The highly coercive and potentially lethal systems of control used against the Uyghurs and other minority groups in China’s internment camps have been revealed in the Xinjiang Police Files - a giant cache of secret documents shared with the BBC.
  • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
    243·
    2 years ago

    Adrian Zenz doesn’t speak Chinese, has never been to Xinjiang, and is literally a US government employee.

    • Kulun@mander.xyzOP
      1319·
      2 years ago

      If the documents are authentic, it doesn’t matter who delivered them

        • Kulun@mander.xyzOP
          615·
          2 years ago

          The Xinjiang Police Files were evaluated and checked for authenticity by a team of more than 30 journalists from 13 media outlets around the world – including the British BBC, »El País« in Spain, »Der Spiegel« in Germany and »Le Monde« in France

          • 𝕰𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖔' 𝕲𝖗𝖆𝖎𝖓@lemmygrad.ml
            164·
            2 years ago

            I don’t know what qualifications these journalists have w.r.t. verifying the authenticity of the documents, but let’s assume that they’re genuine. Do they contain some actual evidence to support the allegation that China is committing genocide, using slave labour, or something similar? (These are extremely serious allegations to make, so they ought to be very confident about their conclusions.)

            • Kulun@mander.xyzOP
              415·
              2 years ago

              Do they contain some actual evidence

              Did you even read the linked article, or some other sources?!

              • 𝕰𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖔' 𝕲𝖗𝖆𝖎𝖓@lemmygrad.ml
                152·
                2 years ago

                I’ve read plenty of it. I’ve also seen plenty of counter-evidence, so you’ll have to forgive me for not reading through all claims made by highly disreputable sources – it’s far easier to make an outrageous accusation than to disprove it. I’m sure you’ve read the article you posted, so feel free to point out which parts you find convincing.

                EDIT: I have now read the article. It certainly does make some allegations (although even if it is completely accurate, the Chinese government’s treatment of the potential religious extremists detained there is far more humane than what the US does on a regular basis).

                An interesting thing to note is that one of the articles linked at the bottom is an excellent example of the lies outlets like the BBC frequently spread about the official enemies of the imperial core – this article repeats the extreme claims made by Tursunay Ziyawudun, who is known to have changed her story multiple times (1, 2 (same article as above), summary (from a pro-China source), another summary in a Twitter thread).

                • Kulun@mander.xyzOP
                  415·
                  2 years ago

                  Why would you want to discuss an article you haven’t even read? [due to graineters edit]

                  I’m sure you’ve read the article you posted, so feel free to point out which parts you find convincing.

                  The authenticity of the sources seems plausible.
                  It’s not about me or what I find convincing, and it 's not my intention to convince anyone, so pls don’t judge others by yourself

              • AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.mlM
                112·
                2 years ago

                Yes.

                Even assuming the documents are true, they don’t lead people to infer that the people being dealt with are innocent and “was captured for being the wrong race.” If they’re prisoners who have actually committed serious crimes, which the Chinese government has always outright stated they have reeducation programs for (and every country has a penal system, surprise surprise), I don’t see how the treatment of them are anything scandalous. The US often treats inmates worse than is alleged in these leaks, as do many other Western countries.

                Let’s go through all of the claims with the context that it’s likely actually a prison or reeducation camp, for actual criminals/extremists, shall we?

                The police are instructed to kill escapees if they confront them with a warning shot and they keep trying to escape? Not unreasonable and seen all the time in Western high security (and even low security) prisons. Hell, with all the unjust police killings reported in the West, a Western even petty criminal is lucky if they even see the walls of a prison. Wait, I thought those evil commies killed prisoners on the regular just for fun, and here they are firing warning shots when someone is trying to escape?

                Prisoners are blindfolded and shackled when transporting them? Seen all the time in Western high security prisons. It’s to prevent them from knowing where they are and planning an escape accordjngly, and you know, fighting the officers and escaping outright, respectively.

                Prisoners in need of medical care are restrained and escorted by police? Funny story, I went to a hospital here in Canada, and I actually saw an inmate in the same ward being attended by a police officer. Inmate was in prison jumpsuit, and officer’s uniform literally said he works at a prison and is escorting an inmate. Wait, I thought the evil Chinese commies denied all medical care and even basic living nessities to their prisoners. Hmm…

                Also, interesting that the police in the leaked medical procedure picture is carrying a stick, not even a proper police knight stick, it’s looks like a broom handle lol. You’d think they’d go for something more substantial if they’re committing genocide.

                All in all, if this is true, it seems like fairly standard prison security procedures to me. Certainly nothing that would be out of place in a Western prison.

                The article authors also don’t actually call out that this institution these files are alleged to be from are actually one which the CPC has claimed to be a school for “willing students”. You’d think in a “China is the devil” article, if the CPC ever publicly referenced this specific facility as such, they’d definitely call that out and go “see? They lied!” Because you can have both proper prisons/compulsory reeducational facilities and facilities for willing participants. Western courts also order prisoners to undergo reeducation mind you, though that’s a dictatorship word so they don’t call it that.

          • AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.mlM
            122·
            2 years ago

            Notice a pattern with the publications jumping on this?

            Also, how do you even validate something like this beyond a reasonable doubt? I saw no actual proof of the verifications of their documents, and it was basically “these are real and I checked. Trust me, I’m the BBC.” Was it accidentally sent to the BBC by a gov.cn email or something? If someone just showed up with these documents (which they did, twice removed mind you) how do you know they didn’t just create them? Because they’re extremely easy to fabricate, just open up Microsoft Word, and someone with even moderate computer forensics knowledge can pretty easily forge all kinds of metadata and other tidbits that makes a fake document seem authentic, even under close scrutiny, because you’re ultimately trusting what the file self reports itself to be from. And obviously a piece of paper is even easier in this regard.

            So, what? They have a few out of context images of Chinese police, testimonials (which are unnamed and highly aggregated, literally no more than “there are people who confirmed these mugshots are of their missing relatives”, the definition of hearsay) saying the mug shots are real, and some censored phone and ID numbers of police (so YOU can’t verify it) that if real, probably weren’t classified to begin with (why would you classify who’s a police officer and who isn’t?) And it’s not like people, including the police, don’t get their phone numbers leaked to the public all the time.

            This is a huge issue with leaked documents in general, and there have been plenty of very convincing leaks that ended up being fake. And it’s also why in court trials, where authenticity is absolutely imperative, written documents or computer files that weren’t obtained by a court discovery order or subpoena is extremely hard to actually get entered into evidence, even if you claim that you took it right out of the murderer’s hands. There are chain of custody problems because the history of the document is hard to verify, and it’s almost always inadmissible as hearsay (Legal Eagle on YouTube has some good explanations of this).

  • AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.mlM
    145·
    2 years ago

    BBC BS/propaganda aside (and yes I too think that’s the case), the page design itself is HORRIBLE. I don’t want your stupid progressive web app animations, just give me a normal looking article FFS.