bilash persuaded him that foreign attention was her best hope. ‘We’ve never had a trial like this, open to the public, to foreign journalists,’ he told me on the steps outside the court. ‘This will show the world what is happening in Xinjiang.’

There is no information on who has financed the quite sizeable Atajurt. Kazakhstan has since shut the organization down and Serikzhan Bilash, its founder, has fled to Turkey. Tursunay Ziawudun also moved from Kazakhstan to Turkey before coming to the U.S.

Two weeks after her interview with Atajurt Tursunay Ziawudun was interviewed by the U.S. government controlled Radio Free Asia:

Authorities took Ziyawudun to an internment camp on April 11, 2017 without offering her or her family a reason, amid a rollout of a new policy of mass incarceration in the region, she said, although “the situation was not so severe, as it was only when they had just started arresting people” and she was released after one month, in part due to poor health.

Ziawudun was again detained in the following year:

However, Ziyawudun was unable to obtain a passport and could not join her husband in Kazakhstan, and on March 10, 2018 was again detained without reason.
This time, she said, the situation at the facility had become much worse, and many of the dozen women she shared quarters with endured poor treatment, including forced sterilization.

There is however no direct claim that she has been raped or observed raping. There is talk of rape in the interview but the claims are indirect, ambiguous and were prompted by the interviewer:

When asked about recent reports by former detainees of rape and other abuse in the XUAR camp system, Ziyawudun broke down.
“We were all helpless and unable to defend ourselves,” she said.

“We all went through all kinds of mistreatment, but even when we saw such abuse we were powerless to do anything about it.”

Camp officials would come in the middle of the night and take women away, she said.

“They would shout, ‘Get up and come with us,’ and after that, we would never see them again,” she said.

Well, could it be that those women were released?

A second interview with Tursunay Ziawudun was published by BuzzFeed News on February 15 2020:

Ziyawudun, 41, is one of just a handful of Uighur Muslims who have made it out of one of China’s now-notorious camps for Muslim minorities and gone abroad — to neighboring Kazakhstan.
After nearly 10 months locked up without ever being charged with a crime, Ziyawudun was released in December 2018. In Kazakhstan, Ziyawudun thought she was finally safe after months of nightmares, interrogations, and ritual humiliations at the hands of camp officials. Her long hair was lopped off, she was forced to watch endless hours of state propaganda on television, and every second of her life was filmed by security cameras. Each night, she had struggled to sleep, terrified she might be raped.

Her husband is a citizen of Kazakhstan, and she was initially granted a visa to stay. Things were looking up. But last year, she was given some terrible news — she must return to China to apply for a new type of Kazakh visa if she wanted to stay.

The Kazakh government says this is a procedural matter, but Ziyawudun knows that returning to China will likely mean she will be sent back to captivity.

Ziyawudun was detained twice. The first time was in April 2017:

[T]he police drove them to a place that they called a “vocational training school.” At the time, Ziyawudun was terrified — but in the context of the many worse things that followed, the facility now seems tame to her.
“To be honest, it wasn’t that bad,” she said. “We had our phones. We had meals in the canteens. Other than being forced to stay there, everything else was fine.”

In the evenings, the instructors taught the detainees to do traditional Chinese dances in the yard of the building, she said. Sometimes there were lectures — an imam working for the state might come in and talk about how important it was to avoid “extreme” practices like wearing headscarves.

Ziyawudun was released a few weeks later.

In March 2018 she was again detained in a reeducation facility. The conditions, she says, were harsher but not unbearable:

Nobody discussed rape in the camp. All conversations were monitored by guards or surveillance cameras. But it was on Ziyawudun’s mind all the time. If she were raped, she knew, there would be no one to tell about it, no place to report the crime. After all, she had landed in the camp because authorities felt she was “unreliable.” If one of the women were raped, who would believe them? She had never felt more vulnerable in her life.
...
The real torture, she discovered, took place in silence, in the inmates’ minds.
“I wasn’t beaten or abused,” she said. “The hardest part was mental. It’s something I can’t explain — you suffer mentally. Being kept someplace and forced to stay there for no reason. You have no freedom. You suffer.”

Ziyawudun was released in December 2018 and had since then lived in Kazakhstan. She eventual move to Turkey.

In September 2020 the U.S. based Uyghur Human Rights Project had picked her up to use her for their agitation against China:

Tursunay Ziyawudun, one of only a handful of Uyghur concentration camp survivors known to have reached the outside world, has arrived safely in the United States.
...
"We are tremendously relieved that Tursunay is now safe in the United States,” said UHRP Executive Director Omer Kanat. “UHRP warmly thanks governments who have rescued at-risk Uyghurs. Every rescue is a godsend.”
As one of the few people able to provide eyewitness testimony about what happens in the camps, Ms. Tursunay is a critical witness. She spent nine months in detention, where she suffered malnutrition, dehydration, forcible ingestion and injection of unknown drugs, and physical and mental torture. Her testimony will be vitally important for future atrocity-crimes determination processes and tribunals.

The Uyghur Human Rights Project will be assisting with Ms. Tursunay’s resettlement and is mounting an appeal to ensure that she receives immediate treatment for a serious health condition. Donations to help cover her living costs and medical treatment may be earmarked by sending a brief note.

Neither in her interview with Atajurt nor in her interviews with RFA or BuzzFeedNews does Tursunay Ziawudun claim she was raped. The Uyghur Human Rights Project report of her arrival In the U.S. says she had suffered from several forms of mistreatment but rape is not mentioned as one of them.

Like in the case of Sayragul Sautbay it is only months after she has received the appropriate coaching that Tursunay Ziawudun makes the outrageous rape claims. The BBC knows that these claims are likely bogus as it carefully notes:

It is impossible to verify Ziawudun's account completely because of the severe restrictions China places on reporters in the country, but travel documents and immigration records she provided to the BBC corroborate the timeline of her story.

The facts indeed corroborate the timeline, but they corroborate not one of the other claims Ziawudun makes.

There are many more details in Tursunay Ziawudun BBC story that differ from her previous accounts. Her "earrings were yanked out" where previously "Police told the women to take off their necklaces and earrings." In the BuzzFeed interview she said: “I wasn’t beaten or abused.” In her later BBC account she is beaten heavily:

"Police boots are very hard and heavy, so at first I thought he was beating me with something," she said. "Then I realised that he was trampling on my belly. I almost passed out - I felt a hot flush go through me."

Small details also differ. Where there previously was a bucket to pee in during the night there is now a hole in the ground.

Parts of what she tells the BBC seems to be from a bad porn script:

"They don't only rape but also bite all over your body, you don't know if they are human or animal," she said, pressing a tissue to her eyes to stop her tears and pausing for a long time to collect herself.
"They didn't spare any part of the body, they bit everywhere leaving horrible marks. It was disgusting to look at.

"I've experienced that three times. And it is not just one person who torments you, not just one predator. Each time they were two or three men."

The accounts of both women, Sayragul Sautbay and Tursunay Ziawudun, have 'evolved' after they have been handled through a chain of organizations set up to propagandize against China's anti-terror and development program in Xinjiang.

Like the Swedish organization which handled Sautbay, the U.S. based Uyghur Human Rights Project which handles Ziawudun is part of the infamous World Uyghur Congress:

As this investigation establishes, the WUC is not a grassroots movement, but a US government-backed umbrella for several Washington-based outfits that also rely heavily on US funding and direction. Today, it is the main face and voice of a separatist operation dedicated to destabilizing the Xinjiang region of China and ultimately toppling the Chinese government.
While seeking to orchestrate a color revolution with the aim of regime change in Beijing, the WUC and its offshoots have forged ties with the Grey Wolves, a far-right Turkish organization that has been actively engaged in sectarian violence from Syria to East Asia.

None of these links seem to have troubled the WUC’s sponsors in Washington. If anything, they have added to the network’s appeal, consolidating it as one of the most potent political weapons the US wields in its new Cold War against China.

The claims by the women of rape in the re-education camps in Xinjiang are as believable as the ones Nyirah al-Sabah made about babies allegedly thrown out of Kuwaiti incubators:

Her story was initially corroborated by Amnesty International, a British NGO, which published several independent reports about the killings and testimony from evacuees. Following the liberation of Kuwait, reporters were given access to the country. An ABC report found that "patients, including premature babies, did die, when many of Kuwait's nurses and doctors ... fled" but Iraqi troops "almost certainly had not stolen hospital incubators and left hundreds of Kuwaiti babies to die." Amnesty International reacted by issuing a correction, with executive director John Healey subsequently accusing the Bush administration of "opportunistic manipulation of the international human rights movement".

Posted by b on February 4, 2021 at 16:24 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Imperialism's new mantra: "If you can't get anything on them, then simply make shit up!" Unfortunately, that general strategy has been remarkably effective in certain contexts.

Posted by: Maracatu | Feb 4 2021 16:29 utc | 1

Once again, impressive reporting from b.

'Uyghur oppression' is just part of a dangerous anti-China narrative that most Westerners buy into without question. Just like the stories of babies thrown out of incubators before the first Iraq War. We must beware of such manipulation.

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Feb 4 2021 16:39 utc | 2

thanks b.... the story keeps on changing due whose hands the story gets into.... i agree with jackrabbit - impressive reporting from b..

"... a US government-backed umbrella for several Washington-based outfits that also rely heavily on US funding and direction. Today, it is the main face and voice of a separatist operation dedicated to destabilizing the Xinjiang region of China and ultimately toppling the Chinese government."

once it gets in these types of organizations hands, it becomes pure unadulterated propaganda... unfortunately most people following the western msm - only see the end stories - and none of the earlier ones that would show just how bogus this propaganda is...

Posted by: james | Feb 4 2021 16:52 utc | 3

fantastic reporting by B.. what a website.. ??

Journalism at its finest.. Clearly the world needs an international court with jurisdiction to issue probable cause summons and with authority to hear cases, expose and punish providers of false and misleading content providers...
How can such a court be devised outside of the nation state system.? Establishing such a court needs to be an initiative of humanity <=not the nation state..

