Blanked-out spots on China's maps helped us uncover Xinjiang's camps

China's social media army is out in force on that Twitter thread. Deflect, Deny, Discredit.

"Individuals cannot accept interviews without government approval." [12:06]

Does anyone know if this is a law?

I don't want to drive more divisive discussion here but if you understand chinese language the edits of the video is not without problems (a little sensationalist if I may say). The local guys are clearly helping the journalists, the normal citizens conversation were quite innocent and used in a way to indicate the editor's views. At the end people were chanting 'Are you chinese', while it should be clearly interpreted as 'Are you a chinese citizen'. The editor clearly wants the viewers to think they are being taught to be Han chinese.

Cool! Do you have a link?

They stupidly placed empty tiles on the map instead of image editing the terrain to erase the camps. In any case, the bases are present on other maps.

The US probably has a more complete map of China than China itself, thanks to things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20845111

Here’s another relevant Wikipedia article regarding censorship/absence of map data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_w...

When I was traveling around China a few years ago it was extremely frustrating trying to use my phone's GPS+offline map. Realtime mapping in China is purposely offset by hundreds of meters making navigation quite challenging!!

Kind of frustrating the reporting didn't compensate the pins on the map to adjust for this. Most of the dots currently point to nothing useful. I hope the data set gets released with real + compensated coordinates so people can conduct followup analysis.

Or use a neural network to do it, like thisbuildingdoesnotexist

They could put cartoon images of "land", like this TV show's overlay on top of a lady wearing Muslim dress: https://youtu.be/17oCQakzIl8?t=270

Interesting how the IMO Chinese "Eh, imma just half-ass it!" mentality (hopefully having visited the country and experienced half-assery, I'm allowed to comment) basically lead to this research work.

Bulldoze the camps, cover it with dirt, plant grass and trees, nobody will ever know.

Horseflies.

Filled with cryptids.

Taiga. And yes, that's where USSR internment camps and gulags used to be, for same out-of-sight reasons as they are in China.

Because history told us that public consensus and official conclusion could be lies. Remember the reason that the US invaded Iraq?

I think people are skeptical, because a lot of the people talking about these camps clearly don't care about the people in them. They only care about making China look bad. Many politicians in the US are using this as an example of why China is bad, while simultaneously pushing for similar here with our prison system or with ICE.

Plus, even if they aren't being hypocrital, it is in the United States' interest to make China look bad, even if that means making things up or exaggerating.

I'm surprised it hasn't been. Some initial reporting measured expansion of the camps by floor space which can be used to estimate internment numbers. One of the researcher is a licensed architect, this is 101 stuff in terms of occupancy/building use estimation. Source some commercial satellite service to take pictures and start counting.

That said, if the intention of the system is to indoctrinate then we can expect most of the 11M Uyghurs to be imprisoned at some time. Really the question is concurrent numbers which makes for grabbing headlines. My personal guess is if competent geospatial analysis was conducted the actual detention capacity would be far lower than the commonly cited 1-3 million Zenz estimated extrapolated from his claims of 1,200 detention centres. This study, alleged to be comprehensive, found 260 (edit 315) camps in the entire region. At least it's a good start.

Seems like something between B-D. Some people leave, some people don't, some people are murdered.

I'd think a mix of A and C (massive amounts of both good and ill intent/practices, largely a question of who runs the particular camp). This is based on both living in China in 2009 and seeing the nature of the state apparatus at the time, and having a Uighur roommate in 2012 who spoke a bit about the political situation at that time.

Does anyone know why the above post gets downvoted, even though it's only inquiring people for opinions, and not even presenting its own opinion?

What have I done wrong, and what should I have done differently?

Too simplistic. Based on the generally available reports, and based on prior probabilities given the way this stuff has tended to work all over the world, I tentatively believe something close to this:

There is forced re-education, forced de-radicalization, and forced political (and cultural) assimilation. One major motivation is probably to fight a (largely illusory) danger of widespread separatist violence. In fact, the policy will probably eventually provoke or exacerbate such violence from at least a significant minority. That in turn will confirm in the leader's minds that the entire populace is dangerous, leading to a heavier crackdown. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Some voluntary vocational education is available, not necessarily in "camps", but probably in somewhat less restricted residential settings as well as on an "outpatient" basis. This "education" has a significant political component, which is largely unnoticed by the people who create the curriculum. Failure to absorb the political component is failure to absorb the lessons, and is treated as such.

