The BBC has a bad record. They visited the Xinjiang Education Camp. Although interviews were allowed, they used various shooting and editing techniques to make this school look dark, distorted, and scary. Then the content of the filming showed that this was only a skill training school. Until the end, they did not give up and hoped to take evidence of lying, but the scene of Xinjiang people leaving the education camp showed that the interviewee did not lie.
So what strong evidence does this article have? A few photos and two screenshots of the chat. This is too easy to forge and can't explain much.
I propose a hypothesis: the protagonist once had a job, but he was arrested for selling marijuana (mentioned in the article). After he was released from prison, he could not find a decent job, because companies are generally unwilling to recruit people with criminal records. When he was facing financial pressure, the BBC approached him and asked him to take a few photos (and some props), then forged some chat records to help make up stories. Now he has a new job, BBC actor.
I think this hypothesis is likely to be true, but I will soon be labeled as a brainwashed person or a robot. I saw that many people here saw the BBC report, and instead of thinking about its authenticity, they directly began to scold how bad the CCP was, and then downvote all different opinions. I found it ridiculous.
It's interesting that you believe he was arrested once but cannot believe that he was arrested twice. If the pictures and chatlogs were from his first stint in prison, would you believe it then?
Many anti-CCP actors have criminal records. Maybe they have a difficult life after having criminal records, so they become actors.
I can't imagine how the prisoner got a phone, so I don't believe this was filmed in prison.
The point is not whether he was arrested or not, but he accused the CCP of torturing Uyghurs. This is completely illogical. China has 56 ethnic groups, and all of them are Chinese nationals. Torturing will only cause resistance, and the CCP has no reason to do such things that are not conducive to stability.
The reasonable explanation is that some Western countries hope to create an image of the CCP abusing Uyghurs and then sanction China.
If that was reasonable then there wouldn't be any problem with letting us check, no?
I'm from Germany, this looks exactly like the thing we reiterate 'never again' on. What would you have done, looking at Germany in 1940? The sad truth is, most people would do nothing, and that is something we try to work against.
As mentioned earlier, the BBC visited the education camp, but found no evidence of abuse and had to use filters and editing techniques to instill ideas into the audience.
I'm sorry, this is not enough. We need a competent neutral and trusted third party to verify the truth thoroughly if we want to make sure. Statements of the Chinese government concerning this matter are not trustworthy. Statements of people under the power of the Chinese government are not trustworthy enough.
I understand the country of China to be a great nation of many achievements and many internal challenges that I cannot begin to understand. Just.. this looks very similar to the greatest horrible mistake my country and ancestors committed, a grave crime against us all as humanity that must be prevented everywhere. It's a slope, you don't start with the death camps. (Have a look at our history, if you will [0].) Things like this need to be stopped as early as possible, it will only become harder. It is not becoming of any nation to have something like this in their history, doubly so if they're such a great nation with long past and achievements.
1. The burden of proof shall be borne by who making the claim. I have pointed out that the evidence in this article is very easy to forge and not convincing. It is not to look for evidence that abuse does not exist, but to provide evidence that abuse exists.
2. The mistakes made by Western countries do not mean that China will make the same mistakes. Everyone here has learned about German concentration camps from middle school textbooks, so there is no need to introduce it to me.
Western media often use these two mistakes to fabricate lies that have no evidence but are easy for people in the Western world to believe.
In this thread, I have seen people angry and threatening to retaliate against China, which is very dangerous to the whole world. I understand that your post is out of good intentions, please take my post as a kind warning:
1. I do think there are enough hints and reports to justify further investigations. If they are unfounded, fantastic, that is the best outcome.
2. No, of course not. But someone will make the same mistake at some point, because it is human. We need to stay vigilant. This kind of thing can happen again and again all over the world.
> In this thread, I have seen people angry and threatening to retaliate against China, which is very dangerous to the whole world.
I agree that this is very dangerous. Then again, I don't believe anything drastic will happen as long as China does not outright start a war, which hopefully I'm right about not happening (which is what did not occur in Germany - if not for that the Nazis might still be in power).
Thank you for the warning, I'll keep it in mind. Hate is far from our general sentiment about it for me and the people around me though. You don't need to be an evil hated person or group to allow this to happen, as I said, it's human. And again, China even recently did some great things, such as lifting large parts of its population out of dire poverty, which is an amazing feat.
Of course it's not China or the CCP torturing Uyghurs. Rather, it's individual Chinese prison guards (who may or may not be in the CCP or Uyghurs or both) torturing individual Chinese prisoners (who may or may not be in the CCP or Uyghurs or both).
The CCP leadership may intend prison to be places of transformation instilling a sense of gratefulness for the CCP's benevolent rule, thus requiring prisoners to be treated well, kept in good health, provided with a good education so they will be able to earn a living after release doing honest work rather than having to work as actors or whatever...
But that costs a lot to implement and who's going to implement it? Inexperienced prison guards who were just recently hired when the state increased it's security budget in Xinjiang and who didn't go to a police academy where they learn fancy stuff like "torturing people may make them rat out their friends and earn you a promotion for making your arrest quota, but in the long term it fuels resentment and destabilizes the country, so don't do it" since there aren't enough of those graduating each year, and you may recall that the whole reason re-education is even necessary is that the education system in Xinjiang failed to properly instill Socialist Values like patriotism and democracy and so on, so why would it have succeeded at instilling the idea that torture is bad?
Here is the link and explanation of the video https://medium.com/@sunfeiyang/breaking-down-the-bbcs-visit-...
So what strong evidence does this article have? A few photos and two screenshots of the chat. This is too easy to forge and can't explain much.
I propose a hypothesis: the protagonist once had a job, but he was arrested for selling marijuana (mentioned in the article). After he was released from prison, he could not find a decent job, because companies are generally unwilling to recruit people with criminal records. When he was facing financial pressure, the BBC approached him and asked him to take a few photos (and some props), then forged some chat records to help make up stories. Now he has a new job, BBC actor.
I think this hypothesis is likely to be true, but I will soon be labeled as a brainwashed person or a robot. I saw that many people here saw the BBC report, and instead of thinking about its authenticity, they directly began to scold how bad the CCP was, and then downvote all different opinions. I found it ridiculous.