Uyghur Tribunal US government NED
Behind the Uyghur Tribunal, US govt-backed separatist theater to escalate
conflict with China
BRIAN BERLETIC·OCTOBER 17, 2021 The Grayzone
US-backed activists and regime-change operatives convened the Uyghur
Tribunal to ramp up conflict with China, but wound up exposing major
inconsistencies in their narrative.
As the US governments propaganda campaign against China drags on, a mock
tribunal has become a central node for the dissemination of allegations of
Uyghur genocide to Western media. But behind the carefully scripted horror
stories conveyed to the public by an uncritical media are massive
discrepancies, overt separatist sentiments, and huge sums of US government
money.
This June, Uyghur separatists and Washington-funded operatives of the human
rights industry organized a Uyghur Tribunal to build the case over 80
tedious hours of testimony that the Chinese government is guilty of the
crime of genocide in its western Xinjiang province.
While the mock tribunal presented itself as independent, it was organized
by a US government-funded separatist group that for years has played a key
role in generating anti-China propaganda.
To help buttress the narratives spun out of the spectacle, major media
organizations such as CNN have generated various sideshows featuring star
witnesses from the tribunal. In the process, they have inadvertently exposed
major inconsistencies in the witness testimonies, exposing the entire
exercise as another Western information weapon deployed against a targeted
nation.
US claims of Chinese Genocide in Xinjiang lay narrative foundation for
Uyghur Tribunal
The US government claims that China is carrying out genocide against ethnic
Uyghurs, many of whom are Muslim, in an effort to erase them culturally.
This has provided the narrative basis for high-profile media spectacles like
the Uyghur Tribunal.
No motivation or context is provided to explain why Chinas government would
be carrying out such putative abuses.
In reality, a campaign of terrorism in pursuit of separatism was unfolding
in Chinas Xinjiang region from the early 1990s onward. A violent extremist
minority of Uyghurs had been radicalized by Wahhabi fundamentalism imported
from Saudi Arabia, as the LA Times explained in 2016.
LA Times Salafism Xinjiang Uyghurs China
The resulting terrorism not only targeted aspects of the Chinese state, but
also fellow Uyghurs who refused to adopt this imported extremist ideology.
While the Western media makes little to no mention of this extreme violence
now, in order to depict security operations in Xinjiang as senselessly
repressive, media organizations like the BBC were more than happy to
report on the murder and mayhem as it unfolded, and to highlight Beijings
apparent helplessness against it at the time.
A 2014 BBC article, titled Why is there tension between China and the
Uighurs?, provided an extensive list illustrating the horrific nature of
these attacks, from ethnic rioting that killed 200 in the regional capital
of Urumqi in 2009 to an attempted aerial hijacking by Uyghur militants in
2012.
In April and June 2013, police opened fire on a separatist mob armed with
knives in Xinjiangs Shanshan county, which was attacking local government
buildings, leading to 27 deaths.
This bloody incident was followed by mass casualty assaults by Uyghur
separatists that killed more than 30 in Urumqui in May 2014, as well as bomb
and knife attacks in local transportation hubs and mosques that left close
to 150 dead that year.
Attacks by Uyghur separatists also killed 20 in downtown Bangkok in 2015,
while thousands of others flooded into Al Qaeda-controlled areas of Syria to
participate in the NATO-backed dirty war against Damascus, with explicit
plans to take the fight back to China.
AP Uighurs China Syria
Behind the Uyghur Tribunal, a US government funded separatist front
That this extensive terrorism and extremism, covered at length years ago, is
no longer mentioned by the very same media organizations reporting on the
Uyghur Tribunal today is an obvious indicator of not only the deception at
work, but the level of coordination involved.
Articles from Western media organizations including State
Department-directed Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, US
government-funded CodaStory, British state-backed BBC, France24, the
Associated Press, ABC Australia, Qatari state media Al Jazeera, The Hill,
and the Washington Post each took turns falsely claiming the tribunal was
independent and had no state backing.
Without a hint of critical detachment, the media disseminated firsthand
accounts of systematic abuse against Uyghurs by the Chinese government,
either making no mention of Xinjiang-based separatist violence or describing
the bloodshed only in the context of why China claims it enacted security
measures in its western territory.
Media accounts also failed to examine the tribunals claim to be
independent and not sponsored by any government.
On the Uyghur Tribunals own official website, on a page titled About, the
event admits that the US-government funded World Uyghur Congress launched
the tribunal through Sir Geoffrey Nice, a British jurist whose services have
been contracted by the government of Qatar.
As The Grayzone previously reported, Nice was part of a Qatari-sponsored
regime-change team targeting Syria, and was hired to legitimize the dubious
Caesar files used to gin up support in Washington for imposing harsh
sanctions on Damascus.