Some unknown, but probably not very large, number of people accept this on a truly voluntary basis. Another unknown, but probably larger, number accept it "voluntarily", because they expect full-on involuntary internment if they do not. Both of these "voluntary" groups probably do get privileges like the possibility to occasionally get a pass to leave the camp (or other facility). Neither group is probably as large as the outright involuntary group, but it's hard to tell.

Unless you can put on a good show of actually qualifying to "graduate", guitting the "voluntary" group probably has a better than even chance of getting you put into the "involuntary" group. On the other hand, if you're genuinely an enthusiastic member of the "voluntary" group, and you manage to prove it, that's a great thing and you'll get all kinds of rewards.

No genocide is intended; assimilation is intended. The goal is not so much to erase any existing cultural identity as to make it subordinate to "Chinese" identity. That includes accepting a healthy helping of Han, but the people defining the goals don't see that, and think of it as accepting "universal values and pro-social habits". The intended assimilation would have the long-term effect of erasure and might meet the UN definition of "genocide"... but that's not really the purpose.

There is no intentional genocide in the sense of planned mass extermination. Nobody is killed outright unless they resist with violence. They are, of course provoked to so resist, but that's not really intentional. Of course anything that looks like participation in or aid to rebellion counts as violent resistance.

If things escalate enough there may be more dehumanization, and a perceived need for a "final solution", but that's not what the bosses want to do, and they are probably not thinking in those terms at this point.

The intent with regard to religion is to tame it, and those in charge feel they're enlightened and lenient for not outright suppressing it. The "taming" includes bringing the practice under state supervision and control, and removing any doctrinal elements that the regime finds threatening or that might in any way tend to undermine the regime's own doctrines. Some of the altered elements are probably important to the religion as it exists and as it is presently seen by its practitioners. It's very hard to create a recognizable "socialist Islam".

The re-educators, for their part, cannot understand why anybody would be unwilling to accept the "obviously reasonable" changes they're asking for, and see any resistance as vicious intransigence.

The brutality, in or out of the camps, is neither policy nor incidental. It's just what happens when you round people up and tell your troops that they're recalcitrant and anti-social and need to be "re-educated". But Those In Charge are predisposed not to see the brutality as what it is. It's simply tough love for the recalcitrant, with the occasional rare aberration. If a guard manages to make the bosses see something as brutal, that guard is probably punished with extreme severity.

Artefacts, buildings or whatever aren't an issue unless they become rallying points or are seen as likely to be rallying points. However, "not an issue" also includes "not very important to preserve". Which may make them into rallying points.

The goal is to have everybody in the camps re-educated (or brainwashed, as we crazy outsiders would have it), and released. It's a regrettable reality that certain elements resist this reasonable re-education, and therefore must be detained for very long periods, maybe even for life. It wouldn't be appropriate to release anybody who hadn't actually been reformed. After all, it's for their own good, and don't doubt that the people at the top of this believe that it's for their own good. Of course, if somebody resists "criminally" and becomes an enemy of the state, they may be imprisoned, or, justifiably, executed judicially, or killed as imminent threats to the safety of the state, the state's agents, or the social order.

How many people they actually manage to release is hard to tell. Exactly how hard they try, or what they accept as adequate evidence of having been re-educated, is also hard to tell. It probably varies.

It's also a regrettable reality that there are many unregenerate elements in the populace. Whether it gets to a million, I don't know.

So sort of C with elements of A, but it's more complicated than that.

You would think they'd have learned about some of this from the Cultural Revolution, but apparently not.

It would have very little effect, which is why it's not a primary threat now. Despite China's aims, their tech giants have made little headway in pushing their core businesses far outside of China. Huawei is the primary success story in that regard (the US has obviously been aggressively targeting them across the board). Baidu was supposed to conquer the world and defeat Google, it failed miserably and is largely just a China search engine today, nearly all of their revenue comes from China, so sanctions wouldn't do much. China's tech giants are, for the most part, captives within China. ByteDance did manage to build a global phenomenon in TikTok, however that too is now under threat of being turned back.

