The Uyghur region of China is home to the Uyghur people, one of China’s many ethnic minorities. It is also the site of hundreds of concentration camps. And well documented human rights violations against the Uyghurs, including forced labor, take place in these camps. But The Telegraph reports vloggers from Europe are visiting the region and painting over the ongoing Uyghur genocide with images of a well-scrubbed and bustling tourist destination full of fun and adventure.
One of the most “controversial areas”
The Uyghur region has been in the news for years now, but not as a sparkling vacation spot. Instead reports of Uyghurs being rounded up and secreted away in camps on an unprecedented scale are more familiar headlines. But vloggers traveling to the Uyghur region are using words like “misinformation”, “hype” and “lies” about previous media coverage. They describe their time there as a “wild adventure” posting happy-go-lucky footage of dressing up in traditional costumes and exploring a town set up for tourists.
Daria Impiombato, a cyber analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said:
“It’s like influencers who are going to Syria, just doing travel vlogs from Syria without talking about years and years of war and devastation. You can’t do that, and you can’t do that in Xinjiang either.”
Impiombato co-wrote several reports on how skillful the Chinese government is at wrapping local and foreign influencers into its propaganda strategy.
“It’s like a normal city, what’s all the hype about?”
Only recently reopening to tourism post COVID, the Chinese government has been trying to encourage “foreign friends”. They released a host of new visa-free policies and it seems to be working. In the first seven months of this year China received over 17 million foreign travelers. And the usually censor-happy Chinese government couldn’t be more pleased with the vlogger’s recent coverage. They are using it to legitimize the false narrative that no human rights abuses are taking place. But Associate China Director at Human Rights Watch, Maya Wang urges travelers to be more aware in societies suffering human right abuses.
“Volggers should not be complicit in the censorship and disinformation that the Chinese government hopes to achieve.”
It is believed that more than one million Uyghurs are currently being detained in re-education camps across the Uyghur region. And there is a mountain of evidence that what happens in these camps includes forced labor, sexual violence and organ harvesting, to name just a few of the human rights violations reported. But foreign vloggers are using language like “media deception” to promote their videos.
It isn’t thought vloggers are paid for their propaganda, but their language eerily echos official Chinese state rhetoric that the West has an anti-China narrative. And the footage they are posting is being amplified by Chinese social media platforms and state-run outlets. That leads to hundreds of thousands of views and more views means more money for the vloggers.
Nothing happening here, it’s all “normal”
Local officials are using the vlogger’s videos to underline a false narrative. “No human rights violations are taking place”, the Uyghur region is a “great vacation destination”, and Urumqi is a “normal city”. For their part, vloggers say, if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about in the Uyghur region. But experts around the globe, including the U.N. agree the government of China is perpetrating human rights abuses on a massive scale in targeting the Uyghur population as well as other Turkic and Muslim-majority peoples based on their religion and ethnicity rather than any crimes committed. Nothing about that is normal.
Prof Steve Tsang, the director of the SOAS China Institute, said the official’s top priority is how everything is seen in Beijing.
“The propaganda machinery will be able to report back up the chain of command all the way through .. to Xi Jinping that ‘we are doing it and doing it well, we are seizing and controlling the narrative’.”
Instead of creating propaganda for the Chinese government, influencers have a responsibility to use their platform for good, not whitewashing. Freedom United is part of The Coalition to End Forced Labor in the Uyghur Region. Learn more about what is ACTUALLY happening and the work the coalition is doing. Then add your voice to those rejecting the false narrative presented by the volggers and the Chinese government and join the movement to pressure the Chinese government to end Uyghur forced labor.
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