Debunking Denialist Narratives Around the Xinjiang Genocide.
Every known genocide has been accompanied by denial. Genocide denialism is so bound up in the act of genocide that it is considered to be an innate part of the genocidal process. Wherever you see a genocide, there will always be genocide denialism put out by the perpetrators and by those who are misled by them or whose interests are served by denying. This is well known, it’s been studied extensively, and it’s considered one of the best-established facts in atrocity studies:
http://genocidewatch.net/genocide-2/8-stages-of-genocide/
By far the most extensive genocide denial on this site however, and online generally, is denial of the Xinjiang Genocide. There’s so much of it that it dominates the discourse here. It’s also the worst denialism here, the most morally reprehensible, because the atrocities being denied are ongoing. In case you are in doubt that we are looking at an active genocide in Xinjiang, here is the Genocide Emergency Alert that was issued by Genocide Watch, the world’s primary genocide watchdog and authority on genocide who are tasked with monitoring the progression of such atrocities worldwide:
GENOCIDE EMERGENCY ALERT FOR XINJIANG, CHINA
https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/genocide-emergency-alert-for-xinjiang-china
And some further discussion of where the determination of genocide comes from:
Yes, Xinjiang Is an Intentional Genocide
Beijing wants to end the Uyghurs as a people.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/15/xinjiang-uyghurs-intentional-genocide-china/
But because China is a large and powerful country, two factors have plagued discourse on this matter, making it harder to call a spade a spade. Firstly, China expends vast resources on propaganda both domestically and on the global internet to derail serious discussion about Xinjiang:
China’s Internet Trolls Go Global
https://www.cfr.org/blog/chinas-internet-trolls-go-global
Secondly, many people who have financial or personal interests in China, or have some kind of axe to grind against the West, choose to turn a blind eye to these atrocities and to dismiss, deflect and deny any discussion of them. We saw this kind of thing in the ’30s as well; this isn’t surprising, but we need to be aware that these kinds of morally bankrupt and contemptible individuals and groups are once again making lots of noise.
While Xinjiang denialism can be found all over the internet, some Western platforms seem more susceptible to it than others. While it can be found in fair quantities in obscure threads on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit, I have noted particular concentrations of it on the Q&A site Quora. Quora is absolutely infested with this kind of denialism, to the point that the discourse on the Xinjiang genocide there is virtually a wall-to-wall barrage of denialist propaganda. If you don’t believe me, then simply type the words ‘Uighur genocide’ into Quora’s search bar and read the first answer that appears. I almost guarantee that it will be denialist in nature. Probably the majority of posting on that site on this topic is denialist propaganda. Shame on Quora for permitting factually incorrect denialist misinformation and propaganda to proliferate on their platform. History will judge the enablers of this genocide.
I spent a lot of time there, analysing the denialist arguments, evaluating them, and debunking them. Though this was ultimately quite a thankless hobby, I hope that some value can be extracted from these refutations.
The rest of this article will go through denialist arguments that I’ve seen, and provide the resources to refute and debunk them. Think of it as a ‘crib sheet’ for refuting denialist propaganda on Quora. Since I have now left Quora I hope this can help people who are fighting against disinformation on this topic. I’ll try to refute as many of the common claims as possible:
1: There’s no evidence for the Xinjiang genocide:
Yes there is. There are mountains of evidence. Everything from eyewitness testimony, leaked documentation, satellite imagery, footage, key logistics markers, population statistics and more corroborate the charge of genocide.
Supporting links/evidence:
MeansAndEvidences/Sources.md at main · Stop-Uyghur-Genocide/MeansAndEvidences
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oaJAqOlhfDiPwZK6PKPEqHihXg_zYp80-IO0oqHpuCk/edit
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-camps-china/
What is happening to Uighurs within Chinese concentration camps?
As a Muslim centrist with no affiliation nor loyalty to any government or politician, I suggest we look at this from a detailed, analytical and logical point of view. It’s not black and white, it’s a very complex issue and it’s important we look at this from all sides with zero marginalization of whe…
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“Break Their Lineage, Break Their Roots”
https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/1478/html/
China Cables: Who Are the Uighurs and Why Mass Detention? — ICIJ
2: Well, ok, maybe there is evidence, but there isn’t footage of abuse and in an era of proliferating camera phones there should be.
