{"id":17386,"date":"2021-09-16T14:48:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-16T14:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.utjd.org\/uyghurtribunal\/?post_type=news&p=17386"},"modified":"2021-09-27T15:01:01","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T15:01:01","slug":"hacks-threats-and-propaganda-how-china-tried-to-discredit-the-uyghur-tribunal","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.uyghurtribunal.com\/?news=hacks-threats-and-propaganda-how-china-tried-to-discredit-the-uyghur-tribunal","title":{"rendered":"Hacks, threats and propaganda: how China tried to discredit the Uyghur Tribunal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

BY\u00a0ISOBEL COCKERELL<\/a><\/p>\n

When Xinjiang camp survivor Erbakit Otarbay, from Kazakhstan, decided to give evidence at London\u2019s Uyghur Tribunal earlier this week, he felt proud of himself. Here was a chance to be a witness at an independent hearing that sought to investigate the\u00a0human rights crisis<\/a>\u00a0in the northwest of China. Before a panel of judges, he would be able to recount the horrors he experienced in government-run detention centers between 2017 and 2018, after visiting family in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

Otarbay, 47, secured a visa from the British Embassy in Kazakhstan, and prepared to go to London in September. He told only a few close friends. But, before long, the phone calls started.<\/p>\n

Two or three times a day, a man calling himself \u201cBakhyt\u201d from Kazakhstan\u2019s state security service began calling him, warning him not to go to attend. \u201cIf you go, it might affect your family, your future,\u201d the man told him. \u201cYou should think of your family members in Kazakhstan, and in China.\u201d He continually asked Otarbay if he would come and meet him in a coffee shop or a restaurant to \u201ctalk, face to face.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the day came to fly to London, Otarbay went to Almaty airport. There was a very long pause as the border official looked at his documents, before refusing to let him board his flight. \u201cI was shaking. I was so scared that they would arrest me,\u201d Otarbay said.<\/p>\n

Along with two friends, who were also set to give evidence at the tribunal, he left the airport and took a taxi back to the city, as if going home. The three men then got into another car, turned their phones off, and drove at high speed across the border to neighboring Kyrgyzstan, completing the four-hour journey in three. From Bishkek, they managed to fly to Istanbul, Dubai, and finally, London. The relief was immense. But Otarbay, who has two children in Kazakhstan and two more in Xinjiang, felt anxious about leaving his family behind, and afraid of any punishment that might be meted out to them by the authorities once he told the truth about his experiences to the tribunal.<\/p>\n

In Altay, Xinjiang, where Otarbay\u2019s parents and two of his children live, the Chinese authorities were visiting his parents at their house and threatening them about the consequences if their son gave evidence. His sister, who lives in Shanghai, called Otarbay and begged him not to testify.<\/p>\n

On the day of the tribunal, Otarbay told the panel of judges how he was starved, beaten, brainwashed and forced to work in Xinjiang\u2019s network of camps and prisons. \u201cSince there were cameras in other places, they would take us to a separate washroom where a camera wasn\u2019t installed, and they would beat us with electric batons,\u201d he said, via an interpreter.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Erbakit Otarbay gives evidence at the Uyghur Tribunal in London, September 12, 2021. Photo: Lily Vetch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The pressure exerted on Otarbay to stop him from testifying is part of a wide-ranging campaign by the Chinese and \u2014 by proxy \u2014 the Kazakh governments to undermine the Uyghur Tribunal in London, and denounce any international attempt to establish the truth about the crushing system of detention and surveillance inflicted on Xinjiang\u2019s ethnic minorities. To date, as many as one million Uyghurs have been held in so-called \u201cre-education\u201d camps.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Uyghur Tribunal<\/a>\u2019s second hearing took place between 10 and 13 September, at Church House in Westminster, moments away from the Houses of Parliament. It was held to investigate allegations of genocide by the Chinese state against Uyghur, Kazakh and other Turkic Muslim populations in Xinjiang. The trial was formally requested by the World Uyghur Congress, but acts as an independent people\u2019s tribunal, chaired by QC Sir Geoffrey Nice, who previously led the prosecution of the former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes. It has no powers of sanction or enforcement, but has, nonetheless, been targeted by the Chinese government throughout its first hearings in June and again this month.<\/p>\n