I would love to hear the Chinese government voice in this matter.. ? Any way to get an official statement.. an analysis.. Who and by what authority did China detain these people? What is the purpose.. how many have been processed (without incident) and released?

Fantastic journalism.

Posted by: snake | Feb 4 2021 17:06 utc | 4

b asks: "Why Do These Uighur Witnesses' Stories Constantly Change?"

Because there is a change of administration in Washington DC - they need to demonstrate their propaganda is better than the previous administration's. Biden has promised his approach to China will be more "nuanced" than Trump's. Human "rights" also supposedly played greater roles in Democrats than Republicans.

Readers already can sense this shift of "stories" from many troll commenters here in MoA. Just read them carefully - they will come to this article too.

Posted by: d dan | Feb 4 2021 17:28 utc | 5

Considering the USA has now declared to be above reality, it wouldn't surprise me if their "reality czar" or the temporary equivalent (while they don't create the office and nominate someone) decreed the Uighurs were now mass raped.

Posted by: vk | Feb 4 2021 17:36 utc | 6

@ Posted by: snake | Feb 4 2021 17:06 utc | 4

I would love to hear the Chinese government voice in this matter.. ? Any way to get an official statement.. an analysis.. Who and by what authority did China detain these people? What is the purpose.. how many have been processed (without incident) and released?

You're kidding, right?

Just a quick search from the Global Times, recent:

Familiar names frequent behind lies of 'Xinjiang women being raped' (today - the replica against the subject of this post)

Seasonal workers in Xinjiang labeled by Western media as ‘forced labor’: Exclusive with French writer Maxime Vivas

Anatomical Analysis of The Independent Report about the "compulsory sterilization" and "genocide" of Uyghurs in Xinjiang by Adrian Zenz

China's govt agencies condemn US over Xinjiang bill

China considers suing rumor-mongering researchers and think tanks for libel

China urged to take 'stronger countermeasures' against US' Xinjiang bill

This one I specially recommend reading:

Full Text: Vocational Education and Training in Xinjiang (official text, by the The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China)

Posted by: vk | Feb 4 2021 17:46 utc | 7

Thanks vk # 7 for those links. It is evident that no matter how many diplomats China takes to tour the 'Re-Education Camps', the narrative will continue being the same.

Posted by: Maracatu | Feb 4 2021 18:10 utc | 8

This propaganda is the crassest form of projection: nowhere are rapes more routine than in the massive US gulag with its dozens of different prison systems, private and public.
And so far as genocide is concerned this is a great deal more American than Apple Pie. It has been so successful that the number of indigenous nations within the US or its governmental reach has shrunk into tiny populations concentrated in the least eligible remnants of the land. And those populations are dying at twice the rate of the general population in the pandemic.
As to rape: white America wrote the book on it.
In every aspect of fascism the United States pioneered the way: the Black Hundreds in Russia modeled themselves on the Klan, and introduced the word 'lynch' into Russian parlance; Apartheid was consciously modeled on Segregation; the Nuremburg Laws were taken almost directly from Jim Crow jurisprudence.
One in every four prisoners on the planet is incarcerated by the US. And they are the unlucky ones whose fate is totally neglected by western NGOs, victims who are given no pulpits by the CIA- they are hidden in plain sight by the long standing mass hypocrisy of US society and its accomplices.
The plain truth is that when humanity begins to clean up the filth of arbitrary detentions, torture and genocide it will have to begin by addressing the cesspool laughingly called the "justice system' in the United States.

Posted by: bevin | Feb 4 2021 18:10 utc | 9

Today, Global Times aims directly at the BBC's lies: "BBC should show evidence or admit to rumormonger[ing]." We should all be very accustomed to this particular game since it's been played for many decades now, going back to the early 1900s and the advent of Mass Propaganda which originated in the UK.

"Chinese scholars familiar with Xinjiang affairs, including those who live and work in Xinjiang, felt the accusations were preposterous when the Global Times asked them to comment. Such mass rapes and sexual assaults have no place in today's China, and such collective audacity is unbelievable. The chance of such a crime being concealed is zero. Those who commit such evil crimes would have faced the intolerable risk of severe punishment or even death penality [sic], so no one in China would believe that the BBC's allegations have any basis in fact." [My Emphasis]

Unfortunately, China isn't the target for the propaganda--all English speakers/readers are globally--in an attempt to raise anger against China, not merely hatred--Anger gets people riled up to go to war while mere hatred doesn't, as Romanoff describes well here.

"It is hoped that media professionals of the BBC and other Western outlets who made up the "Xinjiang myth" can stop moral narcissism. It is hoped that they can be brave enough to break the iron curtain forged by themselves and politicians, and regain the basic qualities of a media professional: to be objective and seek truth from facts."

Somebody needs to tell the Chinese that what's being done is preparing the English speaking public for war against China--even Nuclear War since China is a genocidal nation and cannot be allowed to perform any more harm. This is the ultimate end of R2P that was used to destroy Libya. As I commented on the open thread, the Outlaw US Empire will use all its tools to keep its dollar hegemony.

Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 4 2021 18:25 utc | 10

One of the real problems in the 21st Century is knowing what to believe.

The amount of time that I spend - just trying to get a grip on what is going on - is ungodly.

Having traveled in China and having seen how well minorities are treated in China, I have doubted the American media Uighur story from day one.

Could I be wrong about what is going on in Xinjiang?

Of course.

But on the other hand, I know that American media outlets are pathological liars.

It is just like I said, it is so hard these days to figure out just what is going on.

Posted by: Mike from Jersey | Feb 4 2021 18:27 utc | 11

This is the information/soft war side to the increasing concentration of western military assets into the south western Pacific region. The BBC makes broad claims of genocide directed towards the PRC leadership, while simultaneously the UK prepares its aircraft carrier for service in that area. This will be supporting the US as it prepares naval assets in anticipation of a friendly government bent on confrontation with China regaining power in Phillipines next year. The effort to wean Taiwan as an independent state will continue, as vassals (such as Guyana) are encouraged to establish "state-to-state" relationships with the island.

Posted by: jayc | Feb 4 2021 18:34 utc | 12

There is low hanging fruit in these indirection mechanisms: A encourages B to make things up. C acts very trusting towards B. D acts very trusting towards D. Low risk. The Flemish press is already copying the whole BBC reporting.
Mainstream media is defined by whom they consider trustworthy and whom not. You know they'll trust these reports. The people behind the reports also know it.
Bernhard also knows it and has a briefing ready before I've even had the time to read the original reporting :)

Posted by: Tuyzentfloot | Feb 4 2021 18:38 utc | 13

@B: Amazing work - again - on the Uighur propaganda machine!
Even though i was quite harsh on the last 2 pieces, this is why i have waited every day for many, many years now for you to submit your daily post. It is always a highlight of my day, and likely always will be, even though i in rare cases dont agree.
One constant in my life and likely of many other barflies, no matter the crazy times!

Posted by: DontBelieveEitherPr. | Feb 4 2021 19:21 utc | 14

I linked to Lavrov's comments related to the West's Navalny related media distortions at yesterday's presser on the open thread and deliberately omitted the keenness of his reply and the surprise it contained. But I see this thread is also about propaganda, and what Lavrov had to say is quite appropriate. What follows is what I omitted:

"Sergey Lavrov: I’d say that the West presents very specific, one-sided coverage of not only the events linked with Alexei Navalny but also everything that is taking place in Russia. The hysteria caused by his trial is out of proportion. The public is not told that the regulations for holding demonstrations, rallies and protests are much tougher in the West than in Russia. The police in the West have the right to curb any assembly that is not authorised or notified of in advance, or, if a notification was submitted, violate the procedures for holding it as agreed with the authorities. If demonstrators in Germany, France, the US or other Western countries take to the streets and prevent the normal functioning of transport, they can face several years in prison, huge fines and other penalties. The police are much tougher with them than our law-enforcement bodies as regards participating in illegal actions.

"Coverage of these actions in Russia and actions by opposition leaders in the West is also based on double standards. When they show events in Russia, the focus is on the police response to the behaviour of the demonstrators. The latter’s actions are not shown at all, although looking at the footage on the internet, it is easy to see how aggressive those who took part in illegal actions were in Moscow and other Russian cities in the past few days. When the Western media cover similar events at home, they usually show outrageous behaviour by demonstrators like broken shop windows and cars on fire, but not the cruelty of the police. This applies to the footage of a police car driving over the bodies of demonstrators lying on the asphalt. As a rule, such footage is kept behind the scenes and can only be found on social media.

"To have this discussion (if the West is interested) along the lines of common sense and facts (the West is reluctant to discuss facts), we have prepared a video on how illegal actions are held and suppressed in the West and how our police reacted to the excesses of demonstrators during the recent events. Yesterday, we handed over this video to Foreign Minister of Sweden Ann Linde who is also the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office. Today, I sent the same video to Josep Borrell, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. We want him to see the objective picture based on specific facts from both sides rather than groundless accusations as he prepares for his visit to Moscow on Friday. Unfortunately, our Western colleagues have become used to such accusations, whether it’s the Skripal case or the so-called Navalny 'poisoning' or the events related to his arrest and yesterday’s court verdict." [My Emphasis]

Will Linde and Borrell actually view the video evidence provided or chuck it into the dustbin? My cynicism says they'll chuck it because they have no other choice as they've been ordered to lie.

Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 4 2021 19:57 utc | 15

As an unnamed, but likely neocon, official from the George W. Bush administration stated 16 years ago in 2004: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

That was just after the US had brutally "shock-and-awe" invaded Iraq in 2003 on the basis of completely fabricated WMDs claims and the earlier Kuwaiti-babies-thrown-from-incubators story.

US Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson who happened to be chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell when the US invaded Iraq, and Afghanistan before that, states in this 2018 talk on YouTube that the US military will be in Afghanistan for the next 50 years so that the US can disrupt China's Belt and Road Initiative near its starting point in Xinjiang, and so that the US can exploit the Uyghur minority to destabilize China.