There are clear prohibitions against filming and recording these things in Xinjiang. This has been explicitly noted by some of the eyewitnesses.[1] It will be extremelydifficult to get footage out of the camp network. We also lack footage from the inside of Laogai labour camps[2] or the North Korean prison camps. Does that mean that evidence for abuse in these camps is also all a hoax? That said, there is footage of the repressive measures:
Footage of Uighur prisoners being transferred to a newly built re-education camp in Korla:
China footage reveals hundreds of blindfolded and shackled prisoners
Video shows what appear to be Uighur or other minority prisoners led away by police
The verification process of this video:
4 days ago a video showing 3–400 detainees handcuffed & blindfolded at a train station in Xinjiang was uploaded to YouTube (https://t.co/GpEaZ7YkIK)
In this thread I’ll share how I’ve verified that this video was filmed at 库尔勒西站 (41.8202, 86.0176) on or around August 18th. pic.twitter.com/hr5xd8nahM— Nathan Ruser (@Nrg8000) September 21, 2019
Footage from inside the camps:
Uighur model sends rare video from Chinese detention
Seven months ago Merdan Ghappar disappeared in Xinjiang. Then his family started getting messages.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-53650246
Footage of police abuse of a recently arrested Uighur (WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC AND DISTRESSING):
Horrific Video Allegedly Shows Chinese Police Ruthlessly Beating Uyghur Muslim in Handcuffs
https://nextshark.com/video-chinese-cops-uyghur-muslim/
We need to ask ourselves what this poor man faced once he was actually inside the police station and out of sight.
3: All the evidence comes from the lying Western Media and from a few sources. Virtually all the evidence can be tracked back to one man: Adrian Zenz.
No it doesn’t. See the evidence presented above. It derives from a wide variety of sources, from academics to analysts. This claim is simply not true.
The evidence for this genocide clearly does not rest upon a narrow base of flimsy evidence, and it’s a bit rich to accuse all Western Media of lying while simultaneously making easily-refuted false claims.
4: Adrian Zenz bad. Zenz lacks credibility/is a fraud/ cooked up all the evidence because he hates China, etc.
Adrian Zenz is a well-respected academic investigating the genocide whose work is very high credibility. Ad-hominem is a fallacious argument form. The personal smears against Zenz actually demonstrate that those who try to discredit him don’t have a substantive reply to his scholarship, and haven’t found serious flaws in it. For more about Zenz and an evaluation of the claims made against him, read this:
5: There’s a witness who has inconsistencies in their story/ their claims can’t be verified/ they lied.
Memories can be very unreliable, especially of traumatic events. Therefore evaluating eyewitness claims is more complex than these apologists admit. Inconsistent stories or even outright fabrications are not uncommon among victims of atrocity and abuse. Also: if some people lie about abuse, it doesn’t mean that that abuse isn’t happening at all, or that it invalidates the whole spread of evidence, or is itself evidence that the entire genocide has been hoaxed by ‘enemies of China’. There are people who lied about being in the Holocaust and in 9/11. Does that mean that these events didn’t happen?
A good article on this question:
But some Uyghur on Twitter lied! This is Nayirah 2.0!
https://wokeglobaltimes.com/xinjiang/but-some-uyghur-on-twitter-lied-this-is-nayirah-20
On how to evaluate eyewitness testimony:
6: This is just like the Nayirah Testimony/ WMD claims!
The Nayirah testimony was a 4-minute false account of Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait throwing babies out of incubators that was hyped by the US to help justify the First Gulf War in the ‘90s.[3]Similarly, the false claims about Saddam’s stockpiling of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the lead-up to war in 2003 are mentioned by denialists who say that the same thing is going on with claims about Xinjiang.
The only problem with this claim is that it doesn’t take into account that both the Nayirah testimony and the WMD claims were based on one or two pieces of testimony and flawed reports, which were then hyped up to justify intervention. Immediately, people pointed out glaring flaws in the allegations and both stories quite quickly began to fall apart on inspection. Humanitarian groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch quickly poked holes in the claims, and got into public spats with US state officials who tried to keep that narrative alive by criticising the investigation. There was widespread questioning and dissent, especially over the WMD claims, but we saw obviously unbalanced ultimatums from the US as it scrabbled around for a casus belli. Nothing like that has happened with the Xinjiang allegations. Instead, it’s this huge and mutually inter corroborating body of evidence from diverse sources. I’ll repost the link for some of it here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oaJAqOlhfDiPwZK6PKPEqHihXg_zYp80-IO0oqHpuCk/edit
And on the Nayirah testimony:
But some Uyghur on Twitter lied! This is Nayirah 2.0!
https://wokeglobaltimes.com/xinjiang/but-some-uyghur-on-twitter-lied-this-is-nayirah-20
So no, the Xinjiang allegations have no possibility of being a similar fabrication to the WMD claims or the Nayirah testimony. I also don’t think that the US wants a war with China in the same way that it did with Iraq. It would be far too costly and destructive to everyone. It wouldn’t serve their interests.