Sanctions on most parts of China's system will have little effect, similar to how China's retaliatory sanctions on US Senators are largely meaningless.

There are three primary ways to hurt China. 1) Cut them off on technology (eg semiconductors), which is an angle the US is using to an extent. There is some question over how long China will tolerate that before they just start ignoring international rules/laws/norms and start openly steal-cloning the tech they want (I'd bet they won't tolerate it for very long). 2) Humiliate them politically, through isolation & exclusion; cut them out of the global system; that requires a widespread effort from the top several dozen economies, it can be done however. 3) Target their export machine & dollar dependency, cut them off financially from the global economy (USD, Euro and Yen combined entirely dominate the global economy, along with the connected banking & financial systems); this will work for a while, however China is aware of the weak spots and is very aggressively working to build out their domestic service economy to lessen the importance of their exports to their economy, and they're always looking to lessen their dollar dependency.

All that said, China is well beyond the point where you can really restrict them in the sense that you can most nations (like Iran or Venezuela). They've accumulated enough capability, tech, wealth, productivity, infrastructure, domestic know-how, etc. that they are fully free standing now. They have $60 trillion or so in domestic wealth. They have the world's #2 military. They have the world's largest manufacturing engine, and can increasingly manufacture at or near the highest tiers (eg jet engines & planes, semiconductors, etc). They have very few real weak points that can threaten them in a serious sense. The last time it was possible to squeeze China was before the great recession, when their economy was still far smaller than the US & EU, and back then it was hoped that wouldn't be necessary.

US could stop putting mexican kids in cages and treat them like garbage. That would be a start towards rehabilitation.

In international politics nobody cares too much as long as you are only killing your own people. No country wants to go to war to save some other country's citizens. Hitler could have finished the Holocaust with little more than an international slap on the wrist if he hadn't also invaded France and Russia.

YC announced the closure of YC China last year.

https://blog.ycombinator.com/an-update-on-yc-china/

There’s no “using another legal entity to do their bidding over there”. It’s just closed.

That said, it’s not clear that it’s unequivocally morally superior to deny a service to all 1B+ Chinese people, many of whom could have been founders of great companies or customers/beneficiaries of those companies, just because of the actions of a government, particularly one that was not elected by those citizens.

But that’s moot now. YC China has been closed.

unfortunately you will likely have to spend hours of research for every product, and be content with paying double once you find a suitable product.

Disproportionately purchase items made in your own country. Encourage others to do the same. Vote for government officials who encourage similar policies, write to government official who do not. Start/join action groups, engage in political debate at all levels. Start / invest in a local manufacturing company, run for local office, run for president, get rich and invest in local brands.

That's funny. For me as a Brazilian, 99% of things coming from China are made by American companies. I'd love to be able to not consume of this too.

It will get easier - there has been a significant shift of manufacturing away from China to other countries, primarily India.

That is the case for tech and some of the more crucial imports - cheap less important items will probably always be manufactured in China in high volume though.

Coordination problems of this size are most effectively solved with government sized units.

Become politically active (not just in the internet).

Start by self reflection on your hypocrisy. Do you feel bad about regularly using services from a country which has committed and supported some of the worst war crimes and genocide in history? (if not obvious, I am referring to the US)

Some options:

1. Resolve to not care if anyone is hurt in the process of providing you with consumables. Come up with excuses why it's not your responsibility, avoid learning more about it, ignore it, live in denial. The moral dread is gone.

2. Acquire your goods somewhere else, which may involve more cost and difficulty. The moral dread may not be gone if you realize that simply not supporting the oppression does not stop the oppression (avoiding German products does not stop the Holocaust)

3. Consume less. Same issue as #2 though.

4. Actively work towards ending the oppression which is giving you moral dread. This may end the moral dread, even if you continue to consume their products.

#1 is what most people go with.

As a start, you can buy goods from non-Chinese owned companies, even if they're manufactured in China. Also, you can start paying attention to the manufacturing location, so at least you are able to make a conscious choice. It's not easy, but possible.

