Through the FRG
By Bahram Sintash and Nuriman Abdureshid
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China has put some new faces in denying allegations of genocide against Xinjiang Uyghurs: young foreign influencers on social media who produce short videos showing happy minorities in the western region.
Travel videos recorded by video bloggers known as vloggers are broadcast on platforms such as Twitter that are banned in China and spread by state media and affiliate sites. It echoes and amplifies Beijing’s massive propaganda effort to portray the Uyghurs as satisfied and grateful for Chinese rule.
The videos show “foreign travelers” interviewing people from Xinjiang factories, with captions such as “Friends, it’s a lie that there is a Uyghur genocide.” “Everything is normal here” and “Is there a single piece of evidence that there are more than 1 million people in concentration camps?”
State and local media outlets are organizing the pro-China campaign, paying vloggers for trips, according to documents posted online and video producers familiar with the system.
“What happens is that you will have a state press like CGTN or CRI or iChongqing or any number of Chinese government-run organizations – which are the Chinese government – and what they will do is pay for the flights, pay for accommodation, organize your trip and mention the content creator and invite them to go on these trips, ”said YouTuber Winston Sterzel, who lived in Xinjiang.
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The miners working as translators or repairers are always on hand to make sure the content creators follow the script, he said.
Vloggers, who post short videos on their personal websites or social media accounts on platforms such as YouTube, say local government officials organize their travel and travel recording for which they are hired to make videos that bring China to light. Hi.
“They arrange our travel and pay for our accommodation and food,” YouTuber Lee Barrett said in a video he recorded.
Business Insider reported in January that the Chinese Consulate General in New York had signed a $ 300 million contract with Vippi Media in New Jersey to create a social media campaign to promote positive messages about China TikTok, Instagram and Twitch, as a prelude to the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
Social media influencers were asked to produce content for the target audience about Chinese culture, positive diplomatic relations between China and the US, and general news from the consulate.
“Living happily ever after”
On the YouTube channel “Two Brothers”, Tarekk Habib and Anas Habib from the Netherlands, both of Egyptian origin, posted a video on December 31, 2021, in which they say that a Chinese company agreed to pay them $ 1,000 to produce and share a video praising government measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 virus at the Olympics and to ensure the safety of athletes.
They said they rejected the request and instead produced a video discussing China’s oppression of Uighur Muslims.
China’s struggle to form a global view of Xinjiang will come to the fore this month when UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet pays a long-awaited visit to China, including Xinjiang.
Since 2017, it is estimated that about 1.8 million Uighurs and other Turkish peoples have been imprisoned in a vast network of internment camps in Xinjiang.
The United States and several European countries have labeled the practice as genocide, while China has vehemently rejected criticism and said the camps are training centers designed to combat religious extremism and terrorism.
In the fall of 2021, the government of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) launched an initiative to mobilize foreign students in China to praise “Xinjiang policy.” The effort was part of the central government’s broader plan to portray Xinjiang’s ethnic minorities as happy and content, according to a Xinjiang Daily article.
Entitled “People of All Ethnic Groups in Xinjiang Live Happy and Happy”, the report quoted a series of letters written by Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping urging foreign students in July 2021 to increase their understanding. about “true China” so that their knowledge can inspire others to understand the country.
The XUAR government sponsored a trip to Xinjiang in October 2021 for students from 16 countries, including Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Burundi, U