On X, one can find a verified Danny Haiphong (@SpiritofHo), allegedly a journalist, sharing his travels through the Uyghur region of China. His video posts show us a “grand bazaar in Urumqi” where “thousands of people are shopping, living their lives in a beautiful, beautiful place.” A place where genocide, as in the human rights violations that are taking place at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.
But to hear Mr. Haiphong, the party lackey, tell it, these are only the abuses we’ve been told by “some Uyghur in the West somewhere.” The particularly blood-boiling part of his video was this, speaking of the bazaar jovially: “It’s a beautiful place.
” But it’s all produced by forced labor. And everyone has to go back to their camps after they have finished shopping. What more could you expect from someone who is clearly doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party? It’s a pity that more than 140,000 followers are listening to his garbage.
But this is among dictators’ favorite moves: using influencers and tourists to lie for them. It’s known that the Chinese Communist Party orchestrates visits to the Uyghur region to conceal the harsh realities of forced family separations, arbitrary detentions of millions in concentration or forced labor camps and thousands of Uyghurs living in exile and forcibly rendered stateless. Influencers, tourists and journalists parade around the region on tours, but they are not shown the whole truth.
This is a tact.