Myths about China
The Myth of the Xinjang Genocide and the Tiananmen Square Massacre
Okay firstly the Tiananmen square "massacre"
Police brutality at most in response to violence and riots.
https://worldaffairs.blog/2019/06/02/tiananmen-square-massacre-facts-fiction-and-propaganda/amp/
Here are a few more examples of what western journalists once said about what happened in Tiananmen Square in June 1989:
CBS NEWS: “We saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel — in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a “massacre” had occurred in [Tiananmen Square]” — thus wrote CBS News reporter Richard Roth. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/
BBC NEWS: “I was one of the foreign journalists who witnessed the events that night. There was no massacre on Tiananmen Square” — BBC reporter, James Miles, wrote in 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm
NY TIMES: In June 13, 1989, NY Times reporter Nicholas Kristof – who was in Beijing at that time – wrote, “State television has even shown a film of students marching peacefully away from the [Tiananmen] square shortly after dawn as proof that they [protesters] were not slaughtered.” In that article, he also debunked an unidentified student protester who had claimed in a sensational article that Chinese soldiers with machine guns simply mowed down peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/13/world/turmoil-china-tiananmen-crackdown-student-s-account-questioned-major-points.html
REUTERS: Graham Earnshaw was in Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3. He didn’t leave the square until the morning of June 4th. He wrote in his memoir that the military came, negotiated with the students and made everyone (including himself) leave peacefully; and that nobody died in the square. https://earnshawcom.wpcomstaging.com/writings/memoirs/tiananmen-story
WIKILEAKS: A Wikileaks cable from the US Embassy in Beijing (sent in July 1989) also reveals the eyewitness accounts of a Latin American diplomat and his wife: “They were able to enter and leave the [Tiananmen] square several times and were not harassed by troops. Remaining with students … until the final withdrawal, the diplomat said there were no mass shootings in the square or the monument.” https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89BEIJING18828_a.html
"The government said 200 citizens died (from stray bullets and shootings by thugs), in addition to dozens of troops. The likely toll is almost certainly higher. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, who did some admirable detective work in Beijing hospitals in the weeks after the massacre, said in a report published on 21 June 1989 that 'it seems plausible that about a dozen soldiers and policemen were killed, along with 400 to 800 civilians.'" Tiananmen killings: Were the media right? BBC News. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/803556.stm
"Secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing have shown there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square when China put down student pro-democracy demonstrations 22 years ago." Wikileaks: No Bloodshed Inside Tiananmen Square, Cables Claim. The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8557631/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html
"Inside the square itself, a Chilean diplomat was on hand to give his US counterparts an eyewitness account of the final hours of the pro-democracy movement. 'He watched the military enter the square and did not observe any mass firing of weapons into the crowds, although sporadic gunfire was heard. He said that most of the troops which entered the square were actually armed only with anti-riot gear – truncheons and wooden clubs; they were backed up by armed soldiers,' a cable from July 1989 said." Wikileaks: No Bloodshed Inside Tiananmen Square, Cables Claim. The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8557631/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html
"The first draft of history can be crude. Even if the thrust of a story is well described by journalists on the scene, some of its details might need refinement, and sometimes even correction. Such was the case with the massacre in Beijing on 3 and 4 June, 1989. I was one of the foreign journalists who witnessed the events that night. We got the story generally right, but in one detail I and others conveyed the wrong impression. There was no massacre in Tiananmen Square." Tiananmen killings: Were the media right? BBC News. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/803556.stm
"Instead, the fiercest fighting took place at Muxidi, around three miles west of the square, where thousands of people had gathered spontaneously on the night of June 3 to halt the advance of the army." Wikileaks: No Bloodshed Inside Tiananmen Square, Cables Claim. The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8557631/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html
"The most reliable estimate, from many sources, was that the tragedy took 200-300 lives. Few were students, many were rebellious workers, plus thugs with lethal weapons and hapless bystanders." Tiananmen: The Empire's Big Lie. CounterPunch. Retrieved from https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/03/tiananmen-the-empires-big-lie/
"The last group of protestors filed out of the square to the south soon after." There Was No "Tiananmen Square Massacre". CBS News. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/
Government negotiators almost reached a truce with students in the square, only to be sabotaged by radical youth leaders seemingly bent on bloodshed. And the demands of the protesters focused on corruption, not democracy." Tiananmen: The Empire's Big Lie. CounterPunch. Retrieved from https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/03/tiananmen-the-empires-big-lie/
"The demands of the protesters focused on corruption, not democracy." Tiananmen: The Empire's Big Lie. CounterPunch. Retrieved from https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/03/tiananmen-the-empires-big-lie/
But what about the iconic “tank man”? Well, if you watch the whole video, you can see that the tanks stopped and even let the tank man jump on the tank. He eventually walked away unharmed.
