It has been a lasting practice of some white supremacist politicians to wage propaganda wars against their political, ideological and economic opponents. The world is highly aware of their propaganda strategy, as the politicians often employ it against many of their adversaries.
Their favorite tools of propaganda are human rights violations, lack of democracy, state persecutions, forced labor, autocracy, arbitrary detentions, and genocide. The politicians first come up with allegations against their rivals of committing the aforesaid offences. Their poodle media outlets later start running smear campaigns based on the baseless allegations. The media continues the campaigns until they make a spurious cause and create favorable conditions for punishing their competitors.
A woman works at a factory in Kashgar, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. (Photo/Xinhua)
Western forces led by the United States have destroyed several Islamic countries and killed millions of Muslims who they saw as potential threats to their supremacy around the world. As a result, there is no one challenging Western dominance. Against such a backdrop, poisonous eyes fall on the development of China. As the socialist country becomes the second-largest economy in the world, the only superpower has begun suffering from the pending anxiety of losing its dominance to China, which has never shown any interest in replacing the US.
The imperium has since seen China as a potential threat to its illegitimate hegemony all over the world. As a result, they have become determined and committed to preventing the rise of China at any cost, starting an all-out propaganda war against the East Asian nation.
After much deliberation, they have made Xinjiang and its Uygur Muslims targets of their propaganda war. They have long been fabricating cock and bull stories of so-called Muslim persecution in Xinjiang. Many Western politicians and media are spreading fake news of so-called concentration camps, mass detention, forced labor and birth control, and lastly, of genocide in the northwestern region of China.
Upon closer examination of these propaganda pieces, it can easily be understood how they are deceiving the world into believing their concocted stories over Xinjiang. If we look at the fake stories in the order in which they were published in the media, we can see that the stories of human rights violations were followed by reports of concentration camps and detention of a million Uygurs.
The stories of camps and detentions were published based on a research paper by German anthropologist Adrian Zenz, a so-called Xinjiang expert who has never been to the region. Much to my surprise, the so-called expert came up with the number of detainees into his paper from a report broadcast by Istiqlal TV, an online television station run by Xinjiang separatists based abroad.
I think this information is sufficient to understand the veracity of the reports of the so-called camps and detentions. But many Western media have long given uncritical coverage of the fake and fabricated stories to serve their political purposes of isolating China from the rest of the world. However, some media outlets have also proven the reports false through the practice of objective and investigative journalism.
The crooked media later came up with fake stories of forced labor and birth control in Xinjiang. Again, they turned to another study paper by so-called expert Adrian Zenz to spin their groundless stories. But many analysts and experts have raised many questions regarding the authenticity of information included in the paper.
Some of them have rejected the paper, pointing out that only four women were interviewed in the study, and they all live in the US. They are of the view that on the basis of the statements of four self-exiled women, a conclusion cannot be drawn for the entire region of Xinjiang, which has a population of 25 million. Unfortunately, some Western media are spreading the news as being true without verifying and asking any question of its validity.
For these media, the final task was carried out by the previous US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. On the very last day of his tenure, Pompeo, who had already risen to prominence for making false statements about China, accused the country of carrying out genocide in Xinjiang. Ever since them, the so-called mainstream media has been accusing China of genocide.
The media has not even found the time to cross-check the authenticity of his allegations by going to the the region. Based on the propaganda, Canada has also endorsed the statement, which proves that the propaganda stories were deliberately made to smear China and thus hamstring its overall advancement in the global arena.
Moreover, if we take a closer look at the population of the Uygur community in Xinjiang, we can find that the accusation of genocide is the biggest lie in history. If there has been any kind of genocide in the region, the size of the Uygur population would have decreased over the years.
But the facts show that in the four decades between 1978 and 2018, the Uygur population in Xinjiang increased from 5.55 million to 11.68 million, accounting for 46.8 percent of the total population of the region.
Many delegations of the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC), UN Human Rights Commission, journalists, diplomats, religious leaders, and politicians of Muslim and non-Muslim countries have already debunked the propaganda by visiting Xinjiang and observing the situation on the ground for themselves.
The delegates have also praised China for its vast development and poverty eradication in the region. As a result, the anti-China forces have failed to deceive the world into believing the propaganda stories.
The Chinese government has ensured the region’s tremendous development by improving the livelihoods, lifestyles, and socioeconomic situations of the Uygurs, resulting in the eradication of poverty in Xinjiang.
In my eyes, the allegation of genocide in Xinjiang is a totally baseless one, derived for the narrow political interests of the global superpower. It is a direct interference in the domestic affairs of China. The Western propagandists must work on improving human rights conditions in their own territories instead of using it as an excuse to maintain their supremacy on Earth.
The author is a Bangladeshi journalist and columnist now based in Beijing, China.