GUEST BLOG: Lois Griffiths – WHO TO BELIEVE?

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On 19 January 2021, as the Trump  administration was coming to an end , the US State Department accused the Chinese regime of genocide and crimes against humanity through its wide-scale repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in its northwestern region of Xinjiang.

“I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy  Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated, adding  that Chinese officials were “engaged in the forced assimilation and eventual erasure of a vulnerable ethnic and religious minority group.”

Both President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Anthony Blinken have endorsed former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s last-minute genocide accusation.

A difficulty for someone who cares about justice issues everywhere is knowing what to believe, who to believe,  particularly, if the atrocities being cited are being committed in  countries the West declares as enemies , and the accusations come from the West. 

We, the public, have been lied to, so many times….lies that have led to massive bombing campaigns and massive losses of life. 

Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation, in 1962,  against the Cuban government, that originated within the US Department of Defense. The plan was for the CIA to stage and actually commit acts of terrorism aganst American miltary and civilian targets. The terrorism would be blamed on the Cuban government, giving the US a justification to go to war against Cuba. Kennedy stopped Operation Northwoods from happening. 

The Tonkin Gulf of August 04 1964  incident,  led to the US engaging in war on North Vietnam. But the Pentagon Papers and the memoirs of Robert McNamara revealed that the ‘incident’ didn’t happen.

Have we forgotten about the lies told about  Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, about the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ , ‘excusing’ an illegal attack on Iraq that led to  hundreds of thousands of deaths. 

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Remember the 1990 accusation that Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait removed babies from incubators and left them to die? 

What is really happening in remote western China? Where is information coming from? We have no Robert Fisk who lives there and dares to see for himself.

A journalist I highly respect is Max Blumenthal. He writes on the website thegrayzone.com, about an anti-Chinese  right-wing Christian evangelist, Adrian Zenz  whom the West’s media consult as an expert. An article by Max Blumenthal and another journalist, Ajit Singh.

“Claims that China has detained millions of Uyghur Muslims are based largely on two studies. A closer look at these papers reveals US government backing, absurdly shoddy methodologies, and a rapture-ready evangelical researcher named Adrian Zenz.”

You can read more about Zenz. 

That’s really all I can add. 

I make no claim to knowing much about China. 

Yet, considering what the West has done to the people of Afghanistan, of Iraq, of Libya of the entire Middle East really, it is hard to believe the sudden compassion for Muslims in western China. 

The lost skill of diplomacy is to try to imagine what the situation might look  like through the other‘s eyes. China is surrounded by hostile military bases. 

Other countries in the Pacific region are willing military allies of the US. That includes NZ with its Rocket Lab launch pad. The US has an enormous bloated military arsenal, including an expanding  nuclear arsenal. The US is the only country to have dropped a nuclear bomb,  on another country..an Asian country at that! 

There is a positive role New Zealand could, if it dared, to play. New Zealand could dialogue with the Chinese, could express very strong concerns about reports in the western media about the situation in western China. But only if New Zealand transforms itself into an independent, non-aligned country. 

Our top priority should be not just to  avoid being caught up in  a nuclear war, but  to vigorously challenge all nuclear nations to dismantle their nuclear arsenals. Humanity is on borrowed time really. The doomsday clock is very close to midnight.

 

Lois Griffiths is a Human Rights Activist.

8 COMMENTS

  1. Taking a break from bashing Israel, Lois Griffiths gives us the ultimate smoking gun of her moral selectivity by defending China against charges of genocide for its persecution of the muslim Uyghur people. The US is not the only country to condemn China over this. Holland and Canada have also made claims of genocide. No matter what the US has allegedly done, it pales beside China’s genocide of its own population under Communism…70 million dead, and historians claim that’s a conservative estimate. So much for the great socialist experiment. As for Max Blumenthal, he’s known as the ‘clown prince’ of the PIDS. He lost all credibility when he chased a Leftist member of the German parliament into a toilet in 2013 after the guy refused to talk to him because of his rabid antisemitism. Don’t think the Chinese are systematically exterminating the Uyghurs, Lois? Read this from firsthand witnesses. Hope you have a strong stomach.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071

  2. Thanks for the heads up on this Lois. The mere fact that this has upset Gaby is warning enough to keep an open mind. People might like to read Is China Committing Genocide? https://popularresistance.org/is-china-committing-genocide/ for further information.