Our establishment media will, as one, propagate the narrative, as they did the WMD claims in 2003, the Kuwaiti babies story in 1990, the Viagra-rape claims in Libya in 2011, etc. Of course, at the very same time as the establishment media attentively fans the flames of outrage over unsubstantiated/baseless claims about China's treatment of its Muslim Uighur minority, they completely ignore Israel's far, far more substantiated/documented decades-long mistreatment of its Muslim ethnic minorities. The hypocrisy is blatant and Orwellian.

As Caitlin Johnstone recently wrote: "Everything about life in our current world order is dominated by phoniness. Our culture is manufactured by Hollywood. Our dominating political structure is manufactured by think tanks. Our perceptions of what’s going on in the world are manufactured in Langley and Arlington."

Posted by: Canadian Cents | Feb 4 2021 20:07 utc | 16

Why Do Uighur Witnesses' Stories Constantly Change?

Good question. It's anyone's guess but this might get the ball rolling..

1. The original lies were probably intended to make China sound more Evil than the Christian Colonial West. But stories of un-ease and/or being detained outside one's comfort zone, tend to sound insignificant in comparison with Guantanomo-ing, Waterboard-ing and Assange-ing, to which one could add a plethora of similar HR breaches justified by the democratic (cough, cough) West.

2. Then there's the question of which rocks one peeks beneath to find & recruit people of the 'right calibre' to be trusted with the important task of making up pro-democracy, anti-China tosh?

3. Do they have to fail an IQ test, a Sanity test, or a Maturity test to qualify?

4. Are the consumers of such tosh expected to deduce that our Glorious Leaders have discovered that the Uighur problem is far worse than "we" originally suspected?

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Feb 4 2021 20:12 utc | 17

Every time Washington opens its mouth it tells a lie:
https://fair.org/home/jumping-on-the-hezbollah-narcoterrorism-bandwagon/

Posted by: bevin | Feb 4 2021 21:57 utc | 18

One of the Rules of Propaganda is "Demonize the Enemy." When this has been successfully achieved upon the targeted population, They will believe any subsequent claims no matter how absurd they may be!

Posted by: DickNOz | Feb 4 2021 21:59 utc | 19

@11 Mike from Jersey - it is so hard these days to figure out just what is going on

Agreed about the hours involved in figuring out many of the details, but the overall context is straightforward enough:

1. It's a war of the rich against the poor. The rich create the poor by stealing from them. They own the narrative that distorts all of this, and they own the system that makes it happen. Now the entire system is threatened with planetary resource depletion, it makes sense to the rich for billions of the poor to cease being consumers, and the simplest way for this to happen is for billions of the poor to cease being. They own the narrative that distorts all this, and they own the system that makes it happen.

2. Fortunately, revolutionaries through time have shown that one can fight back against all this. China and some other countries have institutionalized this fight, and are building a different world.

Did I miss anything?

Posted by: Grieved | Feb 4 2021 22:00 utc | 20

Her long hair was lopped off, she was forced to watch endless hours of state propaganda on television, and every second of her life was filmed by security cameras. Each night, she had struggled to sleep, terrified she might be raped.

Oh, BuzzFeed) This is amazing. It's like reading lines from the script of a Hollywood action movie about the heroine's life in a "totalitarian camp" (of course, somewhere in China, Russia, or Iraq), from where she was then effectively rescued by a brave American marine who successfully repelled the attacks of hundreds of enemy soldiers.

However, the BuzzFeed propagandists could have done better to impress their readers even more. I added in parentheses how it should have been:

Her [beautiful] long hair was lopped off [by a sneaky communist hairdresser in a gray dust tunic], [sitting in a damp basement in front of a huge screen at gunpoint] she was forced to watch endless hours of state propaganda on television [, even small children were forced to watch and those who dared to turn away from the screen were subject to immediate execution], and every second of her life was filmed by security cameras [placed even in the toilet and shower - sadistic guards masturbated while watching Ziyawudun's life, and the total control system did not even allow her to cough without remaining unnoticed]. Each night [, listening to the loud footsteps of the ruthless guards in the corridor of the prison barrack], she had struggled to sleep, terrified she might be raped [and no one will hear her desperate pleas for help].

It's better that way, isn't it?

Posted by: alaff | Feb 4 2021 22:12 utc | 21

Parts of what she tells the BBC seems to be from a bad porn script:

"They don't only rape but also bite all over your body, you don't know if they are human or animal," she said, pressing a tissue to her eyes to stop her tears and pausing for a long time to collect herself.

"They didn't spare any part of the body, they bit everywhere leaving horrible marks. It was disgusting to look at.

"I've experienced that three times. And it is not just one person who torments you, not just one predator. Each time they were two or three men."

--- b

--------

Rumsfeld: Oh, you bet. This is serious business. And there's not one of those. There are many of those.

Fictoid #3: The Lair of bin Laden

Russert: The Times of London did a graphic, which I want to put on the screen for you and our viewers. This is it. This is a fortress. This is a very much a complex, multi-tiered, bedrooms and offices on the top, as you can see, secret exits on the side and on the bottom, cut deep to avoid thermal detection so when our planes fly to try to determine if any human beings are in there, it's built so deeply down and embedded in the mountain and the rock it's hard to detect. And over here, valleys guarded, as you can see, by some Taliban soldiers. A ventilation system to allow people to breathe and to carry on. An arms and ammunition depot. And you can see here the exits leading into it and the entrances large enough to drive trucks and cars and even tanks. And it's own hydroelectric power to help keep lights on, even computer systems and telephone systems. It's a very sophisticated operation.

Rumsfeld: Oh, you bet. This is serious business. And there's not one of those. There are many of those. And they have been used very effectively. And I might add, Afghanistan is not the only country that has gone underground. Any number of countries have gone underground. The tunneling equipment that exists today is very powerful. It's dual use. It's available across the globe. And people have recognized the advantages of using underground protection for themselves.

A few weeks after the "Meet the Press" interview, US special forces and their Afghan allies occupied Tora Bora.

They painstakingly searched Gree Khil mountain and the surrounding area. They found no underground fortress, no hydro-electric power plant, no 2000-room hotel, no ant farm, no iron doors, no ventilating shafts.

The troglodyte Lair of Bin Laden turned out to be mythic.

Posted by: Triden | Feb 4 2021 22:23 utc | 22

https://www (dot) edwardjayepstein (dot) com/nether_fictoid3.htm

Posted by: Triden | Feb 4 2021 22:26 utc | 23

@ 9 bevin... that is a really relevant, bang on comparison and conclusion.. thanks for making it..

@ 15 karlof1.... i look forward to that video lavrov mentions being made public to the wider audience of us ordinaries.. if anyone sees it, please let us know.. thanks..

Posted by: james | Feb 4 2021 22:44 utc | 24

It is all about soft power: nobody, with the sad exception of the people who pay for it, believes the lies anymore. The days of speaking softly and carrying a big stick are over. The stick is wilting and the tone of voice is loud to the point of being hysterical.
The more they try to get people to listen and believe their narratives the more they scream. And the reaction is increasingly embarrassment, from squirming friends and allies, and laughter.
Patrick Armstrong at Strategic Culture explains in detail.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/02/04/the-west-is-losing-its-soft-power/

Posted by: bevin | Feb 4 2021 22:56 utc | 25

alaff @Feb4 22:12 #21

It's like reading lines from the script of a Hollywood action movie ... It's better that way, isn't it?

Hollywood script writers would be waaay more outlandish. Here's my quick revision:

She was actually repeatedly raped but had suppressed the memories until her mutant genes were triggered and she gained the power to become a fearsome freedom fighter. Using her refreshed memories and newfound skills she discovered that rape was common practice - especially for (very) young prisoners. Naturally, the movie will include the pleading victims and the off-camera screams of those who are tortured because they resist.

After disrupting the prison's operation and stealing incriminating evidence, she escaped with a group of ex-prisoners but the evil prison commander hunted them down like animals.

It looks hopeless until they stumbled upon an alien spaceship in Uyghur territory that the CCP was keeping hidden. With the help of a kind-hearted American aid worker and/or genius philanthropist, the secrets of the alien technology are unlocked (something the CCP henchment could not do because they are unworthy and stupid) and the world is saved from the terrible soul-crushing weapon that CCP was just seconds away from using to force the entire world into submission.

The movie is not complete without a gripping sound-track that guides the audience to rage at CCP evildoers, laugh at their stupidity, and rejoice in their eventual defeat.

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Feb 4 2021 23:00 utc | 26

Meant to add: alaff is right. The same sort of imaginative story-telling is evidenced in some of the psyops that we see.

Hollywood is now so outlandish that (mutants, aliens, etc.) that propaganda narratives look credible in comparison.

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Feb 4 2021 23:07 utc | 27

james @24--

Wish I could make that a formal request, but I lack Twitter. Did you read Lavrov's description of the White Helmets at the presser I linked? It's the first time I'd read that from him.

Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 4 2021 23:16 utc | 28

Thanks b for some reality and context, something ordinary people can't find in our 'news' media.

I follow news media in both Australia and New Zealand. Unsurprisingly, the Mighty Wurlitzer has been cranked up in both countries in tandem with this propaganda. This is the same media who are conspicuously silent on the one hundred years of blatant zionist genocide, ethnic cleansing and oppression of Palestinians. As if the public can't notice the outright audacity involved in the sudden and confected Anglo/Zionist concern for Muslim Chinese.

Posted by: Paul | Feb 4 2021 23:27 utc | 29

@ 28 karlof1... i didn't! i am trying to open it now, but it is not opening.. will try later.. i am curious now.. thanks..

Posted by: james | Feb 4 2021 23:40 utc | 30

The bad porn script is missing one detail: the evil, heavy-breathing FSB or KGB observer with his jar of Novichok-lite jelly (or the fake Nina Ricci perfume spray bottle of the liquid stuff) close by to smear or spray all over Tursunay Ziyawudun's quivering naked body.