Now onto the Xinjiang ugyhur "genocide"
There is no evidence of ethnic cleansing. The main source comes from a far right American who believes Jesus sent him on to destroy the CPC
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is the second largest organization after the United Nations with a membership of 57 states spread over four continents. The OIC released Resolutions on Muslim Communities and Muslim Minorities in the non-OIC Member States in 2019 which:
20. Welcomes the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat's delegation upon invitation from the People's Republic of China; commends the efforts of the People's Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People's Republic of China.
https://www.oic-oci.org/docdown/?docID=4447&refID=1250
In this same document, the OIC expressed much greater concern about the Rohingya Muslim Community in Myanmar, which the West was relatively silent on.
Over 50+ UN member states (mostly Muslim-majority nations) signed a letter ( https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?FinalSymbol=A%2FHRC%2F41%2FG%2F17 ) to the UN Human Rights Commission approving of the de-radicalization efforts in Xinjiang:
The World Bank sent a team to investigate in 2019 and found that, "The review did not substantiate the allegations." (https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2019/11/11/world-bank-statement-on-review-of-project-in-xinjiang-china)
Even if you believe the deradicalization efforts are wholly unjustified, and that the mass detention of Uyghur's amounts to a crime against humanity, it's still not genocide. Even the U.S. State Department's legal experts admit as much:
The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide, placing the United States’ top diplomatic lawyers at odds with both the Trump and Biden administrations, according to three former and current U.S. officials.
State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China-https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/19/china-uighurs-genocide-us-pompeo-blinken/ | Colum Lynch, Foreign Policy. (2021)
basic critical thinking skills. where's the refugee crisis spilling into central asia if 11 million people are being executed?
Why are regular Uighurs vlogging on youtube? Why is everything in Xinjiang in the Uighur language if their culture is being erased?
Genocides don't just happen by accident. Every genocide in history has been driven by extreme, overt hatred. Governments who commit genocide may cover up their actions, but they can't and won't cover up the hatred behind those actions, because 1) it's fundamental to their ideology, and 2) they need to spread that hatred so that the general population will acquiesce or even participate in the genocide. When it comes to China, we thus need to ask: where is the ideological basis for genocide? Where would the hatred come from? There's nothing in Marxism-Leninism, or Xi Jinping thought, which could serve as the basis for ethnic genocide. In fact, China has generally been very good at looking after the interests of its ethnic minorities (they were exempt from the one child policy, for example). Some would argue that vehement state atheism could explain a genocide, but the PRC's constitution actually guarantees freedom of religion. Considering the ideological and historical contexts, the claim of genocide simply doens't make sense. What would make sense would be an anti-radicalisation programme aimed at tackling a long-running and well-documented problem with terrorism in Xinjiang Province, which may well have been excessively harsh, resulting in some innocent people being wrongly detained, leading to the stories which the western media is happy to blow out of proportion.
The Uyghurs aren't even the only ethnic minority that practises Islam, there's also the Hui. Like the Uyghurs, the Hui also have their own autonomous region as well. The Hui get their own autonomous region even though they only comprise around a third of the population. That doesn't remotely sound like the actions of a state that's Islamophobic. Why would a Islamophobic state give not one, but two ethnic groups that are predominately Muslim their own autonomous region?
Being Hui or Uyghur isn't just some random trivia, being an ethnic minority in the PRC means access to various affirmative actions. A good example is that every single ethnic minority was exempt from the one-child policy. The one-child policy was only formally abolished in 2015 (although implementation was never uniform and had already been inconsistently applied in the 2000s-2010s), it's frankly ahistorical for the same government to go from "we'll allow this ethnic minority to have more children relative to the ethnic majority" to "let's genocide this ethnic minority by cramming them into concentration camps" in less than a decade. This would be like if the Nazis had a eugenics program during the 1930s but excluded Jews, Roma, and other ethnic minorities from it. It makes no fucking sense.
You should also look up Sibel Edmonds. She was a Turkic translator working for the FBI before she became a whistleblower. She exposes how the u.s. has radicalised individuals from Xinjiang, trained and armed them in Turkey, and sent them back to destabilise the region. The purpose of this is because the region is important for oil transports as part of the BRI. As such, China responded by setting up reeducation sites to prevent radicalization. Claims of genocide have no substance. If there were pictures of it then they would’ve been brought to light, like the images from Abu Ghraib.
There is No genocide. However, there are reeducation camps. I don't think even China denies this.
And this is a policy against terrorism, not muslims. You will find many muslims who have a good life in north west China, and even all over China. You can find lists of Uyghur celebrities online who appear in TV shows. Uyghur food is amazing, and big cities have them.
If you want to dig deeper as to whether or not a counter terrorism policy is warranted, I'll give you some questions to ponder over.
Why has the US carried strikes on Uyghurs? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-targets-chinese-uighur-militants-well-taliban-fighters-afghanistan-n845876
Why does the US need a Uyghur interpreter working in Guantanamo Bay? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushan_Abbas
Why has the US removed ETIM from its list of terrorist organisations? Why was it there in the first place? https://www.voanews.com/a/extremism-watch_uighur-diaspora-hails-removal-etim-us-terror-list/6200004.html
What ethnicity was the ISIS K member that attacked a mosque in Afghanistan after the US pulled out? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/world/asia/afghanistan-mosque-attack.html
It is Ok to doubt China, I also used to. But there is so much evidence against the claims of genocide and very little supporting the claims. I'll also let you know that Uyghurs also benefit greatly from the security measures in the region. Overwhelming majority are against the attacks they carried out in Xinjiang and Beijing and so on.
