Link: https://thediplomat.com/2026/08/silence-is-not-an-option-the-quest-to-bear-witness-to-chinas-uyghur-camps/

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“When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out ‘stop!’ When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible.”

German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s observation on the political apathy that engulfed Germany in the 1930s resonates with 21st century survivors of the Chinese state’s war against Uyghurs in its northwestern heartland, known by exiles as East Turkestan.

Germany’s slide into fascism brought book burnings and arrests of “undesirables.” It lead step by step to antisemitism, concentration camps, torture, and death. That brutal history echoes today in Beijing’s campaign against the Turkic peoples of its western regions – and in the silence of a deaf world. Only those who have experienced the terror first-hand and survived to tell the tale can hope to describe its full horrors.

Kalbinur Sidik (formerly Romanized as Qelbinur Sidik) is one such rare eyewitness to what many nations have termed a genocide. Her ordeal as a teacher inside the camps drove her to the brink of collapse. She escaped in 2019 ostensibly for medical treatment, hoping to reunite with her daughter in the Netherlands and seek asylum. Speaking out became her path to healing.

She told The Diplomat that “silence is not an option.” The faces of captives in her class have haunted her to this day. Since leaving, her mission has been to give voice to their silent cries.

[...]

Her memoir, “Heart Full of Light” – a title reflecting the meaning of her name, Kalbinur – is full of horror and sadness but also memory, dignity and resistance. It is a cry against erasure and a wake-up call to a world that has not been listening.

[...]

Every inch of the compound was monitored. If someone moved, a screen flashed red and zoomed in. “It was impossible not to compare them to animals in cages,” Sidik wrote of her students. “There was nowhere to hide. For them, or for me.”

The specter of organ harvesting hung over everything. Healthy young prisoners disappeared. Across Xinjiang authorities collected biodata from everyone aged 16-65. Mandatory DNA tests, bloods, iris scans, voice and gait recordings filled vast data banks, many believed for organ matching. Research later identified Saudis and Gulf Arabs traveling to eastern China for halal organs.

“Alive we were worthless, dead, and cut up, our organs were worth a ransom,” Sidik wrote.

[...]

This type of "news" has been exposed as US backed bullshit for quite awhile.

https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/21/china-detaining-millions-uyghurs-problems-claims-us-ngo-researcher/

https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/430738-egyptian-media-delegates-provide-a-detailed-insight-of-the-situation-in-xinjiang

Please stop citing sources that are explicitly pro-China and pro-Russian, and, therefore, anti-democratic.

Greyzone is well-known to hire ex-'editors from Russia's propaganda outlets RT and Sputnik, among them are Mohamed Elmaazi, Dan Cohen, Rania Khalek, Kit Klarenberg, Jeremy Loffredo, Wyatt Reed, Anya Parampil, Alex Rubinstein (you'll find a lot of articles by them on the website).

Greyzone has also frequently echoing Chinese Communist Party propaganda, the outlet is even often cited by Chinese officials. As one article by ProPublica wrote in 2020,

When Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, tweeted that reports of mass detention camps for China’s Uighur Muslim minority were the “LIE of the CENTURY,” she cited an article in the Grayzone, a website founded by Max Blumenthal, a frequent contributor to RT and the Russian-controlled Sputnik news agency. Similarly, Chinese government spokesperson Zhao Lijian’s tweet that the coronavirus originated in the U.S. cited a website previously found by NATO to spread Russian propaganda.

The independent media outlet Coda Story published an article on how Max Blumenthal, the founder of Grayzone, downplayed Beijing’s actions in Xinjiang on international TV. In Enter the Grayzone: fringe leftists deny the scale of China’s Uyghur oppression, it states,

On July 25 [2020], Max Blumenthal, the founder and editor of the far-left news site The Grayzone, went on Going Underground, a current affairs show broadcast by the Russian state-controlled TV channel RT. On air, he questioned the scale of the detention of Uyghurs in camps in China’s northwestern Xinjiang province ...

Blumenthal’s statements met with outrage online and many social media users accused him of ignoring one of the largest-scale human rights violations of the 21st century ...

There is much more across the web. Your sources are outright rubbish.

Stop posting sources that are explicitly pro-west and anti-China, as there's nothing more antidemocratic than governments run by the rich.