Posted by: Jen | Feb 4 2021 23:45 utc | 31

This short but very revealing documentary shows how the South-Korean secret service (NIS) maintains a very strict and cruel program to supply the South-Korean public with human intelligence provided by North-Korean defectors. They even kidnap North-Koreans in China! The film shows two very moving stories of defectors from the North held in Seoul against their will. This clearly is the model they (CIA, Western agencies and NGOs) now apply with the Uighurs in Xinjiang. It's quite a food chain where the defectors earn money by telling obviously bogus horror stories and ther handlers get the 'sexy'information they want to publish in order to manufacture consent among Western audiences.

Title: Loyal Citizens of Pyongyang in Seoul

link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkUMZS-ZegM

Posted by: Paul J | Feb 4 2021 23:48 utc | 32

The stories change because the purpose is to elicit an emotional response and would never stand up to scrutiny.

Take for example, Bana Al-Abed, the supposed 7 year old refugee from Syria who tweeted about supposed government atrocities in Aleppo during the Syrian Civil War. Twitter's own policy sets the minimum user age at 13. Allowing a supposed 7-year (now 11) old, to continue to use its platform is highly suspicious considering its recent selective 'enforcement' of its Terms of Service against American citizens. Like Nayirah, for a country whose official language is Arabic, the 7-year old has a better grasp of English than many Americans. Having Bana at the Academy Awards is pretty much proof of how the entire mainstream media AND the entertainment industry are in bed with the government when it comes to pushing for more war. Especially now that we know the OPCW was compromised from the beginning and the chemical attack most likely never happened.

Unlike Nayirah who only had to do one performance, the new generation of propagandists are required to produce a constant stream of disinformation. Occasionally, the mask slip.

Posted by: Sid Victor Cattoni | Feb 5 2021 0:07 utc | 33

bevin @25--

Thanks for your suggestion as I was going to bypass Armstrong's essay. And here's why the PR battle is so intense:

"Soft power is packing up and getting ready to move house: success attracts, failure repels." [My Emphasis]

Even an Outlaw US Empire controlled entity, The World Bank, is providing documentation of China and Russia's successes--somethings just can't be Enron accounted. I found this article Armstrong linked very important politically. I graduated from high school about the same time productivity and wage rises decoupled. In 1980, I felt that earning $24,000/year was an excellent amount that covered everything plus some important extras like concerts and other entertainment. Today, I'd need to triple that. For decades the Holy Grail politically was pocketbook politics or some variation, the comparison being: Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Many are saying we're worse off than we were in 1980, which IMO is the actual driving force behind all protesting within the Outlaw US Empire. And that's why this headline says so much:

"'Politically It's Suicidal': Frustration Grows as Biden Entertains Narrower Eligibility for $1,400 Checks.
'Let's be really, really clear. Doing this will cost Democrats control of the Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024... It is a colossally bad idea.'"

It's just so much easier to lie and bash your perceived enemies than to go against your donors, even when it's so wrong politically.

Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 5 2021 0:17 utc | 34

The Uighur scams of the US replay the Brzezinski provocations of the USSR in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 80s, which created AlQaeda and led to nothing but disasters for all, another tragicomic US murder trap into which the US clown fell and remains.

Presumably Biden will keep the Russia/China propaganda going for MIC bribes and to cover the ME anti-Iran exploits for zionist bribes. The rich scammers and MIC of the US learn nothing and forget nothing.

In the next episode, China abandons some remote district, the US moves in aggressively, and is attacked on all sides by "moderates."

Posted by: Sam F | Feb 5 2021 1:30 utc | 35

Paul J @ 32:

I've just watched that film you linked to, and I can well imagine that Sautbay and Ziyawudun have been subjected to similar manipulation, brainwashing, threats, intimidation and blackmail by their handlers in the US-funded "human rights" NGOs. A model that works for South Korea might well be adopted by the US, if not already designed by past US agencies for the South Koreans.

Incidentally the right-wing thinktank organisations like Atlas Network mentioned in that documentary you linked to were also fingered by film-maker David Yun as being involved in destabilising the Maduro government in Venezuela. Destabilisation done on the cheap by using the same people.

Query to all MoA barflies:

Interesting that the Uyghur people speaking out against Chinese "oppression" of Uyghurs seem to be all women. What happens to the men? Do they end up as "freedom fighters" holed up in Idlib province in NW Syria?

Posted by: Jen | Feb 5 2021 1:36 utc | 36

Hands up all non-Uyghurs/Chinese who have traveled around in Xinjiang recently....

Posted by: Antonym | Feb 5 2021 1:44 utc | 37

Antonym | Feb 5 2021 1:44 utc | 36

The troll has entered the chat.....

Paging Antonym - Your boss wants you to go defend Modi from Greta on some other board.

Posted by: A.L. | Feb 5 2021 2:02 utc | 38

The simple answer is because MOST people will not notice.

In the blizzard of propaganda that is served daily, facts and consistence are difficult to find, identify or remember!

Posted by: James Cook | Feb 5 2021 2:06 utc | 39

@ 35 jen... that's easy... westerners associate islamic men with jihadi and terrorism... think of all the propaganda since 9-11. not so the women.. it's sexist i tell ya, lol!

karlof1 - i am unable to get the link @ 15 to load...

Posted by: james | Feb 5 2021 2:23 utc | 40

@36
I have...my step-mom and step-brother are Chinese. They are both from south-western China, close to the Myanmar border. My step-brother received is B.S. from the University of Madison and then got his MBA from University of Texas Austin. He works as an investment manager/advisor in the buying and selling of natural gas. After a few years working for Exxon/Mobile in Houston, he moved back to China where he does the same kind of work for the government. He currently lives in Changji of the Xinjiang Province which is the center of China's natural gas industry. I had the pleasure of visiting him for a week in 2018, and did a good deal of sight seeing in Xinjiang. It was nothing short of spectacular!

I am very white and not Uyghurs/Chinese. It can be awkward as I am tall and blonde, but some of the ladies their seemed to think I was exotic (:

Posted by: Jason | Feb 5 2021 2:24 utc | 41

"Interesting that the Uyghur people speaking out against Chinese "oppression" of Uyghurs seem to be all women. What happens to the men? Do they end up as "freedom fighters" holed up in Idlib province in NW Syria?"

Posted by: Jen | Feb 5 2021 1:36 utc | 35

Well, obviously, women make better hostages. Or maybe they are better at sewing gloves or masks.

But seriously, it seems like an interesting question.

This is really just the latest in a long line of these improbable and evolving stories fed to us by the reality makers(tm). To be fair our political press has always had a distant relation to sober truth. I think it's a very deliberate tactic, this foisting of improbable stories on the public, made to look like institutional decay.

All this military theater in the Capital seems worthy of further inquiry too, what are they for? Do they fear a color revolution? Do they have plans they expect to cause trouble? But as before, you can't tell if it's a plot or bunch of buffoons. Security theater usually has an agenda behind it. Given the tendency the government has to try to pound square pegs into round holes, there is no way to reason it out.

===

Hands up all non-Uyghurs/Chinese who have traveled around in Xinjiang recently....

Posted by: Antonym | Feb 5 2021 1:44 utc | 36

Me, I am not a Uyghur/Chinese who has travelled around much of anywhere lately, let alone Xinjiang. Furthermore I claim no expertise at all about it.

Posted by: Bemildred | Feb 5 2021 2:42 utc | 42

"They don't only rape but also bite all over your body, you don't know if they are human or animal," she said, pressing a tissue to her eyes to stop her tears and pausing for a long time to collect herself. "They didn't spare any part of the body, they bit everywhere leaving horrible marks. It was disgusting to look at.

When I read such nonsense it always
make my blood boil,

In case you forget.
Empire watch rule no 1
IN concocting their mofoking BS, CIA/MI6 mofo often are inspired by their own experience.

1965, mofo orchestrated the genocide of the century to remove pro Beijing Sukarno, together with a huge chunk of ethnic Chinese,

1998, mofo were dismayed that Chinese were still dominating the Indon economy.
Another fix was called for.
Sobs organised riots and mass rapes in Chinese communities.

Most of gory details of the mass rapes have been scrubbed off the internet .

From whats left, which is pathetically few, a testimony...
Tip of an iceberg.

One of the lucky few able to flee the country was Kelly, who arrived in San Francisco earlier this month. Fearing for the safety of remaining family members in Indonesia, she did not want to give her full name.
In May, her house and surrounding neighborhood in Jakarta were looted by a huge mob.

"They took everything, the forks and spoons, even the detergent," she said.

A few days later, she went to the hospital with a church group to visit rape victims. What she saw were women so traumatized they couldn't speak. But of all the horrific crimes, what shocked her most was the sight of a woman whose nipple had been bitten off.

"When I saw that, I just couldn't handle myself," she said. "She was black and blue from head to toe."

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Chinese-tell-of-brutal-rapes-in-Indonesia-3078359.php

This is real, mofoking real.
Many victims were so maimed they had to flee to hospitals in Singapore for'advanced treatment, I heard some nurse were so shocked by the hideous wound on the patients bodies they couldnt handle it and broke down and
needed therapy themselves.

Those mofoking lying fukus pos,
Gawd, how I relish a chance to re-arrange their face,.

Posted by: denk | Feb 5 2021 3:36 utc | 43

Paul J @ 32:

BTW, I forgot to thank you for putting up that link in my earlier comment! I get a bit carried away.

Posted by: Jen | Feb 5 2021 3:45 utc | 44

@ 41 bemildred.. it was a loaded question.. they were making a statement as opposed to looking for an answer.. it pays to know the personalities around here... cheers..

Posted by: james | Feb 5 2021 3:52 utc | 45

@ A.L. 37

Someone showing a different view is a troll for you? Are you by any chance high up in the present US "Democratic" Party? Smearing, banning and de-platforming has roots in Stalinism, Maoism as well as in Nazism; all were authoritarian monopoly meme spreaders, just like your favorite "Marxist ha ha" CPC.

