Brian Berletic hosts The New Atlas, a great YouTube channel in which he analyses and comments mostly on Eastern geopolitics from a Western perspective.

He is an American who now lives in Asia.

In a nutshell

In short, the claim is that China—or more accurately, the Chinese government— is detaining millions of Uyghur Muslims in camps in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, forcing them into labour, sterilising them and trying to erase their culture and religion. This is apparently part of a deliberate effort to commit ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses.

Brian argues that it’s a myth.

He argues that it is Western propaganda used to perpetuate an anti-China narrative, much like the false claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction that justified the Iraq War.

Also, the Uyghur population growth looks pretty healthy.

Of course, it was later revealed that her testimony was nonsense and part of a propaganda campaign.

No concentration camps

Brian also argues that there are no concentration camps in Xinjiang.

In fact, the ‘camps’ are really just educational institutes aimed at rehabilitating Uyghur radicals, designed to help them reintegrate into Chinese society peacefully. Keep in mind that Chinese culture is thousands of years old, traditionally conservative and the Chinese are very keen on preserving it.

Furthermore, groups like the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) have used ‘satellite imagery’ to bolster their ‘concentration camp’ storytelling. But, as it happens, zooming into the cited coordinates doesn’t reveal concentration camps.

Conversation

Look, there’s a lot to digest, and Brian does a great job at summarising everything.

But I strongly recommend looking into not just the genocide claims but the sources of those claims. You’ll likely find a link to a handful of suspicious anti-China actors based in the US, like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) who are also behind religious groups like Falun Gong.

Brian Berletic on the Uyghur genocide myth