One facility out of a total of 380 detention camps is a school in Nilqa. Bad-faith actors/trolls have desperately tried to disprove this site. I'm going to tell the story of Dina Nurdybai to highlight the cruelness that denying the trauma of victims has. She was detained here.
Dina was a business woman and a business owner, she owned a clothing company in Nilqa, and in 2017 was summoned for 'a chat' with police. This chat ended up with her being detained without rhyme or reason for almost a year.
She was taken directly to this facility, the Wuzan Middle School, where she was ordered to strip, undergo a full cavity search and then crammed into a room with 30 detainees and three beds.
When she met with a party cadre asking why she was detained, she was told that it was Uyghurs who were to blame for her detention, not the party, because they were terrorists. Which is shockingly similar to the psychopathic justification of this shocking regime I've seen on here.
At least every two weeks she was made to write “thought reports” (思想汇报), “statements of repentance” (悔过书), and “speak out and brandish one’s sword” (发声亮剑) declarations. Some of these often needed to be more than 3 pages long.
Dina says that it took her a while to learn that this place was a “education and training center” (教培中心). She says that when she looked up at the sign saying that, she was hit with an electric-shock baton by a guard.
She was also once made to sit next to a torture (tiger) chair for 24 hours, she needed to 'repent' by looking at it, or else they would strap her in and torture her with electric shocks.
They were allowed to call home twice per month. Following her release she was told she was required to pay interest on loan totally $250/day, when she was detained this loan had no interest. As a result all the machines and materials for her company were confiscated.
She told the AP that anyone with children were forced to have an IUD implanted while detained at the camp.
Dina's story, compared to many other detained individuals, is quite light, she was released relatively quickly, she wasnt tortured, she wasn't grossly mistreated in the camp. Even so, when she left she was sick, her "fingers were swollen and my nails were almost falling off."
That's because this is an exceptionally low security facility, compared to many of the other ones in Xinjiang. But it's still deeply traumatic. For the online reactionary left to search high and low for any smidgen of mistake, like sharks in the water is speaking over victims.
What matters more than these stories, to the derranged portion of the podcast-tankie-left, is an incorrect ideological belief that these people have no agency and have no experience unless they completely agree. Anyone who doesn't is a US imperialist pawn.
Pretty much every Uyghur I know has friends and family who, to this day, remain detained. A lot of them have far more horrific stories than Dina, one of the lucky people who was able to get out.
To dismiss all of that in favour of amature and incorrect assumptions (this facility is marked as a school on an online map therefore it can't be a camp) shows that to them the suffering of Uyghurs and others means nothing, anything counter to their belief is false.
It's distinctly cruel, and it's distinctly typical of a toxic part of the online Left that has been denying the agency, the experiences and the trauma of oppressed people of colour for decades.
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As the man who disarmed a terrorist shooter in Bondi is named as Ahmed El Ahmad, a Muslim name, there is already AI-generated disinformation falsely claiming the hero was a Sydney-born local called "Edward Crabtree", with an entire AI-generated backstory. archive.is/K5eSI
The entire website is built around this disinformation (try clicking any of the related articles) and falsely attributes quotes to the NSW Police Commissioner, the Australian Prime Minister, the made-up Crabtree and several others.
Meanwhile, people are already trying to 'community note' posts about al-Ahmad. The person who wrote this community note has only previously written in Brazilian Portuguese, generally forwarding right-wing talking points.
A 🧵(ongoing) of geolocations from recent escalations on the Thai-Cambodia border.
Firstly, Thailand has claimed it has launched a ground operation into Sa Kaeo, near Chouk Cheay / Ban Nong Chan. Smoke rounds are around 1km beyond the previous forward deployment of Thai troops.
13.766103, 102.702367
These screengrabs (geolocated first by @RoadtoMars9 ) show Thai infantry fighting vehicles advancing past the de-facto barbed wire border, presumably at least towards the Thai interpretation of the border (purple line)
13.8174, 102.7369
🧵A detailed timeline on escalations in the lead-up to yesterday's clashes between Thailand and Cambodia.
Much of the escalation seems to stem from Cambodia, with their troops fortifying many sectors before the May 28 clashes and surging strategic assets immediately after.
🗺️ - heatmap of Cambodian military developments prior to July 24th.
2025-02-13. The immediate tensions seem to originate from an incident on February 13, when a group of Cambodian soldiers escorted civilians to visit an ancient temple. The group reportedly sang the Cambodian national anthem and was later stopped by Thai security officials.
2025-02-17. Defence Minister Phumtham Wechayachai expressed concern over the recent provocative incident involving Cambodian troops in Ta Muen Thom, stating that he does not want the incident to escalate into a conflict.
The craziest thing is that the LA protests are remarkably normal, dare I say pedestrian. Theres no significant or widespread destruction, barely any meaningful resistance to law enforcement.
It's so transparently obvious that the Trump admin wants to fabricate a crisis.
There is absolutely zero tactical or strategic need for any federal support to control what we've seen this weekend. Yet the admin has been able to completely dominate and distort the conversation with barely any pushback from the democratic establishment or even the media.
By the way, when I say 'barely any meaningful resistance' I don't mean no skirmishes, I mean that at NO point have the police not been able to quickly and effectively perform whatever crowd control action they deem necessary.
Which is absolutely credit to the protesters.
🧵Geolocations of ALL sites that the Indian Army has claimed to have hit in Pakistan and Kashmir. 1. Masjid Syedna Bilal/Hazrat Bilal
34.385846°N 73.456974°E
It appears to have been a direct hit, according to after-strike ground photos. google.com/maps/place/34%…
2. Reported training camp in Gulpur, Kotli
33.402328°N 73.876957°E
No post-strike imagery yet. google.com/maps/place/33%…
3. Masjid Ahl-e-Hadis in Barnala, Bhimber.
32.867802°N 74.256469°E
Quadcopter-dropped munition appear to miss the target building and strike a courtyard around 50m away. google.com/maps/place/32%…
There's a horrendous amount of violence happening over the past few days in Syria, and a tremendous amount of uncertainty in numbers, details & actors. Yet it's astounding just how few people (including mainstream journalists) are engaging with these incidents in any good faith.
So many people are visibly giddy at the idea that the new Syrian government is committing atrocities. And as a result, absolutely misrepresenting the violence that is occurring. It's pulling in the pro-SDF crowd (biji!biji!) the Assadist crowd (counter-revolution!), the pro-Israel crowd (only the IDF can protect minorities!), the idiot Westerners (Assad was the thin blue line!) and even mainstream journalism (finally some spice to report).
And as a result, its the most counter-productive information environment I've seen around Syria since the chemical attack information ops.
It's imperative we find the details of these atrocities, who is involved and hold them accountable. It's crucial this is prevented from becoming a wider sectarian conflict.
And it's wild that most reporting and commentary is acting as a barrier to this, not a help.