The World Uyghur Congress (WUC), for its part, is funded by the US
government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Washingtons
funding arm for political interference worldwide and admittedly the
inheritor of the CIAs regime-change activities.
NED Uyghur Human Rights Project
The WUC is a separatist political organization that refers to Xinjiang as
East Turkestan, and claims it is occupied by China.
While the WUC says it is a nonviolent and peaceful opposition movement, it
has proven indifferent to the use of violence in pursuit of its separatist
agenda.
In 2014, the Uyghur imam of Chinas largest mosque, Jume Tahir, mentioned
above in the BBC report, was stabbed to death by separatists. World Uyghur
Congress spokesman Dilxat Raxit responded, in a quote in the New York Times,
by blaming the Chinese government and condemning the harsh sentences
handed out to the murderers.
In addition to initiating the tribunal, the World Uyghur Congress funded it.
On a second page on the Uyghur Tribunal website, regarding funding, it
claims, A crowdfunder page has raised nearly £250 000, with an initial
amount of around $115 000 dollars donated by the Uyghur diaspora through the
World Uyghur Congress.
The crowdfunding effort had 764 supporters, meaning the average donation
would have been around 330 British pounds. A look at actual donations
revealed far less from identifiable donors, with the bulk of the funding
from anonymous supporters dumping thousands to tens of thousands of pounds
into the campaign at a time. This included two anonymous donations of 55,000
and 66,000 pounds respectively, amounting to nearly half of the total sum
raised.
The World Uyghur Congress itself has but one provable stream of income: that
of the US governments annual grants through the NED.
According to Voice of America, the World Uyghur Congresss UK project
director, Rahime Mahmut, also staffed the tribunal yet another blatant
conflict of interest.
The other organization mentioned as a partner in launching the Uyghur
Tribunal was the Coalition for Genocide Response.
The team behind this operation includes Ewelina Ochab, who has already
concluded that genocide is taking place in Xinjiang, as well as Geoffery
Nice, who chaired the Uyghur Tribunal and had previously chaired the equally
dubious prequel to it, the China Tribunal.
Luke de Pulford is also a member of the Coalition for Genocide Response, and
is admittedly an adviser to the US government-funded World Uyghur
Congress.
Listed under patrons of the coalition is retired Australian judge Michael
Kirby, who previously headed a similar propaganda stunt, a UN inquiry into
alleged human rights abuses in North Korea. That spectacle relied on
witness testimony, lacking any physical evidence to substantiate any of
the claims made during its proceedings. One of the star witnesses of the
North Korea inquiry, Shin Dong-hyuk, later admitted to lying about his
testimony.
Organizations listed as part of the Coalition for Genocide Response include
the End Transplant Abuse in China or ETAC. ETAC had initiated the previous
China Tribunal and includes 20-year National Endowment for Democracy
regional director Louisa Greve as part of its international advisory
committee.
Lousia Greve now works for the US NED-funded Uyghur Human Rights Project
(UHRP), which also participated in the Uyghur Tribunal.
It is now abundantly clear that a network of related organizations has been
created to churn out tribunals, inquiries, and reports targeting nations
that Washington seeks to coerce, undermine, or destabilize internally, all
based on dubious allegations of human rights abuses.
The production of stories of incubator babies and weapons of mass
destruction has been industrialized and replicated on a global scale. And
the latest product off the regime-change assembly line is the Uyghur
Tribunal.
Uyghur Tribunal Adrian Zenz Geoffrey Nice
British jurist Geoffrey Nice (left) and Christian fundamentalist Adrian Zenz
(right) at the Uyghur Tribunal in June 2021
An incestuous network of participants and witnesses
Those appearing before the Uyghur Tribunal panel included the president of
the US government-funded World Uyghur Congress, Dolkun Isa, who personally
initiated the tribunal and provided a statement on June 4, 2021.
Other members of US government-financed organizations participating in the
so-called tribunal included Muetter Illiqud of the NED-funded Uyghur
Transitional Justice Database, Rushan Abbas and Julie Millsap of the
NED-funded Campaign for Uyghurs, Bahram Sintash and Elise Anderson of the
aforementioned NED-funded Uyghur Human Rights Project, and Laura Harth of
Safeguard Defenders, formerly known as China Action and funded by the NED.
Uyghur Tribunal Rushan Abbas
Uyghur Tribunal testimony by US government translator Rushan Abbas, who has
worked with US intelligence agencies, the State Department, Defense
Department, and Department of Homeland Security
The World Uyghur Congress is listed by name, along with the UHRP, Campaign
for Uyghurs, and the Uyghur Refugee Relief Fund, on the official US NED
website, under Xinjiang/East Turkestan 2020.
On another NED page titled Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act Builds on Work of
NED Grantees, the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database Project is also
listed as receiving money from the US regime-change arm.