Posted by: Antonym | Feb 5 2021 4:23 utc | 46

Any idea where's Gen Prabowo, the man implicated in the 1998 anti Chinese pogrom ?

He was recently feted in Washington, as guest of the honorable Esper, to discuss arms sales and how prez wannabe Prabowo might help his gringo buddies to fix China again....yes you got it right, the man indicted for crimes against humanities in E Timor, the prime suspect behind the 1998 pogrom, intends to run for prez, he is looking forward to another fruitful collaboration with the gringos.

See..
It pays to have friends in high place.
Back hime, Prabowo's peers call him pentagoon's fair hair boy

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3104596/loss-human-rights-eye-china-us-opens-its-arms-indonesias-prabowo

Posted by: denk | Feb 5 2021 4:47 utc | 47

Sorry to say B, your carrying the bucket for China is increasing by the day. This surely is not the way to defeat American imperialism and Zionists' domination of the West.
You can not out manipulate the manipulative elites. We can win against by always sticking to cold hard truths whoever is the aggressor- China is not going to change the world for your benefit.

Posted by: anon-indic | Feb 5 2021 4:55 utc | 48

a friend of antonym comes by to visit.. fun stuff... his doppelganger..

@ 32 paul j... thanks for the video.. quite the video! i watched it to the end.. fascinating... scary for those who get caught...

Posted by: james | Feb 5 2021 5:05 utc | 49

They want to stir up the Islamic world against China, and probably have suceeded to some extent, in the way that there are atmospheric disturbances between the Hans and the Uighurs in Xinjiang. The government apparenty is doing some catching up with that and is providing some cultural trainimng to some Uighurs. If they were really evil, they'd probably resort to killing, which is swift and cheap, but would only radicalise the Uighurs more. The reeducation is part of chinese culture, at least post-revolution, and thus a cultural normal. The worst were the rumors with regards to systematic organ harvesting, spread primarily by Falung Gong, with which they certainly topped the Kuwaiti incubator lie.

Now one has to ask oneself, why China would establish these relatively expensive camps, set up with a view to de-radicalise, if they were to treat people there in a way that would definitely radicalise them.

Probably the US uses this, to 1.) manufacture global consent agains China and 2.) generate discord within China, the latter, as a balkanisation of China is their best bet for facilitating a desired regime change there, albeit, I don't like their chances.

Posted by: Oscar Alx | Feb 5 2021 5:14 utc | 50

Jackrabbit 26

Soundtrack by Zappa, The Torture Never Stops

Posted by: DeQuincey | Feb 5 2021 6:19 utc | 51

Posted by: anon-indic | Feb 5 2021 4:55 utc | 47

Can you refute anything in b's report or are you just venting impotent frustration at the truth?

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Feb 5 2021 12:23 utc | 52

So their stories change? Does that entitle China to rule over a people that were colonized, just like the USA rules over Puerto Rico or England over Ireland? I know that you people have little interest in or identification with Marxism but Lenin's opposition to imperialism might interest the 2 or 3 people here who are against capitalism:

https://louisproyect.org/2018/09/25/china-and-the-uyghurs/

During the rise of the Mongols, the Turks, who were also a nomadic people historically, settled into the region that became known as Turkestan. As such, it was a key element in the Silk Road that facilitated trade between Europe and Asia until the end of the 15th century.

This area languished for centuries until competition between China, Russia, and European powers during the 19th century prompted an invasion by the Manchus into East Turkestan with the encouragement of British banks who were participating in the “Great Game”. “Xinjiang” or “Sinkiang”, which means “New Dominion” or “New Territory”, was annexed by the Manchu empire on November 18, 1884.

Meanwhile, Czarist Russia was seizing control over West Turkestan in its own expansionist bid. In their victory over the old regime, the Bolsheviks had to contend with the problem of oppressed nationalities, in particular the Muslim peoples to the south in what had been known as West Turkestan. In a fascinating debate between Lenin and Bukharin in 1919, there are some issues that are relevant to today’s struggles. Bukharin questions the need for self-determination of such peoples, using arguments similar to that of Rosa Luxemburg. Responding to Bukharin’s assertion that “I want to recognise only the right of the working classes to self-determination,” Lenin refers to the Bashkirs, a Turkic people who had petitioned the Soviet government for the right to form an autonomous Soviet Republic:

What, then, can we do in relation to such peoples as the Kirghiz, the Uzbeks, the Tajiks, the Turkmen, who to this day are under the influence of their mullahs? Here, in Russia, the population, having had a long experience of the priests, helped us to overthrow them. But you know how badly the decree on civil marriage is still being put into effect. Can we approach these peoples and tell them that we shall overthrow their exploiters? We cannot do this, because they are entirely subordinated to their mullahs. In such cases we have to wait until the given nation develops, until the differentiation of the proletariat from the bourgeois elements, which is inevitable, has taken place.

Posted by: Louis N Proyect | Feb 5 2021 13:23 utc | 53

Always dismiss the arguments of online personas that claim to be leftish but whose posts always dovetail perfectly with corporate and government establishment narratives.

There has been a slew of those lately.

Posted by: William Gruff | Feb 5 2021 13:40 utc | 54

@ Posted by: Louis N Proyect | Feb 5 2021 13:23 utc | 52

Turkestan doesn't exist. It is a modern nationalist fiction created in the 19th Century by some Central Asian elites in order to legitimize the partition of Central Asia between them in the Westphalian fashion.

The Uighurs - who claim to be of Turk origin - claim the entire Xinjiang, which they call "East Turkestan". We don't know if they really are of Turk ancestry.

Now to the question of why Turkestan - as opposed to, say, Uighuria/Uighurstan. The Turks are a mysterious people that appeared in documented History out of nowhere during the Middle Ages. Modern "Turks" (including from Turkey - the country that self-proclaims to be the land of the Turks) claim to be a single ethnicity, direct descendants from the Mongolian Empire. You can still read and hear nowadays many people claiming the original Mongols were Turkic, but that's not backed up by evidence at all.

Either way, long story short: modern "Turks" (outside Turkey itself, which claims to be the successor of the multiethnic Ottoman Empire) claim to be the rightful heirs to the medieval Mongol Empire, hence the Uighurs claiming the whole Xinjiang as "East Turkestan". Turkestan here being another name for the Mongol Empire in Westphalian form. Of course, as history repeats itself two times - the second as a farce - this new Mongol Empire would not be multiethnic or multireligious: it would be an ethnically homogeneous Islamic theocracy.

Posted by: vk | Feb 5 2021 13:56 utc | 55

On the Uyghur question:

Uyghurs not Turk descendants: white paper

On the ethno-religious fallacy:

Islam neither indigenous nor sole belief system of Uygurs: white paper

So, what we have is this: the Uyghurs not only aren't Turks (which in all likelihood is not even and never was an ethnicity), but they're aren't and never were the majority in Xinjiang and they aren't even entirely Islamic.

There's no other way to put it: the Turkestanic hypothesis is a full-fledged modern fiction.

Posted by: vk | Feb 5 2021 14:33 utc | 56

Posted by: Louis N Proyect | Feb 5 2021 13:23 utc |

There are no single civilizational kingdom there called East Turkestan or even Turkestan. The whole area is just big deserts where trade outposts of silk roads which are sporadically built and destroyed multiple times by mongolian nomadic tribes which lived far beyond the area itself. The peoples that lived there have mishmash of cultures where both middle eastern and Chinese met and blended. They also regularly migrated to settle where they'll be assimilated by other enduring settlement as minorities.

Just like Kurdish were not entitled for a real country based on the land they roam as a nomadic tribes, these so called Turkestan also weren't entitled to any claim of sovereignty over the territory they never have in the first place.

Posted by: Lucci | Feb 5 2021 14:50 utc | 57

Louis N Proyect 52

So their stories change? Does that entitle China to rule over a people that were colonized

Idiot !
shifting and self contradicting narrative wouldnt pass muster in any court, even that fukus anointed ICC says you have no case.
Enuff said.

Just fuck off.

Posted by: denk | Feb 5 2021 15:32 utc | 58

Posted by: Louis N Proyect | Feb 5 2021 13:23 utc | 52

This post took huge liberties with history. Turks appeared on pages of history in 6-th century, originally a clan, then a smallish tribe ruled by Ashina clan, then with innovations in weapons and organization they overthrew ruling clan/tribe in what is now Mongolian Steppe, uniting most of the tribes with Turkic languages, and created an "empire" that foster adoption of Turkic speech among tribes that spoke Iranian languages, and settled population in Tarym basin (before they spoke non-Iranian Indoeuropean language).

After fragmentation of Turkic Kaganate, Uighurs were a tribe that again gain a domination over Mongolian Steppe and Tarym basin, originating ethnonym of Turkic speakers in Tarym basin. Interesting, it was the only state in history with Manicheism as the state religion. That happen few hundred years before anyone wrote the word "Mongol".

Manchus, from current Chinese North-East, conquered China but faced the need of consolidating control over Mongolian Steppe. The western part of that region, plus the entirety of current Xinjiang and Tibet were controlled by Western Mongols known as Oirats or Dzungars. Their rulers attacked the eastern Mongol khanates that paid allegiance to Manchu. A protracted war led to extermination of Oirats (some fled to Russia and are known as Kalmyks, tiny groups remained in Xinjiang, the are where they lived is currently settled by Kazakhs. This war happened ca. 1700 and established the western and south-west border of China.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Feb 5 2021 15:55 utc | 59

Meanwhile, Indians are sitting pretty,
chiming in with their anglo buddies to
demand 'justice' in Xinjiang, Tibet...
while stones throwing kids are shot like dogs and their sisters , mothers are gang raped by the jawans in Kashmir
and the NE.

What did I tell you...?
It pays to have friends at high place.

The UN Security Council will not be discussing the issue of Kashmir this month, Karen Pierce, Permanent Representative of the UK to the UN and President of the Security Council for November has said, underlining that there are a lot of issues going on in the world

OTOH....

