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Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: July 29th, 2023
  • iknt@lemmy.mltoWorld News@lemmy.ml•Chinese citizen journalist jailed for reporting on Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan set to be freed after 4 years
    272·
    8 months ago

    Relevant quote from the trial.

    This court believes that defendant Zhang Zhan repeatedly used WeChat, Twitter, Youtube, and other online media platforms to assume the role of a personal witness and spread indiscriminately fabricated video and written content during a critical period in the effort to control the spread of the coronavirus in Wuhan. This content was published with the aim of distorting the record of, and commentary on, Wuhan’s coronavirus control and prevention efforts, accepting interviews with foreign media outlets including the Epoch Times and Radio Free Asia, thus causing the spread of the relevant false information through networks at home and abroad. The extensive dissemination of this content on the Internet, newspapers, and other media has caused a great number of netizens to see, comment on, and repost it, misleading the public and creating serious public disorder. This behavior constitutes the crime of picking quarrels and provoking trouble. The facts presented by the prosecution are clear, the evidence sufficient, the defendant convicted of the charges, and the court believes the sentencing recommendations are appropriate.

  • iknt@lemmy.mltoWorld News@lemmy.ml•Will China flood globe with EVs, green tech? What's behind latest US-China trade fight
    112·
    9 months ago

    If it’s about Xinjiang then:

    The US’s “Uyghur genocide” (“cultural” or otherwise) disinformation campaign has already been debunked several times over.

    We see here for example the evolution of public opinion in regards to China. In 2019, the ‘Uyghur genocide’ was broken by the media (Buzzfeed, of all outlets). In this story, we saw the machine I described up until now move in real time. Suddenly, newspapers, TV, websites were all flooded with stories about the ‘genocide’, all day, every day. People whom we’d never heard of before were brought in as experts — Adrian Zenz, to name just one; a man who does not even speak a word of Chinese.

    Organizations were suddenly becoming very active and important. The World Uyghur Congress, a very serious-sounding NGO, is actually an NED Front operating out of Germany […]. From their official website, they declare themselves to be the sole legitimate representative of all Uyghurs — presumably not having asked Uyghurs in Xinjiang what they thought about that.

    The WUC also has ties to the Grey Wolves, a fascist paramilitary group in Turkey, through the father of their founder, Isa Yusuf Alptekin.

    Documents came out from NGOs to further legitimize the media reporting. This is how a report from the very professional-sounding China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) came to exist. They claimed ‘up to 1.3 million’ Uyghurs were imprisoned in camps. What they didn’t say was how they got this number: they interviewed a total of 10 people from rural Xinjiang and asked them to estimate how many people might have been taken away. They then extrapolated the guesstimates they got and arrived at the 1.3 million figure.

    Sanctions were enacted against China — Xinjiang cotton for example had trouble finding buyers after Western companies were pressured into boycotting it. Instead of helping fight against the purported genocide, this act actually made life more difficult for the people of Xinjiang who depend on this trade for their livelihood (as we all do depend on our skills to make a livelihood).

    Any attempt China made to defend itself was met with more suspicion. They invited a UN delegation which was blocked by the US. The delegation eventually made it there, but three years later. The Arab League also visited Xinjiang and actually commended China on their policies — aimed at reducing terrorism through education and social integration, not through bombing like we tend to do in the West.

  • iknt@lemmy.mltoWorld News@lemmy.ml•‘We were constantly in terror’: Israeli hostage tells of captivity in Gaza
    4·
    10 months ago

    For context

    On 7 October, the Almog-Goldsteins had barricaded themselves in Yam’s bedroom, which served as the safe room of their home in the Kfar Aza kibbutz. Five hours later, five Hamas gunmen burst in and shot Nadav, 48, in the chest at point-blank range.

    The family had to step over the talented triathlete’s body as the militants led them outside, where Yam fainted. Almog-Goldstein tried to wet her daughter’s face in the bathroom before going to check on her other children. When she returned a few seconds later, she saw that Yam, a soldier just two months from the end of her service, had been shot in the face.

    “I remember there was a hole in her cheek and she was gasping her last breaths. There was an exit hole on the other side and her head was bleeding profusely,” Almog-Goldstein said through tears.

    “With time this image becomes more and more blurred but every night, throughout this whole time, just before night-time, I try to force myself to remember that image, that scene. It was such a difficult thing that I was witnessing, that it’s a process of self-torture in a way for me not to ever forget that.”