NEWS//China: Genocide is fake news
BBC reports
The BBC's reports were stunning. Not only were more than one million Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic minority in China, imprisoned in concentration camps, they are being used as slave labor in ways that benefit well-known multi-national corporations. Even worse, women in these prisons "have been systematically raped, sexually abused, and tortured."
Chinese response
"Fake news!" says China. Consequently, China's National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) has barred BBC World News from airing in China.
An opinion piece in China's China Global Television Network states, "The BBC published a series of allegations on the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region from the purported testimony of individuals…. The BBC is a dogmatic, ideological institution with long complicity in information warfare. Presenting itself as a credible and impartial source of information, it is whipping up extreme emotions with misleading and sensationalist reporting in order to manufacture consent for Western confrontation against China."
Wang Sixin, a professor of law at the Communication University of China, says, "The BBC does not even bother to hide its anti-China rhetoric, commissioning an anti-China so-called 'expert' for research and [it] use[s] fabricated materials to slander China. It deserves such punishment."
U.S. view
Based on BBC report and similar reports, the U.S. government, however, has reacted strongly against China's abusive treatment of the Uighurs.
In one of his last public statements as President Trump's Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo denounced China for carrying out “genocide” against its Uighur minority.
Antony Blinken, the new Secretary of State, told a Senate committee that he agreed China was engaged in “genocide.”
Early in February, the State Department said it was “deeply disturbed” by a report that claims Muslim women being held in Chinese re-education camps detaining millions of Uighurs are being systematically raped, sexually abused, and tortured.
Sources: Global Times, China Global Television Network, BBC 01, 02, New York Post, PBS, The Progressive