A struggle in October over China’s mass internment of Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic minority, suggests how intense the fight has become. It involved Britain taking an unusual leading role in condemning China’s human-rights record. The British representative at the un, Karen Pierce, issued a statement, signed by 22 other countries including America, calling for unfettered un access to the prison camps in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang.

https://www.economist.com/china/2019/12/07/in-the-un-china-uses-threats-and-cajolery-to-promote-its-worldview

HEHEHEHEHEHEHE

Posted by: denk | Feb 5 2021 16:12 utc | 60

karlof1 @15, to my mind, mainstream media in the US currently is very like the situation was when the coup in Ukraine was first beginning. Russia then was on the back foot as far as presenting a clear analysis of what was going on, and US media certainly wasn't going to tell it straight. That I think is very like what is happening with the Ughur situation in China at present. Back then it was sites like this one online that were able to offset the total blankness of television and radio for anyone in the US who wanted to know what was really the case. That was when I totally left those news formats, and I am positive that many others did so also. If they wouldn't give the important news, too bad for them. So too now. Shake the dust from your feet, get your blood pressure back to normal. Ignore them. You will have more time for your garden, and eventually China will bring the news to you in a format you can trust.

Meanwhile, whether we hear the truth or not, we have already enough basic knowledge coming do us through speeches such as Lavrov, Xi, Putin are able to communicate worldwide to know it is gradually becoming a better world through their efforts. Time for the false progaganda disseminators to take their medicine and start planting trees, real ones.

Posted by: juliania | Feb 5 2021 17:03 utc | 61

Slightly Off Topic but relevant to the American habit of demonising people/ countries/ groups for short-term political reasons. Pat Lang has a Feb 5 posting up at SST which appears to be a follow-on from the cherry-picking of guards 'suitable' to be trusted with security surrounding Sleepy's Inauguration Ceremony.

A Political Purge That Will Drive People Into Militias
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2021/02/httpswwwdefensegovexplorenewsarticlearticle2492530austin-orders-military-stand-down-to-address-challenge-of-extrem.html

One suspects that PL is correct and questioning the loyalty of military personnel will prove to be a huge blunder. In a couple of ways it reminds me of the dopiness of US Iraq Viceroy, Paul Bremer, disbanding the Iraqi Army - instantly creating 100k+ desperate, destitute anti-AmeriKKKan people with military expertise.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Feb 5 2021 17:06 utc | 62

Sorry, "...to..." and "...propaganda..." Sun's blanking out my keyboard -- time to go out and plant!

Posted by: juliania | Feb 5 2021 17:06 utc | 63

Indeed, Grieved @ 20 - you hit the target: They own the narrative...TOTN!

Posted by: juliania | Feb 5 2021 17:14 utc | 64

Thanks, jason @ 41!!!

Posted by: juliania | Feb 5 2021 17:19 utc | 65

The Kasakh exodus from China was quite real. It happened in the early half of the 60ies. Cause: Nomadic Kasakhs used to trade their livestock (mostly sheep) for grain from Hàn or Huá Chinese merchants' supplies, which stopped up during the food crises following the kathastrophies of "the great leap forward" malice in most of Communist China. They had to emigrate, just like the Khazak tribes leaving the Wakhan and Badakhshan during the Soviet debacles in Afghanistan: No grain supplies -- then leave for Alaska and Montana!
Most Uichur communities were untouched by the "Great leap Foreward" calamities.
The present fate of Uighur nationality in China is brought on by (1) the acude need to modernize --possibly over.enfoced by the Chinese state --- and (2) The need to see to it that the cut-throat terrorism of Uighuric jihadists in Syria sent in from turkey and Saudi Arabia and by now spread throughout all of Western Europe (so that those from Xīnjiāng I have met feel afraid and terrorized)

Posted by: Tollef Ås/秋涛乐 | Feb 5 2021 18:40 utc | 66

Correction: Not "Hàn and Huá CHinese"but "Hàn and Huí Chinese" (Huí are muslims who seak the same language as the Hàn Chiese). But I may add that Mongoland Tibetan grain and food traders had also been quite active in Northern Xinjiang amongst both Khazak and Mongolic groups living in the North of injiang/East turkestan in the centuries before 1960. All is to be found in the writings of OWEN LATTIMORE -- a US academic and rug dealer who would not coöperate with what became the CIA nor witness for MacCarthy -- ended up , however, as a respected professor in England .

Posted by: Tadlak Davidovitsh | Feb 5 2021 18:51 utc | 67

Sam F | Feb 5 2021 1:30 utc | 35

In the next episode, China abandons some remote district, the US moves in aggressively, and is attacked on all sides by "moderates."

You can bet your last cent that is not going to happen.
When the Chinese government says: "Not an inch!" It means just that.

Posted by: foolisholdman | Feb 5 2021 18:53 utc | 68

Jen | Feb 5 2021 1:36 utc | 36

Query to all MoA barflies:

Interesting that the Uyghur people speaking out against Chinese "oppression" of Uyghurs seem to be all women. What happens to the men? Do they end up as "freedom fighters" holed up in Idlib province in NW Syria?

My guess is that as this propaganda is aimed mostly at people who have a cult of the "tough guy", stories about men being ill treated, generates less sympathy, than stories about women.

Also, there might be an element of projection. "This is what we would do were we in the Chinese's shoes."

Posted by: foolisholdman | Feb 5 2021 19:03 utc | 69

@ Posted by: Tollef Ås/秋涛乐 | Feb 5 2021 18:40 utc | 66

If the Kazakhs had to trade sheep for grain from Chinese peasants, then they weren't nomads, but pastors.

Even during the worst years of the Great Leap Forward, production never dropped below the best year of the Nationalists' rule - and, according to you, the Kazakhs didn't fled from China during that time.

Besides, if the Uyghurs were "untouched" by the "Great Leap Forward calamities", then, by definition, the Great Leap Forward wasn't a calamity, as you recognize yourself large swathes of the Chinese population weren't affected.

And this is the truth: the Great Leap Forward as a failure - a very embarrassing one - but it wasn't a "calamity" or a "famine" as most in the West claim nowadays.

If the Kazakhs really fled China in the 60s and they really survived there by trading sheep for grain, then the most likely reason they did their exodus is that the Communists did a land reform that begun in the 1940s (but was still reduced to the Northwestern region of Han China); this land reform ended the old scheme of the feudal landlords and most became either peasants or middle peasants (depending on the specificity of the region). This resulted in a "self-sufficient" system (not in the sense of growth zero, but in the sense of what we would call today as "imports substitution"), where most peasants were appropriately fed for the first time in 2,000 years (many marrying - a privilege only rich peasants had during the Nationalist and feudal times) and where, when needed, the Government guaranteed the purchase of the exceeding production by the market prices. The Communist land reform also gave the peasants - also for the first time in their history - cattle and draught animals. Also, this system, for the first time, created a mass cotton culture, which was needed to produce clothing.

This combination of factors must have eliminated both the relative surpluses in Xinjiang with which the Kazakh pastors traded and the demand for sheep altogether. The Communists' land reform, therefore, must have obliterated the pastoral economy of Xinjiang.

Posted by: vk | Feb 5 2021 19:06 utc | 70

@ A.L. 37

Someone showing a different view is a troll for you?

Three mice went into the barn to spin,
Puss passed by and Puss looked in.
"What are you doing, my little men?"
"We're weaving coats for gentlemen."
"May I come in and help bite off your threads?"
"Oh! We know you, Miss Pussy! You'd bite off our heads!"

Posted by: foolisholdman | Feb 5 2021 19:20 utc | 71

William Gruff | Feb 5 2021 13:40 utc | 54

Always dismiss the arguments of online personas that claim to be leftish but whose posts always dovetail perfectly with corporate and government establishment narratives.

There has been a slew of those lately.

It isn't just that, here is 'one of those' who is thinking that his opponents are so dogmatic that they cannot admit that Lenin might have made a mistake or that the advice he gave in his circumstances, while good, may not fit the quite different circumstances of today.

Posted by: foolisholdman | Feb 5 2021 19:35 utc | 72

I hope this is not too off thread as we are discussing information sources.

I have been subjecting myself to the BBC as a source for mainstream propaganda/BS for years. The past two days, after viewing a few articles, I get a large blue screen blocking pop-up basically requiring registration and formation of a BBC account to continue. I have no accounts like this anywhere ( no farcebook, no twatter, no yootoob, etc) and I am not about to start here.

Not that the Beeb was a great source of info, but keeping tabs on what the masters want us to think and how it is presented is important, and while I could barely stomach this pile of dung I can not handle CNN, WaPo, etc. Does anyone have a workaround for the pop-up (the “X” in the upper corner is conveniently useless) or a suggestion for a record of the ruling voice that is tolerable in small doses?

Posted by: NotBob | Feb 5 2021 19:48 utc | 73

@73
Few workarounds here:
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/02/13/how-to-deprive-mainstream-media-of-revenue-and-get-around-their-paywalls/

Posted by: Joe | Feb 5 2021 20:26 utc | 74

@73
There is also a Firefox extension on Github, just search for "paywall firefox extension github".
For all sites where it is technically possible, it automatically unblocks the content.

Posted by: Joe | Feb 5 2021 20:29 utc | 75

Someone showing a different view is a troll for you?

foolisholdman | Feb 5 2021 19:20 utc | 71

Not at all. Give it time. Or if you're impatient you can always check out his back catalog...

Posted by: A.L. | Feb 5 2021 20:30 utc | 76

The Uyghur issue is really quite simple. China, under Xi Ping, has become more nationalistic in recent years. For example, the Hui Muslims of central China have been forced to a more Chinese expression of their religion.

The Uyghurs are the main stand-out of those who are not "Chinese". The Tibetans having been defeated some decades ago.

I have no idea about how much truth there is in stories of torture and concentration camps. But the Chinese policy is clear.