Adrian Zenz of the US government-sponsored Victims of Communism Memorial
Foundation (VOC) also provided a statement at the tribunal, as did Shohret
Hosur who works for the State Departments Radio Free Asia.
Zenz, as The Grayzone has reported, is a Christian fundamentalist
responsible for an array of reports alleging forced sterilization and
genocide by Chinese authorities which have been marred by major errors,
statistical manipulation, and retractions.
Other participants in the tribunal include Mihrigul Tursun, who was awarded
the NED-affiliated Citizen Power Award in 2018; Sayragul Sauytbay, who
received the 2020 State Department Women of Courage Award; and IPVM, a video
surveillance information service previously commissioned by the US
government to conduct research on Chinese surveillance programs in Xinjiang.
Also present was Sean Robert, a senior advisor from 1998 to 2006 to the
USAID mission in Central Asia the area bordering Chinas Xinjiang region.
Robert has been active in promoting US government-funded propaganda
regarding Xinjiang for years, alongside mainstays like Rushan Abbas and
Louisa Greve.
Nearly every other witness brought before the so-called tribunal has a
long-established history of participating in this US government-funded
propaganda campaign aimed at China and its alleged abuses in Xinjiang.
This includes Omir Bekali, who was previously invited to testify in front of
the US Congress in 2018; Asiye Abdulahed, who claims to be the source of the
so-called China Files; Zumret Dawut, whose allegations were used by former
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in attacks aimed at China; and Tursunay
Ziyawudun, who spoke in front of Congress in 2021.
Nathan Ruser Uyghur Tribunal
Western government-funded regime-change activist Nathan Ruser (right), of
ASPI, testifying at the Uyghur Tribunal
There were also Westerners representing corporate-funded think tanks long
engaged in anti-China propaganda who provided statements to the tribunal,
such as Nathan Ruser of the US State Department-funded Australian Strategic
Policy Institute (ASPI); Darren Byler and Jessica Batke of ChileFile, a
subsidiary of Asia Society funded by the Australian and Japanese governments
as well as Open Society Foundations; and Charles Parton of the Royal United
Services Institute (RUSI), funded by the US State Department, the EU,
Canada, Qatar, Britain, Japan, and Australia, as well as arms manufacturers
like BAE, Airbus, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General
Dynamics.
While located in the UK, the overwhelming influence the US government has
over those participating in the Uyghur Tribunal is self-evident, and to such
an extent that claiming it has no state backing is entirely inaccurate.
80 hours of deceptions, contradictions, and hearsay
The testimony itself was tedious, even by the standards of mock tribunals,
with a total of nearly 80 hours recorded and uploaded to the Uyghur
Tribunals YouTube channel. Spot checking of the testimony, however, reveals
some fairly serious discrepancies.
On the first day of the tribunal, Muetter Illiqud of the US
government-funded Uyghur Transitional Justice Database provided conflicting
total numbers of Uyghurs allegedly interned, as well as contraditory
accounts of Chinese government restrictions on the number of children
permitted in cities and in rural villages.
After failing to explain the discrepancies, Illiqud was invited by Geoffrey
Nice, chair of the tribunal, to return in September with the contradictions
resolved.
Gulzire Alwuqanqizi, who provided her statement with an NED-affiliated
ChinaAid banner behind her, claimed in her written statement that she was
forced to work in a factory for a month and a half (approximately 45 days),
where she claims to have made over 2,000 gloves. Yet in her spoken
statement, she claimed she was never able to meet the daily quota of 20
gloves and instead made only 11 to 12. If that is true, Alwuqanqizi would
have produced at most 540 gloves. She was never asked to clarify why her
written statement failed to match her verbal claims.
Alwuqanqizi also claimed she was caught sending photos of the factory to her
husband. She alleged: One day, I took a picture of the factory and sent it
to him. From there it became public. Following this, I was interrogated,
they asked the same questions they had always asked, all night long, but
eventually they let me go.
Yet in her spoken statement, Alwuqanqizi claimed: At the factory where we
were producing the gloves, I sent a photo and as punishment I was put in
something like a ditch, a 20 meter deep well. They threw some electric
currents at me, they poured water on me, and kept me there for 24 hours.
The panel interviewing Alwuqanqizi was also silent about her glaring
inconsistency.
In any 80-hour-long proceeding, there are bound to be some inconsistencies
from participants. However, when the Uyghur Tribunal panel was confronted
with glaring ones, it took no action, skipping past them, excusing them, or
allowing witnesses to alter their claims at a later date to iron out obvious
contradictions.
Of course, few people will likely watch any of the testimony first hand, let
alone cross-examine the spoken statements with their written statements to
examine the obvious discrepancies. Instead, the general public will rely on
the Western medias interpretations of cherry-picked highlights designed to
prey on peoples emotions and advance the predetermined conclusion that,
yes, China is committing genocide.
