Twitter Removes China Misinformation Campaign: after I published the #KarakaxList, a major state media smear campaign against me ensued, and was amplified by 100s of suspicious accounts, including one that impersonated me. nytimes.com/2020/06/11/tec…
Global Times smear pieces were re-tweeted 100s of times, by accounts with 0-3 followers, often sexually-suggestive (or at least attractive) user profile pics, very similar messages, etc. I am still trying to get over the fact that this bot called me ugly. Just kidding.
Their first strategy was to troll my most tweets - typically of new original research articles, starting w/ my work on parent-child separation in July 2019. When this re-occurred with the China Cables in Nov 2019, I ruthlessly blocked them all. Then, they changed tactics.
Starting in Dec 2019 with research on forced labor but especially in Feb 2020 with the Karakax list, Beijing's strategy shifted to publishing lots of dedicated state media pieces. These were then amplified by bot accounts, often through dedicated RTs or replies.
In recent weeks, Twitter has deleted 100,000s such accounts. I have lost 100s of "follower" accounts, almost all of which had close to zero followers. But some "echo chamber" accounts survived: some have a few followers, others can only boast a half-way correct English sentence.
This account who amplified a such smear piece, with 0 followers, 0 following, and a sexually-suggestive crop of a female as profile image, was not removed. It re-tweeted various Chinese State media smear or propaganda pieces on Xinjiang, but stopped doing so in early March.
It did not chip into the COVID misinformation campaign and has no recent activity, which might be the reason that it was not removed. However, such accounts can lie dormant for a while and be re-activated at any time.
Most accounts that amplified the second smear article against me survive to this day. Some of them have recent tweets, but they only focus on Xinjiang. The Twitter misinformation removal campaign apparently did not focus on removing bot accounts with a focus on Xinjiang.
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On Saturday, China's Ministry of Civil Affairs casually announced new standardized Chinese names for 30 locations in "South Tibet" (藏南), together with an updated map (below).
"South Tibet" is India's state of Arunachal Pradesh.
Thread:🧵
India promptly responded, affirming that the state is an "integral" part of India.
This was the PRC MCA's 4th announcement, resulting in a total of 62 Chinese place names. Links in next post.
@SophieDRich Related op-ed by @benedictrogers, arguing that member states must be clear and specific in pointing out Beijing's egregious human rights violations. He suggests 10 points that could be raised. ucanews.com/news/chinas-ri…
BREAKING: U.S. sanctions first Chinese central government official over atrocities in Xinjiang:
Hu Lianhe, who defended the camps at the U.N. in 2018.
Hu is a deputy head of the central government's Xinjiang Leading Small Group and of the United Front. home.treasury.gov/news/press-rel…
The justification for sanctioning him follows closely my analysis of Hu's role in my research article from 2021.
The Xinjiang LSG he co-leads was closely involved in the De-Extremification Regulation, which justified the re-education camps. jamestown.org/program/eviden…
Specifically the Central Xinjiang Work Coordination Small Group (中央新疆工作协调小组办公室) was closely involved in supervising the draft of the original Regulation, published in March 2017, and its revision, published in October 2018. Thus, he had close knowledge of the camps.
New Xinjiang Police Files evidence shows that Uyghurs were sent from re-education camps directly to vocational institutions that organized job fairs with Volkswagen & advertise degrees with Volkswagen as a typical work destination. One victim: the Uyghur Adiljan Hashim. /1
Police records show that Adiljan Hashim was detained in October 2017, then placed into the Xinjiang Light Industry Technical College (新疆轻工职业技术学院) in January 2018. This "release" was highly controlled and based on pre-agreed conditions (担保释放人员).
The Xinjiang Light Industry Technical College offers majors in fields such as automobile manufacturing (汽车制造). The college lists examples of a cooperation with companies including FAW-Volkswagen Xinjiang on its website, and advertises Volkswagen as a graduate employer.
Pleased to publish another peer-reviewed article today on Xinjiang forced labor (4th this year), arguing why this forced labor requires reversing the burden of proof.
I would like to thank the Journal of Human Trafficking (@JournalOfHT) for publishing this article.
It's important to have work on Xinjiang forced labor published in a journal that specializes on forced labor, human trafficking, and modern slavery.
The article advances the to-date first systematic review of: (1) the evolution of ILO efforts to measure forced labor, and of (2) the suitability of the ILO’s 2012 Survey Guidelines in several Central Asian state-imposed forced labor contexts (XJ, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Taj).
Major investigative report uncovers how large corporations including @bp_plc, Hilton & Spotify bought carbon credits at direct risk of Uyghur forced labor.
My team provided crucial research findings, implicating the world’s largest carbon consultancy: 🧵 theguardian.com/environment/20…
The Bachu carbon project developed by the world's largest carbon consultancy @southpoleglobal in Kashgar burns cotton stalks to generate climate neutral power.
These stalks are sourced from a region with multiple coercive labor transfers targeting Uyghurs to pick cotton.
Bachu is part of Xinjiang's most coercive labor transfer policies, see .
Our research identified multiple specific local cases of coercive state transfer efforts within the 50km radius within which the plan sources cotton stalks.tandfonline.com/doi/permission…