Finally, there is an overarching problem which China now shares with the Soviet Union, which is that it has native ethnicities. This was discussed in one podcast with Lady Izdihar. Of course, it brings a variety of benefits, such as cultural richness to a society, but it also brings problems, such as a strong sense of identity leading to separatist movements.
And the way US, Canada, Australia dealt with existing native populations was far far worse than reeducation camps.
It's literally an atrocity propaganda started by a white nationalist working for the Victims of Communism propaganda outlet.
Who is driving the Uyghur genocide narrative?
One of the main proponents of these narratives is Adrian Zenz (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Zenz), a German far-right fundamentalist Christian and Senior Fellow and Director in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, who believes he is "led by God" on a "mission" against China has driven much of the narrative. He relies heavily on limited and questionable data sources, particularly from anonymous and unverified Uyghur sources, coming up with estimates based on assumptions which are not supported by concrete evidence.
Adrian Nikolaus Zenz(born 1974) is a German anthropologist known for his studies of the Xinjiang internment camps (also known as "re-education" camps) and Uyghur genocide. He is a senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, an anti-communist think tank established by the US government and based in Washington, DC.
He is quoted by saying “god sent me to destroy communist China” yeah, such an unbiased person
"He is known for his work with the National Captive Nations Committee and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and formerly served as the chairman emeritus of the latter."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Captive_Nations_Committee
The Nazi collaborator Yaroslav Stetsko was the co-chairman of this organisation
The World Uyghur Congress, headquartered in Germany, is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which is a tool of U.S. foreign policy, using funding to support organizations that promote American interests rather than the interests of the local communities they claim to represent.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) is part of a larger project of U.S. imperialism in Asia, one that seeks to control the flow of information, undermine independent media, and advance American geopolitical interests in the region. Rather than providing an objective and impartial news source, RFA is a tool of U.S. foreign policy, one that seeks to shape the narrative in Asia in ways that serve the interests of the U.S. government and its allies.
The first country to call the treatment of Uyghurs a genocide was the United States of America. In 2021, the Secretary of State declared that China's treatment of Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang constitutes "genocide" and "crimes against humanity." Both the Trump and Biden administrations upheld this line.
Why is this narrative being promoted?
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a massive Chinese infrastructure development project that aims to build economic corridors, ports, highways, railways, and other infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Xinjiang is a key region for this project.
Promoting the Uyghur genocide narrative harms China and benefits the US in several ways. It portrays China as a human rights violator which could damage China's reputation in the international community and which could lead to economic sanctions against China; this would harm China's economy and give America an economic advantage in competing with China. It could also lead to more protests and violence in Xinjiang, which could further destabilize the region and threaten the long term success of the BRI.
it's such nonsense it's incredible anyone believes it. morons abound.
Let's compare china's response to the US
The United States, in the wake of "9/11", saw the threat of terrorism and violent extremism due to religious fundamentalism as a matter of national security. They invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 in response to the 9/11 attacks, with the goal of ousting the Taliban government that was harbouring Al-Qaeda. The US also launched the Iraq War in 2003 based on Iraq's alleged possession of WMDs and links to terrorism. However, these claims turned out to be unfounded.
According to a report by Brown University's Costs of War project, at least 897,000 people, including civilians, militants, and security forces, have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and other countries. Other estimates place the total number of deaths at over one million. The report estimated that many more may have died from indirect effects of war such as water loss and disease. The war has also resulted in the displacement of tens of millions of people, with estimates ranging from 37 million to over 59 million. The War on Terror also popularized such novel concepts as the "Military-Aged Male" which allowed the US military to exclude civilians killed by drone strikes from collateral damage statistics. (https://aoav.org.uk/2019/military-age-males-in-us-drone-strikes/)
In summary:
The U.S. responded by invading or bombing half a dozen countries, directly killing nearly a million and displacing tens of millions from their homes.
China responded with a program of deradicalization and vocational training that did result in many abuses and crimes that were not state sanctioned.
Which one of those responses sounds genocidal?
Side note: It is practically impossible to actually charge the U.S. with war crimes, because of the Hague Invasion Act. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act
And if any of you are asking why the US would make up lies ?
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/china-cold-war-2669160202/
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/12/15/china-tech-decoupling-sanctions-00071723
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202104/1220481.shtml
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202404/1310417.shtml
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202309/1299139.shtml
Note these are compiled from multiple different works. I am not the author.
Other sources
https://patrieoulamort.medium.com/the-uighur-genocide-myth-8d2151349db7
https://id.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/sgdt/202206/t20220622_10707637.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78s7yP2BdF0
https://youtu.be/cz9ICFDk8Js?si=fID_7dBgXt4M24wk
https://www.cowestpro.co/papers.html
https://www.ned.org/region/asia/xinjiang-east-turkestan-china-2021/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-26414014
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