'Inferior' women: China counters Uighur criticism with explicit PR attacks | Reuters
China, under growing global pressure over its treatment of a Muslim minority in its far west, is mounting an unprecedented and aggressive campaign to push back, including explicit attacks on women who have made claims of abuse.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
By Cate Cadell
BEIJING (Reuters) - China, under growing global pressure over its treatment of a Muslim minority in its far west, is mounting an unprecedented and aggressive campaign to push back, including explicit attacks on women who have made claims of abuse.
As allegations of human rights violations in Xinjiang mount, with a growing number of Western lawmakers accusing China of genocide, Beijing is focussing on discrediting the female Uighur witnesses behind recent reports of abuse.
Chinese officials have named women, disclosed what they say is private medical data and information on the women's fertility, and accused some of having affairs and one of having a sexually transmitted disease. The officials said the information was evidence of bad character, invalidating the women's accounts of abuse in Xinjiang.
"To rebuke some media's disgusting acts, we have taken a series of measures," Xu Guixiang, the deputy head of Xinjiang's publicity department, told a December news conference that was part of China's pushback campaign. It includes hours-long briefings, with footage of Xinjiang residents and family members reading monologues.
A Reuters review of dozens of hours of presentations from recent months and hundreds of pages of literature, as well as interviews with experts, shows a meticulous and wide-reaching campaign that hints at China's fears that it is losing control of the Xinjiang …
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I think that we can all agree that this article shows true attempts at propaganda.
How closely does this hew to the past actions of other governments in other countries?
The question is whose propaganda is true - the propaganda that demonizes China or the propaganda published by China. Doesn't matter which, because there are people who will believe anything, even that the world is flat, or was created only 6000 years ago.
No ones propaganda is completely true. Propaganda, by definition , ....
Propaganda is used to attempt to make people think in a certain way by using disingenuous argumentation and logical fallacy.... lying and cheating, to be more informal about it.
This article is by Reuters who is noted for their factual reporting.
Just to be clear, Buzz, because I do not think that you are, but are you claiming that this piece is demonizing China? I think that it lays out the case for China being duplicitous in the State use of force to "control" a situation.
You must realize, Thomas, that I see both sides of the story, being here. I doubt that many other members of this site bother to do so, but as has become well known among everyone is that the extent of the bias and fake news that circulates makes it hard to believe anything these days. That is such a contrast from when I was the Editor-in-chief of my university newspaper more than six decades ago. At that time there was even an award presented to the least biased news source, and it was won many times by The Christian Science Monitor, which was our model for both philosophy of content and format. Of course that award can no longer be presented to ANY news source, even The Christian Science Monitor. So I now do not particularly rely without question on anything other than my own eyes and common sense. It makes grandpappy's adage: "Don't believe anything you read or hear and only half of what you see" almost correct these days because of the kinds of editing that is possible you cannot even be sure about what you see, other than with your own eyes.
Of course the western media shouts loud about the treatment of the Muslims in China, but there are 30 million Muslims in China, and anywhere from one miiiion to three million Uyghurs in camps (depending on the extent of exaggeration desired) and the ones who are not so live their lives, run their businesses, pray in their mosques, no different than any other Chinese individual. I'm aware that the Chinese government has used methods to maintain peace, order and good government that would not satisfy the American profession individual rights and freedoms (notwithstanding having the highest incarceration rate in the world), but I read the news of America reporting shootings pretty well every day, some mass murders, domestic terrorism, but guess what - since the government clamped down on the Uyghur terrorists almost four years ago, that doesn't happen here save for the 2 or 3 cases of some disturbed old men breaking into schools and stabbing children during those years - and yes, they are reported. People here don't run and hide when they hear a motorcycle backfire.
