Chinese state media responds to British state media

    There has been a BBC report of a woman named Tursunay Ziawudun, who claimed women in China's Uygur camps have been sterilized and also raped while detained. The Chinese Global Times responds to the accusation with information on Ziawudun. They say her claim that she was forced to be sterilized is untrue due to the fact that she has been infertile for a while, she was previously married, but her first marriage ended in divorce due to her infertility. They also refute her claims that women at these camps were forcefully sterilized with IUDs and other means, they state that there have been no such cases where that is true. They also provide other women at these camps who have had children since they have been there. The whole story that BBC published relied on her narrative, with no other evidence being provided. The Global Times claims that the BBC only tell the stories of these people that seek them out, while ignoring the stories of "ordinary Uygur women", which leads to great anti-Chinese sentiment, since they apparently have other motivations for telling this narrative.

    The Global Times also brings up the fact that Tursunay Ziawudun has changed her story multiple times since she first told it in 2019. When she first told Radio Free Asia (which is literally funded by the US State Department) in October of 2019, she made no direct claim that she was raped in the camp. In February of 2020, when she was interviewed by Buzzfeed, she claimed  that she was “terrified she might be raped,” but that she “wasn’t beaten or abused.” It was only this week that she claimed  she was raped and abused at the camp. 

    While these two articles are from Chinese state media, the BBC article is also state media, they both have their agendas. Global Times also makes a point that there was no other investigations done by the BBC to back up these claims, so there might be something to learn from these articles. Since the fall of the Soviet Union there has been widespread Sinophobia in the "Western world" looking for a new enemy to fight. China just fits the character of the West's "enemy", nonwhite, not exactly capitalistic, and doesn't speak English. Do I believe the Chinese articles are 100% true, no, do I believe the BBC article is 100% true, also no. However, I will not buy into the hate of China without seeing more evidence than one flimsy narrative.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202102/1215491.shtml

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202102/1215146.shtml

Luke Kwiatkowski