The interesting thing I learned from the newly released Tianmen footage, is that one of the leaders of the pretests was if Uyghur descent, maybe not in itself enough to warrant this treatment, but a reminder that the anti-communist party sentiment was certainly shared by the Uyghur population.

That's rich coming from you, Hotz. You exclusively post anti-Chinese propaganda produced by the Western empire and then say something like this without an ounce of self awareness. Orientalism is a form of racism.

Anything negative about China is western propaganda. It is indeed a utopia where every last citizen is healthy and happy all the time always. . . Or else.

Anything negative about China is western propaganda. It is indeed a utopia where every last citizen is healthy and happy all the time always. . . Or else.

I just said China has it's fair share of issues in another comment. However, they aren't locking up people into camps and committing genocide. That's a western activity.

There's plenty that's negative about China and it gets reported on by non-Western sources fairly accurately. And then there's Western reporting which has been lying about China for literally 200 years when the drug dealing merchant marines of Europe got upset that China banned opium and used their ownership of the privately operated newspapers to convince the crown to launch a war against China to protect their drug dealing.

What about accurate Chinese reporting about negatives in China?

Sure that exists too. Not in the same way that Jeff Bezos can buy a whole news company that can slander politicians and build the case for the rich to control everything without oversight, but it's not like China doesn't have investigative journalism. It's incredibly limited, but it exists.

It's also not like China is without it's own billionaires with strong government ties if not in government positions pulling their own strings. There's maybe a reason we don't all know their names offhand

are you unaware of the topic of the post in which you're commenting?

China also executes their billionaires, and millionaires, when they do things that are against the public interest. Just because the billionaires run the government in the Eurocentric world doesn't mean they run the government in China.

From my understanding this is more to do with their actions towards the government and their affiliation. For example Jack Ma who has minimal government affiliation so he's much easier to police than others who are more connected

They have executed government official for taking bribes as well. But they deliver punishment up to and including death for things like cheating on health audits or cutting corners that result in people getting sick and dying from tainted foods etc

Once again it's always who you know. If you're connected enough or have enough compromising info on the right people then justice can always be avoided. Someone trying to be slick without the connections or leverage can always get pinched. Doesn't matter the system, the game is the same. Ever so often there's a sacrificial lamb so to speak. That's just for show amongst the real movers and shakers and a statement to their competition to back off.

How many millionaires and billionaires has the US or Europe put to death for their crimes?

I know you want to say the systems are equal, but the evidence is that they are not.

nobody takes the west seriously anymore

The US doesn't punish such things with death typically. Maybe life in prison without parole. I will say US politicians seem much cheaper to buy.

I think there might be only 2 people in US history that were billionaires and ended up in prison for life and both of them were for financial schemes that ultimately harmed a lot of very rich and powerful people. The Madoff story is pretty telling. He targeted the richest institutions and people, but a bunch of feeder funds target thousands of "middle class" families. Those families got screwed by Madoff, along with the rich. When the government stepped in to prosecute the fraud, they made sure to fix the financial situations of the richest individuals and institutions, but left the middle class out in the cold and those effected never recovered.

Because unlike China, the US government was founded by and for the richest and wealthiest elites in the land.

"please stop using sources that are successfully making me look like a fucking clown"

Try harder halfwit

Aren't you a ray of sunshine.

The sun is just as sick of this atrocity propaganda bullshit as everyone else with a working fucking brain is

Nah it's all accurate, China is indeed a utopia and anything negative about it is purely western capitalist propaganda.

You say that as if any of the people calling you out on this bullshit have ever claimed anything close, you know the only chance you have of not looking like the complete fucking moron that you are is by making up stupider people in your head and arguing with them

I thit talking to you is about sufficient.

Try harder halfwit

Nah I'm good, this conversation is already so riveting.

For you maybe

Sure but you keep responding so you're into also.

Lol try harder halfwit

You know what people say and particularly how they behave is a reflection of themselves and their mind. I'm guessing someone treated you like this or you admire a character in a show with this behavior, in short it imprinted on your mind and here you are echoing it out as I am what imprinted on me.

Wordy but still stupid

How so?

Not particularly relevant or insightful

Seems a bit subjective. I'm definitely getting some information about you based on how you're choosing to behave.

Weird

Everything is weird if you think about it for too long. You're on a ball of dirt flying through space but more likely you're a Boltzmann brain and what you think is the past never actually occurred.

Nope, weird

Yes, weird