Tue 10 September 2019:
In this special edition of The Listening Post, we focus on Xinjiang’s detention camps and examine how Uighur journalists, Chinese state media, and “open-source” researchers have covered the story.
How China spins the Xinjiang story to the Chinese It is not clear how many people are currently being held against their will by the state in the Chinese province of Xinjiang. Conservative estimates put the number of ethnic Uighurs – and other Muslim minorities held under some form of detention since 2017 – between one and 1.5 million.
Beijing calls this practice their response to the threat of “three evils – extremism, terrorism and separatism”. Along with word-of-mouth, informer-based surveillance, and the latest technologies – facial recognition, voice pattern sequencing and DNA profiling – a key tool being used by the state is good old-fashioned propaganda.
The media outlets at its disposal do not call them internment camps or prisons. Istead, they are referred to as “centres for re-education” or even “thought transformation”. The Listening Post’s Meenakshi Ravi takes a look at the shifting narratives and the occasionally Orwellian language in Chinese media in defence of the state’s policies and practices in Xinjiang.
Courtesy: Al Jazeera
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