For example, I'm planning on building a computer. I'm going to aim for components from Taiwanese and U.S. companies as much as possible. In terms of laptops, I won't buy a Lenovo, but would consider an Apple or HP, even though they're all at least partially made in China.

Maybe time to watch The Good Place. Wont solve your issue but will give perspective.

The only way to avoid your moral dread is to change your belief system. Anything that legitimately hurts the CCP a little would disproportionately devastate the residents there. If you boycott all factories that employ Uighurs, for example, that means that many of them will be laid off and sent back to reeducation camp.

A bit of an exaggeration. It does not take much research, google of course is useful, and looking at product websites they must disclose country of origin. Certain big names are obvious skips, seriously don't buy Apple. Avoid certain car brands and yes this includes Tesla but Volvo also exports from China as does Buick and others. A lot of brands have US based manufacturing but to be honest, if you are avoiding China related items you must hold the company accountable across all territories.

for consumer electronics its pretty easy to find sites dedicated to popular models and from there you can easily see where something is made

if you are looking for house hold goods, furniture, dinner ware, and the like, consider buying used from thrift shops, donation centers, garage sales, and even ebay; all my dinner and glass ware is vintage anchor hocking and morgantown glass.

the other option is to consume less. most often people buy stuff when what they have already does quite well. it is also a leading reason why many don't have sufficient savings

I'd suggest that this is less black versus white than it appears.

In buying products made in China, you're helping to raise a huge number of people out of crushing poverty. I've traveled through China across 25 years, and seen how their lives have improved, yet some are still trying to eke out subsistence, farming what looked like a 1-acre plot with an ox.

Yes, the CCP is evil. But the moral calculus is never simple, I don't think we can simply assume that the net effect of purchasing from China is morally bad. It does enable some bad things, but it also helps quite a lot of people.

Not true -- https://www.google.com/maps/place/Aviano+Air+Base/@46.033364...

Wikipedia has a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_satellite_map_images_w...

So? The issue isn't satellite/aerial imagery being censored, it's that it's being censored to cover up unsavory things. The equivalent in the US would be ICE/CBP detention camps being covered up on maps, but it doesn't look like that's happening: https://www.ice.gov/detention-facilities

Even for sake of argument it is propaganda, why does that mean it is false?

Coming from an account created six hours ago it is kinda ironic you are suggesting they are a state actor with no refutation of the premises.

> Radio Free Asia ... founded by the CIA and a today well oiled propaganda arm for whatever is on the US government's foreign policy agenda.

Eh, not so much:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia

> RFA is the only station outside China that broadcasts in the Uygur-language.[32] It has been recognized for played a vital role in exposing Xinjiang re-education camps.[33][34][35] The New York Times regards RFA as one of the few reliable sources of information about Xinjiang.

My understanding is that RFA, RFE, VOA, etc. are basically meant to promote the idea free independent press in areas where only heavy-handed propaganda is available, and the propaganda value is in undermining blatant propaganda.

It's obvious that the US is trying to emphasize what's going on in Xinjiang for political benefit. That said, it's pretty clear it is happening. Its important to draw attention to how powerful institutions influence media narratives, but that doesn't mean that we should disregard anything these institutions push. Rather, the narratives they propagate should be given increased scrutiny. IMO, There's enough evidence from both biased and unbiased sources that there's a cultural, if not literal, genocide happening in Xinjiang.

If you want anecdata, I'm friends with a Han Chinese - who is overall pretty supportive of the CCP, mind - who was born and raised in Xinjiang. When they return to visit their family, they have relatively few restrictions compared to foreign journalists or tourists. They've told me that mass relocations - and deaths in the camps - are clearly happening, based on what they hear from local Uyghurs and from things they just see around their hometown.

buzzfeednews and buzzfeed are not the same thing.

Buzzfeed News has been doing good stuff for a long time.

Buzzfeed does a lot of fluff ("You won't believe these 87 talking cats") plus decent, fairly well-regarded journalism (paid for by the fluff). This actually isn't that different to how normal papers operate; sports, gossip (called 'society' if the paper is sufficiently fancy) etc, bring in the money, with investigative journalism not exactly being a big earner. The difference is that Buzzfeed had the fluff before it did journalism.