Posted by: Laguerre | Feb 5 2021 21:10 utc | 77

Thanks Joe@74/75. I will check out the link to Caitlin.

I’m on an iPad (no Firefox) and my Mac is so old the versions of Firefox it will run can’t access the internet. Maybe I will crawl out of the twentieth century some day.. I spend most of my time working on actual 19th century designed (and sometimes produced) devices and have a tendency to stay there mentally.

Posted by: Not Bob | Feb 5 2021 21:22 utc | 78

It is of course bizarre that the West is now supporting Muslims.

The Uyghurs brought a degree of problems on themselves, when so many departed as jihadis in Syria. That gave fear to the Chinese, who feared the same in Xianjiang.

Posted by: Laguerre | Feb 5 2021 21:27 utc | 79

LaGuerre
You say:
" For example, the Hui Muslims of central China have been forced to a more Chinese expression of their religion.
The Uyghurs are the main stand-out of those who are not "Chinese". The Tibetans having been defeated some decades ago."

I am not an expert, I do not speak the languages involved, but I think you are on the wrong track.

My closest friend for over 60 years is happily married to a Hui Chinese. She is muslim. She comes and goes to China as she wishes. Her childhood friends visit her in USA. With no problems.
Perhaps it would help your perspective to know that the Chinese soldiers who were sent to control Tibet were in fact Hui.
Hui and Uyghurs are mostly Muslim, but they are not similar in many other ways. It is a mistake to conflate them.

Posted by: downtownhaiku | Feb 5 2021 21:55 utc | 80

@ downtownhaiku | Feb 5 2021 21:55 utc | 80..

i think laguerre is correct in fact... obviously it is not all the people from xinjiang.... a number of them though were recruited to go to syria,
from the Turkistan Islamic Party specifically... watch some of the footage in the video below for confirmation.. it is from 6 years ago..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESHu1XGiHVg

Posted by: james | Feb 6 2021 0:11 utc | 81

I have no idea about how much truth there is in stories of torture and concentration camps. But the Chinese policy is clear.

Posted by: Laguerre @77

For the trustworthiness of BBC, NYT, CNN, Spiegel & Co, you only need to check out:

- Wikileaks: no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square, US Beijing Embassy cables claim .

- Black info and media gullibility: creation of the Tiananmen myth

- Check out what the iconic Tankman was really doing. Don't you feel moved to tears simply listening to the American narrator.......

A longer version of video showing the Tankman's "bravery" and the "brutality" of Chinese army.

It's high time wake up to face the fact the Western MSM is totally corrupt, unethical and pathological liars and presstitutes.

- Oh, The escaped 64 Student Leader Chai Ling was on tape telling that they needed to provoke Chinese government to kill the students while she herself couldn't die.

She and other student leaders and VIP dissidents was later rescued by Operation Yellowbird (黄雀行动).

French intelligence and, diplomacy at the highest level as well as the other Western intelligence agencies such as Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the CIA were involved in the operations.

For a quite while, she was on MSM and went to Congress to testify how she saw the students on Tiananmen Square were brutally killed by CPC tanks. Just like these Uighurs who are currently promoting a "genocide" story, Chai Ling later on started to tell the Western media that she was forced to go through abortion when she was at university.

Just how cruel and inhuman CPC was/is/will be!

This is only one example how the Western "free press" has been locking footsteps with your intelligent agencies by feeding you and the world with lies/disinformation for decades.

The current so-called Uyghur concentration camp's "atrocity" is just another made-to-believe lie about China by Western MSM and its handlers in order to precondition your guys to support the ruling elites' war against China to secure their dominance of the world forever.

Good people in the West should take a look of your history of WWI and WWII and be alert how pre-war media propaganda worked on people's mind to bring them killing each other by tens of millions.

Posted by: lulu | Feb 6 2021 0:40 utc | 82

James@81

I am sorry to say that laguerre is NOT correct in his/her fact regarding Xinjiang because he/she just regurgitates MSM propaganda talking points.

For example, laguerre@77 saying:

The Uyghur issue is really quite simple. China, under Xi Ping, has become more nationalistic in recent years. For example, the Hui Muslims of central China have been forced to a more Chinese expression of their religion.

For the Hui Muslims, downtownhaiku@80 reply rebukes laguerre's claim. It is obvious laguerre knows NOTHING about Hui Muslims and their culture and tradition.

...China is home to approximately 10.5 million Hui people, the majority of whom are Chinese-speaking practitioners of Islam......

The Hui predominantly speak Chinese, while maintaining some Arabic and Persian phrases. In fact, the Hui ethnic group is unique among Chinese ethnic minorities in that it associates with no non-Sinitic language.

China has NOT become more nationalistic in recent years because of Xi Jinping. It is the Western ruling class feels threatened by a non-Western political system and non-white race that can rise up and becomes a rival, which shakes its century-old self-belief and propaganda that the Western would be the "end of history" and should forever stay on top of the world food chain.

So the Western ruling elites are trying to demonize its enemy just like what Britain & Co did against Germany before WWI and WWII.

Take a look the latest strategy written by US government officialThe Longer Telegram: Toward a new American China strategy. It starts clearly:

The foremost goal of US strategy should be to cause China’s ruling elites to conclude that it is in China’s best interests to continue operating within the US-led liberal international order rather than building a rival order...

If China ever dares to defense her own national interests, it is called China's gone nationalist. That's exactly what your MSM and talking heads are telling you.

The Uyghurs are the main stand-out of those who are not "Chinese". The Tibetans having been defeated some decades ago.

laguerre@77 and anyone who truly interest in Tibet should read Albert Ettinger's Battleground TIBET.

Also After Syria’s partition, will Xinjiang be destabilized?;

With support from Turkey and its Western allyies, Xinjiang Jihadists go global/.

Posted by: lulu | Feb 6 2021 1:56 utc | 83

James @ 81:

I used to work with a guy who spent his early 20s living and working in Inner Mongolia as an undergraduate during the Cultural Revolution. He met plenty of Hui Chinese. He told me the Hui are China's biggest Muslim community and they have always been Chinese: their language is Mandarin and their culture is Chinese.

Islam has existed in China almost as long as the religion itself has existed. The 15th-century Chinese mariner Zheng He whose ships sailed as far as east Africa (and some of which are rumoured to have been shipwrecked in northern Australia) was a Muslim from Gunman province in southern China.

I have far more faith in what Downtownhaiku @ 80 and Lulu @ 82 say over what someone who can't get Xi Jinping's name right says.

Posted by: Jen | Feb 6 2021 3:20 utc | 84

Damn my stupid idiot smartphone changing "Yunnan" into "Gunman" @ 83!!!

Posted by: Jen | Feb 6 2021 3:22 utc | 85

BBC is suspicious. But China state media is not quite credible either. For one, it is a state mouthpiece. Secondly, China at first vehemently denied about the existence of the camps but under intense international scrutiny later admitted that they exist. They had something to hide. What were they hiding? Suspicious.

Posted by: Martin | Feb 6 2021 3:31 utc | 86

Martin 85

OIC, no less, has visited Xinjiang, to fukus chagrin, they praised China's detoxing program and QUESTION WHAT YOUR
INDIAN BUDDIES ARE DOING IN KASHMIR !

But fukus wont take no for an answer.
That witch Karen Pierce from UK says
' we dont have time to look into Kashmir our hand are full what with 'genocides' in Xinjiang, Tibet...'

YOu dont seem the brightest spark here so I'll lay it out for you.

The Muslim world are not so stupid like your ilks.
they know who'r the real genocidists of their bro. whereas fukus [fuck UK, US] aka the decider, says 'I dont give a shit how many ragheads our Indian cousins wasted in Kashimr, all I want is to nail those chicoms

Get it now, kid ?

Posted by: denk | Feb 6 2021 4:05 utc | 87

Some tens of thousands of Uyghurs went to Syria, out of a population of ten million. Hard to call the entire population as responsible for that. Obviously China has an interest in containing these militants in Syria rather than allowing them back home free to spread terror. But China's main concern only began as the CIA-led insurgencies and terrorist atrocities began to occur in Xinjiang - this was when China acted.

We discussed Tibet extensively quite recently - it was a little off-topic in this thread of January 1 - and it became clear that the same Chinese methodology was used by China in Tibet as has been used in Xinjiang.

China made its 17-Point Agreement with Tibet around 1951, and relations were amicable, as we saw that the Dalai Lama himself attested. But at that same time, the US demanded of the Dalai Lama that in order to receive US support, he must leave Tibet and begin to disparage and renounce the relationship. All this is documented.

China only acted when the uprising occurred around 1958. China put down the insurgency and began to take over the civil administration of Tibet, outlawing slavery and other cruel practices. Then China began to build roads, opened up education, and did all the things she does for her other minority regions, essentially raising the level of general prosperity and individual well being of the unprivileged. All this became clear in that thread if one searches through it - and many thanks again to commenter suzan who posted key information on this.

So we see that China was content to let the region run its affairs until foreign interference disturbed the peace and caused mayhem - as in Tibet, so in Xinjiang. The same policy, more than half a century apart. Just as the CIA playbook hasn't changed, apparently China's response remains the same also.

When trouble arises, kill it with kindness.

It is still appalling to read the vast ignorance of China that comes from westerners. Everything one knows about China is wrong - this is the humble starting point for anyone to begin to learn about China.

Posted by: Grieved | Feb 6 2021 4:35 utc | 88

China threatens retaliation over UK TV license cancellation China is threatening to retaliate after British regulators stripped China’s state TV channel of its U.K. broadcasting license

China might retaliate. ~!

Bunch of sissies in Beijing.
So much for WOLF diplomacy LOL

jUST DO IT MAN,
Kick out that mofoking british bushit cunt.
aka bbc, just for a start.

Posted by: denk | Feb 6 2021 5:07 utc | 89

Denk @ 86

Try not to get worked up. Fukus sure did aweful genocidal things. But two wrongs dont make a right.

China did initially deny the existence of the camps, but later admitted to having them.

