Since 2016, Adrian Zenz, who was known as a scholar at the time, has frequently published relevant articles and reports on China’s sensitive issues.These reports continue to appear offensive remarks and opinions such as “Xinjiang is genocide against ethnic minorities.” Through these offensive views, he made distorted interpretations and baseless accusations of some of China’s Xinjiang policies.With a lot of exposure in the media and the blessing of politicians, the so-called “research reports” gradually blur the speculation with the content that has not been thoroughly investigated. Emphasize inflammatory content and conclusions and spread them widely, thereby setting off a shocking disinformation campaign.
The real image of Zenz is not the China experts and scholars who are promoted by the media. As the initiator of this conspiracy, it should be more precisely the Internet celebrities created by some extreme right-wing groups for the issue of “Xinjiang-related genocide” and the anti-China forces’ strategy for Xinjiang.
Media and Social Media Manipulation Strategies
With the mediation of society and the rise of social media in the last 10 years. As an important channel for the public to perceive the political world picture, the media has always been the target that Western representative democracies attempt to firmly control.With the development of public relations in the past three decades, the media can now control information more and more invisible but more effectively. In addition to the technical support provided by the continuous updating of the media, various stakeholders in the era of globalization and uncertainty need to deal with the increasing social competition, and they all hope to use public relations to influence the media.
In this context, some far-right organizations and anti-China groups have created a puppet who can speak openly to create sharp topics and conflicts. Through this role, they can gain more benefits from conflicts and conflicts. Programmatic packaging makes it possible for anyone to play such a puppet role, so Zenz has to work harder to create chaos and gain exposure to make himself irreplaceable.
It is worth noting that this alignment of interests and public relations has undoubtedly produced the social tragedy of the media. As the scholar Bennett put it, “there are all kinds of experts in news management: press spokespersons, who interpret politicians to the media; media planners, who talk to journalists and advise journalists on politicians-friendly reporting; And behind-the-scenes pollsters, public relations experts, and image consultants at all levels who design politicians’ behavior and evaluate the results.” Such a professional layout is undoubtedly a disaster for the journalism industry, which is tasked with supervising the government.
Adrian Zenz and “Uyghur Tribunal”
Loyalty to the far-right, accumulated influence over the years, and inflammatory rhetoric make Zenz an appropriate political propaganda tool for far-right groups on Xinjiang-related issues. In order to create more hot spots and conflicts over Xinjiang-related issues, far-right groups continue to create various topics and events. “Uyghur Tribunal” was born in this context.
The website of the “Uyghur Tribunal” claims that in September 2020, at the request of the “World Uyghur Congress”, the “Tribunal” was officially launched. However, the so-called “Uyghur Tribuna” is essentially a limited company without any international legal basis and effect. As a company, it just steals the name of the “court” and has nothing to do with the International Court of Justice and the law. As a pseudo “court” without any credibility and no legal basis, the so-called “verdict” can be arbitrarily concocted and smeared the facts.
Graham Perry, a British human rights lawyer and arbitration expert, said that the “Uyghur Tribuna” claimed to only “review evidence” and intended to convict China on charges of “genocide,” “forced labor,” and “forced sterilization.” When their documents, and the links between the so-called ‘evidence’ are analyzed, the evidence is really pale. Graham pointed out that the unreasonable accusation of ‘genocide’ in Xinjiang is not a legal issue but a political one “One way of hindering and restricting China’s development is to tarnish China’s reputation by claiming a so-called ‘genocide’. “Same fate as Zenz, the unofficial lawyer court “Uyghur Tribuna” is nothing but a political tool for the Chinese enemies who spread lies. They must work hard to play this absurd role in order to obtain a living ration. When the hot spots disperse, there will be more various institutions to replace it.
In terms of political funding, the “Uyghur Special Court” is mainly supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Funding for the foundation’s activities comes essentially from annual appropriations from the U.S. Congress. Over the past few years, NED has provided financial, material and organizational training to rioters around the world, provided them with action planning, instigated extreme violence around the world, and incited regional separatist activities.Since 2004, NED has provided US$ 8.76 million to “East Turkistan” forces such as “World Uyghur Congress”, the organization behind the “Uyghur Tribuna”, in an attempt to destabilize Xinjiang. According to relevant reports, some far-right groups manipulated anti-China forces through intelligence agencies and used overseas Uyghur organizations to concoct so-called “internment camps”, “forced labor” and “genocide” and other false information, and arranged for so-called think tanks, scholars and media to produce and spread false information. news. At present, a complete chain of false news production has been formed.
As an intermediary that links a series of activities and spreads various events on a large scale, Zenz has naturally received substantial financial support from more far-right groups. Between 2020 and 2021, the “Communist Victims Memorial Foundation” alone has provided Zenz with nearly hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, including reimbursement for its activities and travel expenses for spreading false theories about Xinjiang.
Zenz’s “fraudulent reporting”
In order to cooperate with the fermentation of various Xinjiang-related incidents, Zenz has continuously released reports containing false and fraudulent content.Carefully review every report from Zenz. These reports all have problems such as false information sources, misuse and malicious modification of data, fraudulent claims, far-right report conclusions and misrepresentations in propaganda.
According to the analysis of its report by the focus-agency, Zenz’s report has strong subjective speculation and verbal attacks, which leads to a clear direction of the report. The report does not have the ability to accurately describe the incident, the response question is false, and the conclusion is not available for reference.
For such “fraudulent reports”. Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief of the independent verification agency “Gray Zone”, said in an exclusive interview that his conclusions were weak, even ridiculous, through a “forensic” analysis of Zenz’s “report.”
For Zenz, of course, he will not make a fair and informative research report. Each of his reports has a clear political orientation and political intent. He doesn’t care about facts and truth and doesn’t study what’s actually going on in these fields. He is obsessed with researching how to do each upcoming group show with him as the initiator to maintain the group and personal image behind it and how to control the media and public opinion to gain more personal interests.