7: It’s counter-terrorism measures/ these policies are necessary to prevent terrorism and militant separatism in Xinjiang.
The existence of militancy in Xinjiang cannot justify collective punishment against the entire civilian population. Claiming that all the victims of the crackdown are ‘terrorists’ in the face of the overwhelming evidence that the wider population are being targeted amounts to victim-blaming and justification of genocide. It flies in the face of the evidence. Most countries manage to strike a balance between controlling terrorism and militancy and not committing genocide on their own citizens.
8: It’s all just poverty alleviation/ vocational education.
This contradicts the evidence already presented here of mass human rights violations and genocide. You don’t alleviate poverty by committing crimes against humanity and genocide.
9: What about the visits to Xinjiang by delegations from Muslim countries that failed to find anything. Muslims wouldn’t leave their fellow Muslims to suffer like that!
First of all, none of these visits were proper investigations, which should include open access and unscheduled inspections of the facilities. Xinjiang remains closed to any meaningful investigation:
U.N. rights chief regrets lack of access to Xinjiang
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/un-rights-chief-regrets-lack-access-xinjiang-2021-09-13/
Anyone who knows anything about Islamic history and politics will find that latter claim bitterly hilarious. Of course Islamic nations will screw over fellow Muslims for their own self-interest. Money talks.
If you look at the signatories to denialist motions praising China’s Xinjiang measures, it’s a who’s who of corrupt dictatorships with poor human rights records, recipients of Chinese loans, and nations with a track record of atrocity who are therefore invested in denying and covering for human rights abuses generally:
We cannot take UN declarations like these at face value. That is almost painfully naive, or otherwise deliberately obtuse. Politics and corruption trump truth-seeking in this context.
10: Where are the refugees/ there is no refugee crisis as there ought to be if there was a genocide.
First off, there are refugees. They’ve been escaping for years:
The Uighur and Syrian refugees making a home together in Turkey
United by shared hardships, a small community is building a place of support, solidarity and safety.
And China hasn’t been issuing passports to Uighurs for a long time now. Those Uighurs who have travelled to China to renew their passports have been detained:
https://docs.uhrp.org/pdf/Weaponized_Passports.pdf
Any exodus towards neighbouring countries on foot en masse is prevented by several factors, notably:
Intense surveillance making such a co-ordinated movement impossible:
Surveillance in China’s Xinjiang Region: Ethnic Sorting, Coercion, and Inducement
https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2019.1621529
How Mass Surveillance Works in Xinjiang, China
‘Reverse Engineering’ Police App Reveals Profiling and Monitoring Strategies
https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/interactive/2019/05/02/china-how-mass-surveillance-works-xinjiang
China’s Algorithms of Repression
The geographic inaccessibility of the borders to other nations that are Xinjiang’s neighbours:
The policy of surrounding states to hand Uighur refugees right back to the Chinese:
Refworld | India to deport three asylum-seeking Uyghurs to China
https://www.refworld.org/docid/5848122da.html
Uyghur minority fear deportation to China
https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/fr/node/193281
Kazakhstan’s Ambiguous Position towards the Uyghur Cultural Genocide in China — The Asan Forum
Together, these obstacles prevent a general exodus. That doesn’t stop a small but steady trickle of refugees from escaping, often with harrowing accounts.
11: But the US/ Canada/Australia/ Norway/ Tahiti/ Lithuania does horrible things to Muslims as well! ‘The West’ (or whoever is talking about Xinjiang) are massive hypocrites that have no business meddling in the internal affairs of another nation!
This argument is irrelevant to the question of whether China is conducting genocide in Xinjiang. It’s pure whataboutism, and a deflection from discussion of the matter at hand. As anyone with an ounce of critical thinking can see, it’s possible for both the US to be doing unethical actions against people in Muslim-majority nations and for China to be conducting a genocide against a Muslim group. It’s a classic form of the ‘tu quoque’ fallacy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
This is actually an admission of guilt, but with an added attempt to deflect from that admission by saying ‘yeah but you do it too’. There’s nothing rational about this form of argument.
That’s most of what I can think of for now. If you think of anything else, be sure to let me know in the comments! I hope this can help anyone who wishes to fight back against Xinjiang genocide denial on Quora and to debunk the spurious claims made by deniers. Don’t let misinformation about atrocities win.
Footnotes
[1] Xinjiang Camps Were Built as Prisons, Their Builders Expose