Due to the travails of the news industry, there are currently a lot of good journalists and not a lot of jobs for them, so this sort of non-traditional route works. Teen Vogue is another example, arguably, though a less dramatic one; surprisingly good journalism in an outlet where you wouldn't traditionally expect journalism at all.

Buzzfeed News does good work.

Admittedly I have a moment of cognitive dissonance every time I see the word Buzzfeed in Buzzfeed News.

Their money-making model is that the low-effort listicles pay for the real journalists.

Buzzfeed News has a lot of excellent journalism. Even in its non US editions, like India for example. They cover a lot of important stories that the mainstream outlets refuse to touch.

Like other comments have already mentioned Buzzfeed (not Buzzfeed News) is the low effort listicle / clickbait part of the business which is unfortunately better known (mostly for pioneering the entire "10 things... you won't believe number 7" genre)

They correlated areas with known camps first.

As someone who lives in SEA and used to live in China, he's able to move around because he lives in China and I assume has a long term visa and speaks Mandarin. And he is going with the blessing of the Chinese state media:

https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/12754321240702976...

What he is saying does not seem remotely credible unless he has the evidence to back it up.

I don't think he's completely making up that he's been to Xinjiang, but what he is writing is propaganda and should be treated as such.

Travel in Xinjiang isn't restricted for foreigners at least a year ago. There are a lot of security checkpoints, but they will just ignore you if you're not brown.

Another one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oKvulTU8oU

I think individual experience is going to vary depending on how much you are trusted. SerpentZa was a vlogger who was there in China for a long time. In contrast to your example, he has mentioned about being stopped at various places and CCP trying to honeytrap him. Even though his wife is Chinese, he moved out of China eventually[1]

But I would agree to the sentiment that American/European media might not be giving the complete picture. If you read local sources or wire feeds you will realize the partisan reporting they do. This is not just true for China, take one more big Asian country India, it has a lot of English media press, you can see the bias easily in reporting of even big names like NyTimes, Guardian. They like to report on mostly negative stuff, skipping reports which connect events as well, so you might end up with a perspective that things are worse than they might be. I can link reports to show how coverage gets omitted from even wire feeds but that is offtopic.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWgqdfAomVI

How to compare that with this experience then?

https://youtu.be/v7AYyUqrMuQ

Also, it's interesting that on Twitter of sharing related articles you'll have Asian people with accounts commenting with very short messages simply saying "you're stupid" or similar without explaining themselves nor actually engaging with the comments - their replies getting 4+ Likes from near bot-looking accounts.

It seems the CCP is working hard to craft the narrative worldwide.

The section on separatism is unadulterated pro-authoritarianism. Examples of regions that have peacefully seceded from a nation abound. Norway from Sweden, Greenland and Iceland from Denmark, multiple states from the former Soviet Union. Scotland had a referendum on independence recently and though they chose to stay part of the UK, there was no threat or chance of violence. Freedom to seceded, or coerced union are both choices and 'everybody does it' is the worst excuse ever. Pure whataboutism.

The fact that the US has indivisibility in it's constitution is a weird historical wrinkle, and one I find hard to reconcile given that they chose to separate from Britain. How they didn't recognise a general right for self determination is beyond me. But then I am a Brit.

I'm married to a former Chinese citizen and have family in China, and while Ive not lived there I've been many times. It's oppressive enough of minorities just in the relatively peaceful areas I've visited. There's a superficial respect for ethnicities, but that's coupled with a sustained campaign of cultural suppression, dilution and colonisation.

For example there's no smallness of degree of ethnic blood too thin to count as part of that ethnicity, and ethnic groups get privileges Han don't, encouraging registration as minority members. Plus registration is just a matter of getting 'notorised', which is an unbelievably corrupt system. The result is that the vast majority of official members of 'ethnic minorities' have virtually, or actually no connection with the ethnic culture, but get full say in how their 'minority' is represented and treated. All the people who get an official say in minority relations are functionally 100% Han, and party members to boot.

He repeatedly mentions Arabic as the local language instead of the various Turkic languages of the region, indicating that he most likely doesn't speak any of them, so he probably didn't have much interaction with less-educated people, who'd be the major targets of forced Mandarin education etc. So when he talks about people feeling safer now, is that representative of everyone in Xinjiang or just the people he chose to associate with?