    “The Uighur genocide claim was virtually unheard of before 2018. Up until that point, Western media coverage of the issue was dramatically different. Take The New York Times. In the 1980s, it published a series of articles about how Uighur Muslims were actually prospering and Islam was flourishing under Chinese rule. By the 1980s, this separatist movement was becoming violent. In one 1997 incident, the Times reported on, about a thousand Muslim separatists of the Uighur ethnic minority rampaged through the town Yining on Wednesday, smashing cars, burning shops and beating up ethnic Chinese to protest Beijing’s rule.” There’s more.

    There is also a video China Threat Examined https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTCqXlDjx18 and Codepink in the US has also recently slammed anti-China rhetoric https://www.codepink.org/blinken?e=6e7f235198c6feb1c76cb78114e39040&utm_source=codepink&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=china_blinken_stop_t&n=5 saying the US should stop anti-Asian hate abroad and at home by ending the lies about China. You are quite right to urge caution Lois, we need to to know more.

    • Anecdotal I know but I’ve spoken with scores of Uighurs and even if a 10th of what they say is true it’s a disgrace to every human being on the planet. Where not fucking stupid are we!!!

      Neither can we be lulled by cute little online bibis. Where humans. The most intrrligent beings for thousands of light years in any direction. That had to mean something.

  3. Thanks for the heads up on this Lois. The mere fact that this has upset Gaby is warning enough to keep an open mind. People might like to read Is China Committing Genocide? https://popularresistance.org/is-china-committing-genocide/ for further information.

    “The Uighur genocide claim was virtually unheard of before 2018. Up until that point, Western media coverage of the issue was dramatically different. Take The New York Times. In the 1980s, it published a series of articles about how Uighur Muslims were actually prospering and Islam was flourishing under Chinese rule. By the 1980s, this separatist movement was becoming violent. In one 1997 incident, the Times reported on, about a thousand Muslim separatists of the Uighur ethnic minority rampaged through the town Yining on Wednesday, smashing cars, burning shops and beating up ethnic Chinese to protest Beijing’s rule.” There’s more.

    There is also a video China Threat Examined https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTCqXlDjx18 and Codepink in the US has also recently slammed anti-China rhetoric https://www.codepink.org/blinken?e=6e7f235198c6feb1c76cb78114e39040&utm_source=codepink&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=china_blinken_stop_t&n=5 saying the US should stop anti-Asian hate abroad and at home by ending the lies about China. You are quite right to urge caution Lois, we need to to know more.

    • Repeating yourself, Bravery? That’s a bad sign. You mistake my disgust for being ‘upset’. Disgust that anyone would defend this evil, brutal, mendacious regime simply because they are, supposedly, to the left of the political spectrum. Same with Russia: conservatively 30 million dead in their socialist experiment. Both Russia and China are now fascist, totalitarian states that have completely betrayed their original idealism, if they ever had any, for a cynical style of capitalism of a truly Orwellian nature. Seems even your pals at Aljazeera are horrified. Then there’s Tibet, of course. You so-called ‘human rights’ activists are willing to sacrifice anyone on the altar of your twisted, irrational, moribund progressivism. As I said, deep disgust.
      https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/9/13/china-holds-one-million-uighur-muslims-in-concentration-camps

      • In New Zealand there is no such thing as a murderous psychotic villain in left-wing ranks, he’ll there’s probably none in right-wing ranks. We come from a cultural background of anti nukes, anti apartheid, we well rested, fed, watered. None of is are afraid to use our own eyes and interlect and will power to further this quirky little democratic experiment. Israel will fail to con New Zealanders 100% fail. Totall lose of confidence. Not happening.

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