Just stating the facts, grandpa

Posted by: Martin | Feb 6 2021 6:06 utc | 90

Martin 89
'Fukus sure did aweful genocidal things. But two wrongs dont make a right.'

YOu mean Im 'rationalising china's genocide in Xinjiang' ?

I presume now you've proof of 'genocide in Xinjiang' kid. ?

PS
signing off now.
Hope to see your 'proof' soon/

[hint]
Spare me those 'prove nuthin video'
the ICC has looked thru tons of it
and declare 'no case'

Posted by: denk | Feb 6 2021 6:18 utc | 91

@laguerre

Let's get some basic facts about Xinjiang:

- In 60 BC, Han China (Han Dynasty) established the Protectorate of the Western Regions (西域都護府) to oversee the region as far west as the Pamir Mountains.

Map of The Roman and Han Empires, around AD 1.

In 640 AD , Tang Dynasty then established the Protectorate General to Pacify the West (安西都護府) to control the region

Around 842 AD Uyghur peoples appeared in Xinjinag after Uyghur Khaganate, located in current day Mongolia, collapsed.

- Xinjiang had been inhabited by Indo-European Tocharians and Iranian Sakas who practiced Buddhism till 10th century with the conversion to Islam.

Uyghurs are NOT Aboriginal people to Xinjiang as Western MSM and Eastern Turkistan promoters want you to believe.

NOT all Uyghurs are Muslims.

Posted by: lulu | Feb 6 2021 7:17 utc | 92

- Qing Dynasty took control of Xinjinag between 1755 - 1760. At this time US did not exist.

Xinjiang means an "old land newly returned" (故土新歸) or the "new old land" when Zuo Zongtang wrote to tell the Qing Emperor after he crashed the rebel by Uzbek/Tajik adventurer Yakub Beg in Xinjiang.

Fun fact: General Tso's chicken in American Chinese restaurants is named after him.

- Xijiang is home to Kazaks, Kyrgyz, Tatars, Uzbeks,Tajiks, Sarikolis/Wakhis, Hui, Mongols, Tibetans, Russians, Xibes, Manchus, apart from Han and Uyghurs.

In 1955, Xinjiang Province was renamed "Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region". The name that was originally proposed was simply "Xinjiang Autonomous Region". Saifuddin Azizi, the first Uyghur chairman of Xinjiang, registered his strong objections to the proposed name with Mao Zedong.

Fun fact: In 1912, the total population of Xinjiang was 2.1 million; in 2015, 11 million Uyghurs, 8.6 million Han, 1.6 million Kazaks, 1 million Hui, etc. How has the CPC/Han genocide worked the wonder that Uyghurs has increased by more than 10 million during all these years?

Posted by: lulu | Feb 6 2021 7:19 utc | 93

- The first Islamic Republic of East Turkestan lasted for 5-month (12 November 1933 - 16 April 1934) around Kashgar in the south .

The stirrings of Uyghur separatism during the early 20th century were greatly influenced by the Turkish jadidist movement, which spread as wealthier Uyghurs, inspired by notions of Pan-Turkism...

Its leader Muhammad Amin Bughra approached the Japanese ambassador in 1935 with "a detailed plan proposing the establishment of an 'Eastern Turkestan Republic'aka Central Asian 'Manchukuo' under Japanese sponsorship, with munitions and finance to be supplied by Tokyo...

East Turkestan Republic aka Second East Turkestan Republic, backed by Soviet, was short-lived (12/11/1944 - 22/12/1949) in the North-Western corner of Xinjiang.

Fun fact: Bughra, the leader of first Islamic Republic of East Turkestan, was arrested by the British in 1942 for spying for Japan and the Kuomintang (ROC)arranged for his release.

He declared an alliance with the Chinese nationalists (Kuomintang) in order to gain autonomy for the Turkic people, under formal protection of the Republic of China and necessity of quelling all communist forces in Sinkiang, including the Soviet backed Second East Turkestan Republic.

...The Second East Turkestan Republic attacked them as Kuomintang "puppets".

Posted by: lulu | Feb 6 2021 7:21 utc | 94

Check out this interview with VP of China Islamic Association, who is Uyghur, was born & raised in Xinjiang, and went to the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Egypt to study Islam.

He has been working for Islamic affairs in China for decades. Listen to what he has got to say about how it's like for Muslims in xinjiang.

Posted by: lulu | Feb 6 2021 7:33 utc | 95

Denk @ 90

The fact remains China initially denied the existence of the camps but later admitted their existence after intense international scrutiny. China had something to hide. Admittedly, China was hiding the forcible detention of millions of people against their will.

Fyi, the ICC will not proceed with investigations BECAUSE:
#1 China (where the crimes are committed) is not a signatory to ICC and the ICC has no jurisdiction
#2 For the case to proceed, investigations require China allowing investigators access to the camps. If you think China will allow itself to be investigated, you are living in Disney Land for far too long.

Posted by: Martin | Feb 6 2021 8:34 utc | 96

Lulu @ 92 is correct in saying that the Qing empire under Emperor Qianlong took control of Xinjiang during the 1750s.

At the time the Qing empire had been fighting a series of wars with the Dzungarian state for a number of decades. The Dzungars were Mongol-speaking Buddhists. Fighting extended from present-day Mongolia through the areas now part of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and into Tibet.

The Qing empire, using an army made up of Manchus and Uyghurs led by Manchu generals, finally defeated the Dzungars in the 1750s and began a mass extermination of Dzungars after they rebelled against Qing rule in 1755. Survivors of the genocide fled into the Russian empire and settled around or close to the Volga River delta area on the northwest shores of the Caspian Sea. These people are now known as Kalmyks and they have an administrative region of their own within the Russian Federation.

After the Dzungars were driven out or killed, their lands were resettled by Han Chinese (including Hui), Uyghurs, Kazakhs and various other groups.

The episode involving Zuo Zongtang and Yakub Beg took place a century after the Qing empire's genocide of the Dzungars, when the Qing empire had declined as a result of European and in particular British encroachment into Qing territory and the Opium Wars fought by the British against the Qing empire.

Posted by: Jen | Feb 6 2021 9:47 utc | 97

Martin @ 85 and onwards:

Perhaps if you were to watch this video of an interview with a British-born Australian citizen, formerly a police officer in Britain in the 1980s and later involved in private security, who has travelled through Xinjiang province with his wife on bicycle trips, you will discover what these camps actually are.

Posted by: Jen | Feb 6 2021 9:53 utc | 98

Martin @89

Please provide the links of Chinese sources that China admitted to having concentration camps for 1 million Uyghurs?

Till now, all I read, both in Chinese and English, China always insists these are re-education/vocational schools to de-radicalise the Uyghurs who have been brainwashed by religious schools and underground mosques that spread cross in Xinjiang with the money flowing from Saudi in the past decades.

Here is a report Xinjiang Re-edcation Camp. Make your own judgement.

Posted by: lulu | Feb 6 2021 10:27 utc | 99

The fact is it was estimated that there were around 10,000 to 20,000 Chinese Uyghurs living in Syria. They have not only been fighting side by side with IS but also volunteered to join Turkish army to invade Afrin

Here are some of the IS-style terror attacks in China conducted by Uyghur terrorists:

- Urumqi Terror Attacks on July 5th, 2009

More than 197 killed; Of 154 identified dead ones: 134 Han Chinese, 11 Hui muslims, 10 Uyghurs, 1 Manchu and more than 1700 injured (absolute majority were Han Chinese), 331 shops burnt down, 627 buses/cars/jeeps/trucks/police cars burnt.

- Kunming Railway Station Terror Attack on March 1st, 2014: Eight Uyghur (6 males and 2 females) who wanted to join jihad in Syria but failed to cross the border to reach Thailand- went to railway station wielding knives killing 29 and injuring 143 with typical jihadi execution sytle: slitting the throats and chopping the heads.

Nine suspects were later identified by Indonesian police in Indonesia.

- Urumqi Morning Market Bombing on May 22nd, 2014: Five Uyghur terrorists drove two cars into the early morning market and threw self-made bombs killing 39 and injuring 94.

- Bombing of the Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan in 2016 : a joint operation between Al Nusra and its Uyghur affiliate Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP)

- Hijacking Passenger Plane at Hotan in 2012: The Tianjin Airlines' flight GS7554 flying from Hotan to Urumqi took off with 92 passengers, including 9 crew members on board.

These Uyghur terror attacks are usually under-reported and always reported in certain way by the MSM to create certain narratives to mislead its readers in the West.

For example,

- NYT captioned photos of Han Chinese victims of 2009 Urumqi Terror Attacks in hospital bed as Uyghur victims. Their name tags on the hospital wall beside their beds indicated clearly they were Han Chinese;

- BBC/NYT/Spiegel/Wapo &Co tended to report only the total number victims but never provided you with details just in case you understood the truth of Ugyhur terrorists killing innocent Chinese, while purposely wrote the crying and bleeding Han victims as Uyghurs.

- When the Han Chinese burnt memorial paper on the 7th day for their beloved ones who were killed by the Uyghur terrrists, - burning paper & candles on 7th, 14th till 49th day of death in memorial of the dead ones is Han Chinese tradition, NYT, WaPO, BBC & Co had the audacity to put on the captions under the photos and wrote in their articles telling you these were Uyghurs crying for their beloved one!

- NYT, WaPO, BBC & Co often went to tell you bold-faced lies, such as telling the bleeding and crying young Han Chinese women on the Urumqi street were Uyghurs to mislead you to believe in their narratives.

This is how pathological and unethical the Western MSM presstitutes are when comes to propaganda! This is how news about China has been manufactured and presented to you by your mostly trusted free press!

- Western MSM tended to portray these terror attacks as "supposed/claimed violence" that in fact is the oppressed Uyghurs fighting bravely for their religion freedom and/or ethnicity identity against the evil CPC.

Remember when the days Western media kept on telling you bin Laden was a "freedom fighter"?

Posted by: lulu | Feb 6 2021 10:48 utc | 100

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