America has not been innocent of making false claims concerning China. IMO Trump was a master of deflecting his own faults by accusing China of unproven issues, supported in that by his mouthpiece Pompeo, and using his xenophobic commentary to endanger the lives and safety of Asian and Pacific Island Americans. Notwithstanding the lie that there was credible evidence that the Chinese created and deliberately released the virus from a Wuhan lab, where is that evidence? Seems to me that even from the beginning that was kyboshed by scientists and now by an international investigating crew. Where is the evidence that the Chinese Consulate in Houston was complicit in spying, even after the consulate was broken into, seeking that evidence, contrary to international protocols?
I could have a lot more to say, but then I don't consider myself to be a hypocrite. So when I read articles like the one posted above, I do so with a grain of salt and an ounce of doubt.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment.
How many terrorist attacks were there before the Chinese government started clamping down on the Uyghurs? Was the response of the Chinese government proportional or was it heavy handed?
I have to leave now, but will return in the morning, hopefully.
It was a build-up, an increase in frequency and seriousness, culminating in a huge attack that murdered too many innocent people in Kunming, that finally was the straw that broke the camel's back, leading to a determination that it was going to be stopped once and for all. A museum has been created in Xingiang displaying the history of the Uyghur terrorism, including samples of the many weapons used by the terrorists. Perhaps it was somewhat heavy-handed, but it was effective, just as perhaps being somewhat heavy-handed with the pandemic (combined, of course, with the cultural preference for the common good rather than individual rights and freedoms) that led to its pretty effective containment in China and other Asian countries.
I did some research... PBS has this short interactive video
This iframe is not allowed
And this Page from the BBC
These from NPR
And these From Reuters
With all due respect, Buzz, I think that the situation is more drastic than you portray.
The Uighurs are apparently not ethnically Chinese and were incorporated into China when the Xinjiang province was taken over in 1949. It seems as though the ethnic Han are moving into the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Not to put too fine a point on it, but this seems reminiscent of what the settling Europeans did to the Native American peoples.
You said, " A museum has been created in Xingiang displaying the history of the Uyghur terrorism, including samples of the many weapons used by the terrorists ," which leads me to believe that museum is a propaganda tool to draw attention from the the fact that they want the land and it's mineral wealth, kind of like "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
I am not faulting you for the actions of the Chinese government and Party. However, you seem to have an extremely sanitized version of events.
And that's how you defend genocide and forced rape.
"it's effective"
I DO NOT DEFEND GENOCIDE AND FORCED RAPE (what other kind of rape is there?). I used the word "effective' to indicate that the actions of the Chinese government were effective in putting a stop to Uyghur terrorism. I never said I DEFENDED it. You just can't stop trying to smear me. Use a dictionary to learn what the word "effective" means.
IF you aren't defending and justifying genocide, then those terms have no meaning. If the Nazi's made a museum to vilify Jews, would that have justified the death camps?
I see. So you are saying that if I said I saw a car crash, you would say I was defending the driver at fault. If I report that if I had an account at the Bank of China you would say I am defending the CCP. So if I say that there is a museum of Uyghur weapons in Xinjiang, then you are saying I agree with genocide. Your comments are a little twisted in logic, I would say. But keep it up, I cherish opportunities to flag your comments.
What I also can't believe is that a member whom I had respected has thumbed up your comments.
Educated, intelligent people check out both sides of a story before they make decisions. Here is the other side of the story that has been proposed by another NT member as the truth:
I am not going to say which side is correct, so anyone accusing me of that just because I have indicated a different side of the story that THEY believe is a vicious bigoted ignorant fool. In fact, my personal feeling is that if China wanted to establish innocence of what it has been accused of, I think it should allow an international multinational human rights group (made up of those whose minds have already been influenced and those who have not) to tour Xinjiang and tour the Uyghur camps WITHOUT restrictions. Unless that is done the matter will never be closed.
Lies move faster than the truth..... I'm sure that's been true for at least the last 6000 years.
I would say that they both move at the same speed until they are, in today's jargon, amplified by an influencer or spontaneously (???) go viral.
6000 years ago, most all communication was presumably verbal, word of mouth. As such, I would say that people in positions of power had a much greater control of narrative. But, then again, I have not dived down that particular rabbit hole...