It's not unlike a European visiting the US when they were busy killing natives and enslaving blacks, but being thoroughly enamored by their egalitarian democracy.

Do we feel like someone riding a bicycle through a region would necessarily discover something about such camps?

If I randomly traveled in any country would I know about these things? Would I know if I was "without government supervision"?

I'm not inclined to believe that any given rando foreigner would somehow provide a good view of what is going on locally.

I've traveled plenty, there's a ton I could not see / know.

I've actually seen this concept put forth a lot, especially when it comes to China that rando traveler didn't see something so we should doubt it (often put forth with stories about how little crime there is). I don't really understand why anyone would think that makes sense... particularly with all the rest of the information we have on this topic.

> Does anyone know why his report is so different, and why the government would just let him go whereever, unsupervised? Do people here believe that his report is genuine, or do people here believe that it's fake?

Honestly, I would expect the report of a tourist to be genuine but not reliable, especially when it comes to political stuff short of a devastating war. They'll probably be honest about what they saw directly, but probably won't find themselves "where the action is." They'd also lack the context and are poorly equipped to understand the larger situation, and are more vulnerable to being mislead. I'm reminded of all the times in my travel journals where I overgeneralized from a small experience or uncritically reported what some tour guide or random person said about something. They could have been lying, mistaken, or leaving something important out, but I lack the ability to tell.

Also, IIRC, the restrictions in Xinjiang are more around journalists and diplomats (that have different visas that subject them to more scrutiny).

>You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?

I trust journalists more than some rando for starters. But even besides that, I have a much harder time believing statements made on a blog by someone with very obvious opinions over direct visual evidence of a clear ramping up of detention centers.

Because he doesn't work for the open technology fund/radio free asia/CIA. Or Adrian Zenz, referenced here, one of the only 2 primary sources they started the whole Xinjiang media episode in the first place. The other one being another NED/CIA shop like this article.

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/china-detaining-millions-...

Because he was a schmuck on a bicycle exploring a region more than twice the size of Texas, and not an actual journalist? Seriously, the OP was from freaking buzzfeed and it still listed the research team. These are not equally valuable accounts.

Blog post that casts doubt on Adrian Zenz - likely CCP propaganda. I've noticed this a trend in the last few months on Reddit and other forums where random people are trying to smear the guy. If you browse through his other posts, its clear this Jerry Grey is anti-US, pro-China and pandering.

> https://medium.com/@jerry_grey2002/abc-four-corners-tell-the....

