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1/ BBC's publication of allegations of rape and torture in Xinjiang reeducation camps have predictably triggered angry responses from denialists, many drawing parallels to the Nayirah affair. This argument relies on stunning ignorance of said affair and of the XJ camps. Thread.
2/ First, a brief logic lesson! Cherry-picking is a fallacy wherein a subset of a body of evidence is used to insinuate something not supported by the totality of said evidence. Both positive and negative testimony about Xinjiang exist, and both are forms of evidence. Anyways—
3/ (The following is taken from a post I did a few months ago, viewable here) https://wokeglobaltimes.com/137db32016d64e81adb0f5fe54266dee
4/ The Nayirah affair refers to the false testimony given in October 1990 delivered by a Kuwaiti girl in front of Congress. Her allegations of Iraqi soldiers killing babies in incubators helped push Congress to authorize Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
annnnd messed up the thread. of course. Love this terribly formatted website. (when can I just start posting essays like on Weibo?) Moving on...
5/ Nayirah's testimony was not arranged by the US government, contrary to the unsurprisingly uninformed view held by people like Josh and Rod; it was arranged by the Kuwaiti government—her father was the ambassador to the US. Kuwait hired a PR firm to coach her.
6/ While denialists are quick to decry every single thing any Western think tank or human rights group that has ever said as useless propaganda, even before the invasion, Human Rights Watch called Nayirah's testimony into question (challenging Amnesty's 'verification'.)
7/ The Bush admin, of course, did not really care. U.S. Amb. to Kuwait, Edward Gnehm, got angry at HRW (and Amnesty, which retracted its report post-war). Bottom line: Nayirah affair was /one/ girl whose claims were contested /at the time/. This is /not/ true of Xinjiang.
8/ HRW contested the claims of Nayirah the exact same way it goes about much of its research now: based on testimony from those fleeing the region. Denialists frequently reveal themselves ignorant of the wealth of testimony outside of the ones cherry-picked for inconsistencies.
9/ Of course, by nature of the overwhelming volume of testimony of former detainees, spanning across years, denialists like tend to focus on what they see as the most flawed testimony to argue that /no/ testimony cited by any Uyghur who contravenes the Party line can be trusted.
10/ History will be the judge there. In the meantime, here is a modest table of such testimony from sources ranging from the The New York Times to small literary magazines. This pales in comparison to sources like
@shahitbiz https://wokeglobaltimes.com/3938794a3c104988aac59227336e1a46
@shahitbiz https://wokeglobaltimes.com/3938794a3c104988aac59227336e1a46
11/ See also this list of activists and just regular /people/ who are abroad. A similar list of academics with specific expertise in Central Asia, Islam in China, and/or Uyghurs is also on my blog. https://wokeglobaltimes.com/ed10f27b02514194ba1c478faa7da253
12/ For any comparison to the Nayirah affair to hold, we'd have to assume that all of the above are paid crisis actors. Clearly, some denialists will continue to think so. They will cite counter-testimony by Uyghurs in Xinjiang who will tell you everything is totally fine!
13/ And that /is/ counter-evidence that has to be examined. The problem, of course, is that while I'm sure there are Uyghurs happy in Xinjiang, we /know/ that the unhappy ones, so to speak, /cannot/ say so. The 2017 XUAR regs are so broad as to criminalize dissent.
14/ The Chinese government's pervasive censorship and control of speech creates a dilemma: how can we be sure testimony from inside Xinjiang is not coerced? As I detail in this post, even many of the supportive visitors brought on trips in 2019 have doubts https://wokeglobaltimes.com/aac16063149c4e37a8e3ee58066c4837
15/ Ultimately, you are deluding yourself if you think that an internment system as massive and pervasive as that in Xinjiang, that is by definition coercive, will not have serious problems with abuse. This is true in any carceral setting, and it is always evil.
16/ Final note—the hypocrisy of many American politicians re: Xinjiang is self-evident, as is the hypocrisy of the same defense-industrial apparatus that underwrites the genocide in Yemen. That does *not* mean what is happening in Xinjiang is okay. We can—and must—oppose both.
17/ Uh final final note. I definitely buy the in-article explanation as to why Ziawudun did not earlier disclose the rape, shown below. Denialist threads that focus on that, though, still ignore the testimony of Gulzira Auelkhan! https://twitter.com/RadioFreeSasha/status/1357149707886354437?s=20
