China Uses Canadian YouTuber To Defend Against Uyghur Genocide Accusations

Chi­nese media is report­ing that the Chi­nese for­eign min­istry has used a Chi­na-based Cana­di­an YouTu­ber to defend itself against accu­sa­tions of human rights vio­la­tions against the Mus­lim Uyghur pop­u­la­tion in Xin­jiang. Accord­ing to a South Chi­na Morn­ing Post inves­ti­ga­tion:

March 30, 2021 For­eign­ers who depict Chi­na in a pos­i­tive light are becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant to Beijing’s counter-nar­ra­tive to alle­ga­tions of an ongo­ing geno­cide in the far-west­ern region of Xin­jiang. In a rare move, China’s for­eign min­istry last week used a speech by a Shen­zhen-based Cana­di­an vlog­ger to hit home its point that West­ern coun­tries are tar­get­ing Xin­jiang to con­tain Chi­na, rather than because of alleged human rights abus­es being com­mit­ted against the region’s Uygur eth­nic minority. […]

Dumbrill’s YouTube chan­nel has 140,000 sub­scribers while his videos, com­men­taries and inter­views – on top­ics such as the Hong Kong protests – have pre­vi­ous­ly appeared on CGTN. His long track record of pro­vid­ing fod­der for Chi­nese state media to throw at the West has earned him spe­cial priv­i­leges not accord­ed to vet­er­an for­eign cor­re­spon­dents in the country.

Read the rest here.

It is wide­ly report­ed that since the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment launched its “Strike Hard Cam­paign against Vio­lent Ter­ror­ism” in its West­ern province Xin­jiang in 2014, it has sent at least a mil­lion Uyghurs, a Mus­lim minor­i­ty, into so-called re-edu­ca­tion camps. While Chi­na claims the Uyghurs have ben­e­fit­ed from “edu­ca­tion and voca­tion­al train­ing,” more than 40 coun­tries, includ­ing the US and the Euro­pean Union, have con­demned Chi­na over human rights abus­es in Xin­jiang. For­mer U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo declared China’s treat­ment of Uyghurs a “geno­cide” in January.

In March, we report­ed that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment had fund­ed British YouTu­bers who are push­ing pro-Chi­na talk­ing points and pro­duce videos that car­ry titles such as “West­ern media lies about Chi­na” and “Cam­era sur­veil­lance is great in China.”

Also in March, an exclu­sive Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) inves­ti­ga­tion exposed a Chi­nese influ­ence oper­a­tion flood­ing YouTube with hun­dreds of pro­pa­gan­da videos white­wash­ing China’s human rights vio­la­tions in Xin­jiang and push­ing the hash­tag #StopX­in­jian­gRu­mors.