Thank you for that really insightful blog post. A very thorough takedown of that poor documentary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9AyqT6RC4E Here's a link to an interview with a British Journalist who tried everything she knew to get me to say the things she wanted me to say, then disregarded what I did say and wrote a whole bunch of lies. I am the guy who rode the bike and I am the guy who is being persecuted by people for having an opinion that differs from theirs - I simply say to all who read this, if you don't believe it, please get on with your life because discussing it with me further will only make you more angry - I don't lie about what I saw I have nothing to gain from doing so. I've read through the thread here and would like to put my own position on the record... I live happily in China and I like it but I don't love everything about it. I have issues that I don't like but generally, it's nicer here than the other places I've lived, so I choose to stay. I don't get any benefit, payment, visa or other bonus from China, Chinese people, the Chinese government, I'm simply a cyclist who saw things that didn't add up. I'm retired from work, so no professional gain there for me and I'm not connected in any way to any department in the government here. I do speak some mandarin but the only reason I was allowed to travel in Xinjiang is that everybody is allowed to travel there, there aren't as far as I know any restrictions. I don't know if journalists, with a visa that identifies them as journalists would have a problem because I've never asked a journalist, in fact, I've never yet met one who has been there, online or in person. Which is part of the reason for my skepticism I don't hate America or Americans, I've never been there, I have no intention of visiting but that's only because I have more important places I want to go and need to go with family in the UK and in Australia, the USA isn't on my radar. I want to correct a mistake which labelled me as a Canadian, a simple mistake ,I'm not, I'm British Born Australian citizen. I don't like politics either Chinese or otherwise and so, I don't get into this because of politics, I simply posted a few nice pictures a few months ago and people started to ask questions - when it was apparent that my travels were considered by many to be either illegal or propaganda, I became a little more vocal. Hence Global Times and CGTN both wanted to talk to me. It seems the world is full of people willing to believe everything they read in the news and if someone speaks out against it, they are immediately shot down as liars, CPC bots, paid propagandists or something else, I've been called a lot of names. The fact is, there are problems in Xinjiang, I never deny this. There are prisons and camps there too, I never deny this but there are also world recognised terrorists there (ETIM the East Turkestan Islamic Movement funded initially by the CIA and then by Al-Qaeda but declared a terrorist organisation by the US Department of State) and these need to be handled. I am no expert on politics, terrorism or anything like that, I simply say, what I saw, doesn't match what I hear in the news. You want to believe what you see and read in news reports, I can't control that, but if you want to really know what's going on in Xinjiang, then stop reading reports from US government sources because they have openly admitted that China is their enemy and their propaganda war is far more than I, a simple cyclist can compete with. Believe or don't believe what I say, it's up to you - I only want people to question what is being said and if that means challenging me, then so be it, but please don't blindly challenge me because I disagree with CNN or Fox news - challenge me with something real. So far, every piece of information I have heard about Xinjiang has come from one of three sources: Adrian Zenz, a religious fruitcake (please don't challenge me on this, read his own books) Satellite imagery which has been analysed mostly by one man Nathan Ruser, who works for ASPI, an Australian think tank funded by weapons manufacturers and Uyghur dissidents who are attempting to gain independence from China and are mostly funded by the CIA through the National Endowment for Democracy. Now, if those three sources don't get you questioning the narrative, then you are simply being blindly lead by the hand into a conflict which may be what you want. It certainly isn't what I want - I would like everyone and anyone to go to Xinjiang and see for themselves - the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has been, has looked and hasn't found anything wrong with what's going on there - perhaps they don't like Uyghurs, I don't know but I would have thought an organisation representing 57 countries with Muslim majorities would have found something wrong, yet they didn't. The World Bank has also visited and didn't find anything wrong with what they saw - they did however reduce funding because they weren't able to visit everywhere they wanted, not because China wouldn't let them, but because they ran out of time. And finally, the UN Chief of Counter-Terrorism has visited too, (Vladimir Voronkov is his name, you can google it) and made positive reports. I ask everyone here - please don't believe me, but please don't accuse me of anything other than raising awareness that another "WMD story" appears to be in the making. Something I would dearly love to avoid. Thanks for reading

It's a tough issue because it's hard to give the Chinese government credit for lack of evidence when they're not letting journalists in in the first place.

I looked into it a year ago and the strongest evidence I found at that point was two dudes drove around and took pictures of a bunch of facilities that looked like re-education camps. They guesstimated 100k-1M, one news article wrote "a million", then the rest of them started writing "millions", and hacker news commenters write "genocide".

Governments have long known how to hide their sensitive activities from satellites, and to even provide misleading information.

Exactly, every image they say are from concentration camps only shows construction sites and factories, like thousand others all around China. There is no credibility in a claim when you just point to random images and say unsubstantiated things about them.

The BuzzFeed articles don't show hardly any current pictures of the camps. And it doesn't seem that hard to believe that the detainees would most of the time remain indoors being de-radicalized and re-educated. The guards would be in the towers, or in the buildings, or looking at the camera feeds. I'm sure that people with better images than the few we saw here are working to figure out exactly what's going on in these camps and as best as possible following all the logistics. At least I'd hope so as China is being very secretive about them.

The authors and their teams clearly took into consideration that these could be military bases and they talk about it to some extant. I'm sure it could still be the case that some of these are barracks and the Chinese make their barracks look like detention centers. Some of the locations they found have been verified by other sources though.

We also have that drone footage of detainees being transported, right?

Also, the leaked document from the NYTimes talked an awful lot about security, not letting people escape, and not letting images or information of the camps be leaked for a normal vocational school.

The Wuhan hospital parking lot study was pretty bad, but worse things have come out of Harvard Medical School in recent months.