CNN Chinese police Xinjiang
The Uyghur Tribunals sideshows expose further discrepancies and deceptions
Among the tribunals participants was Omir Bekali, who was also featured in
a CNN article report on a supposed former Chinese police officer referred to
as Jiang. Jiang claims to have taken part in the abuses in Xinjiang.
The CNN piece was clearly intended to reinforce the narrative that the
Uyghur Tribunal seeks to cement in international media. Instead, it ended up
producing what were perhaps the events most damning and contradictory
claims.
Although CNN called the alleged police officer Jiang, he was referred to as
Wang Leizhan in the tribunal.
In his testimony at the tribunal in June, Jiang said that he never
participated in interrogations. Further, he stated they took place in an
entirely separate facility.
Yet Jiang was presented by CNN later in October as having not only presided
over interrogations, but having carried out specific acts of torture while
doing so.
During the tribunal in June, Jiang claimed never to have witnessed sexual
abuse of any kind and never even so much as asked about it. When talking to
CNN, however, he discussed various types of sexual abuse he alleges took
place, including rape.
CNN never bothered to explain whether he saw this firsthand, heard it from
others, or participated in it directly. CNN also never explained why his
claims contradicted his statements during the June tribunal.
Uyghur Tribunal Chinese police
The supposed Chinese police officer called Jiang by CNN but referred to as
Wang Leizhan in the Uyghur Tribunal
In fact, CNN is one of the few Western media outlets that appears not to
have covered the Uyghur Tribunal. In its October video and accompanying
article, CNN never even mentioned the tribunal, failing to disclose that all
three alleged witnesses featured in its report were also Uyghur Tribunal
participants: Jiang / Wang Leizhan, Omir Bekali, and Abduweli Ayup have
written statements on the tribunals official website.
Another sideshow took place this September in Switzerland. A Reuters article
titled China accuses Washington of low political tricks over Uyghur
exhibit reported: A U.S.-backed Uyghur photo exhibit of dozens of people
who are missing or alleged to be held in camps in Xinjiang, China, opened in
Switzerland on Thursday, prompting Beijing to issue a furious statement
accusing Washington of low political tricks.
The article also claimed: The United States gave a financial grant for the
exhibit, which will later travel to Brussels and Berlin, the World Uyghur
Congress told Reuters. Earlier this week, the U.S. mission in Geneva
displayed it at a diplomatic reception, according to sources who attended.
A U.S. mission spokesperson said, We are committed to placing human rights
at the center of our China policy, and we will continue to highlight the
grave human rights abuses we see the PRC [Peoples Republic of China]
committing across China, in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, and elsewhere.
When the Uyghur Tribunal arrives at its final ruling, expected in December
2021, just ahead of the 2022 Beijing Olympics, its conclusions are set to be
weaponized by a fully complicit Western media, to try to convince the public
that China is carrying out genocide and must be confronted.
Separatism in plain view is ignored by Western media
The Uyghur Tribunal and those participating in it are presented to the
public as human rights advocates concerned about the situation in Xinjiang.
Upon closer examination it is clear this framing is a cynical smokescreen.
In fact, the Uyghurs involved in the tribunal and the wider US-funded
Uyghur genocide propaganda machine are part of a clear separatist
campaign.
There was no discussion in the Uyghur Tribunal of the constant use of the
name East Turkestan instead of Xinjiang. This term was used not only by
those giving statements, but even by members of the tribunals panel.
Careful observers may have noticed an overabundance of light-blue flags
emblazoned with white crescents in the background of offices from which
participants gave video statements.
Mihrigul Tursun Uyghur Tribunal
US-based Xinjiang separatist activist Mihrigul Tursun speaking at the Uyghur
Tribunal with US and East Turkestan flags behind her
These flags are East Turkestan separatist flags. At one point in the
proceedings, pro-separatist activist Arslan Hidayat was seen interpreting
for at least two witnesses. Hidayat has repeatedly called for Xinjiang to be
ethnically cleansed of Han Chinese, and has advocated for the use of
violence to do so.
While articles in the NED-funded CodaStory have featured Hidayats photo, no
mention of his advocacy for violence is ever made.
The nakedly separatist views exhibited by most people involved in the
tribunal is perhaps the most substantial factor in its lack of legitimacy.
But as with many of the deceptions and discrepancies in not to mention the
deep US government links to the tribunal, the Western media turned a blind
eye.
It is simply impossible that the press could be so ignorant about the real
ulterior separatist agenda of the Uyghur Tribunal and those involved in it.
Its refusal to provide the public with this critical context further
illustrates how a carefully choreographed narrative has been stripped of
reality and disseminated to escalate a new cold war.
DOLKUN ISA