The People\u2019s Republic of China did not respond to the tribunal\u2019s requests to take part in the proceedings. Instead, it imposed\u00a0sanctions<\/a>\u00a0against the tribunal and its organizers.<\/p>\n

During a press conference this week, Zheng Zeguang, China\u2019s ambassador to the U.K.\u00a0said<\/a>: \u201cThe so-called witnesses the organizers have put together are merely actors who have been making up the so-called persecution that never happened at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zheng added that he asked the U.K. government \u201cto stop the organizers from continuing such malicious behaviour.\u201d The U.K. Foreign Office did not respond to requests for comment about whether it had sought to reassure the ambassador over the tribunal. Zheng was told he was banned from visiting the U.K. parliament on September 15, while sanctions remain against several MPs and peers.<\/p>\n

Organizers of the tribunal have said the hearings were marked by condemnation from China and other covert attempts to undermine the proceedings.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina continued its attack to harass the witnesses who agreed to give evidence,\u201d said Hamid Sabi, the tribunal\u2019s counsel, during closing remarks on Monday. He described how, following pressure by the Chinese government, two witnesses withdrew their statements.<\/p>\n

Organizers of the tribunal also told me that the host venue, Church House, had been put under pressure not to hold the event. \u201cI think there was some effort to actually try to hire out another part of the building by people who were connected to the Chinese Embassy, so it gives you an idea of how deep this thing went,\u201d said Luke de Pulford, an advisor for the tribunal and co-founder of rights group the Coalition for Genocide Response.<\/p>\n

Church House declined to comment on the matter.<\/p>\n

Tribunal staff also experienced a number of suspicious attempts to hack into their digital security. \u201cWe did receive a high number of fake bookings in the build-up to the hearings,\u201d said Frankie Vetch, a project assistant at the tribunal. He described how the organizers received several suspicious emails and login attempts. This led them to take measures to safeguard the data of their witnesses, including ensuring that there was no public Wi-Fi connection within the venue, in order to prevent outsiders from hacking into the system.<\/p>\n

The Embassy of the People\u2019s Republic of China in London did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Muetter Iliqud, a project researcher at the\u00a0Uyghur Transitional Justice database<\/a>, which registers disappeared and imprisoned Uyghurs in Xinjiang, presented her report at both the tribunal\u2019s June and September sessions. In the days leading up to both hearings, her Telegram app notified her of numerous login attempts on her account. The same thing happened on Facebook and WhatsApp. Her colleagues also experienced similar activity. She showed me her phone and scrolled back through dozens of login alerts. Iliqud and her mother, both based in Norway, also received phone calls from unknown numbers in the lead up to the hearing. \u201cI\u2019m not just risking myself, but also everyone I\u2019m working with, and I\u2019m very worried about it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Another expert witness, Julie Millsap, director of public affairs and advocacy at the Campaign for Uyghurs, was harassed by anonymous accounts on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, which posted old photographs of her pole dancing, along with out-of-focus, fake images of a woman kissing a man in a dance studio. \u201cThe messages said, \u201cWe\u2019ll show this to your husband,\u201d she said. He then received similar messages. During her testimony, trolls spammed the Uyghur Congress YouTube page with comments denouncing her.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Screenshots from the propaganda video released by the Chinese Foreign Ministry in May to dispute Qelbinur Sidik\u2019s witness statement<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During the June hearings, China\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a press conference featuring family members disputing evidence given by witnesses. \u201cThey tried to undermine my testimony,\u201d said Qelbinur Sidik, a witness who, in June, recounted being forcibly sterilized in Xinjiang. The day before her testimony, she watched a video of her husband on the official foreign ministry\u2019s Twitter page, who described her story as \u201cnonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were clearly forced to denounce their own family members as liars,\u201d said de Pulford. \u201cThe cruelty of this government knows no bounds. They\u2019ll stoop to any low in order to support their narrative, which is to deny there\u2019s any problem to make out like it\u2019s all being made up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Erbakit Otarbay has now decided it\u2019s too dangerous to return to his home country and will try to seek asylum in the U.K. \u201cI feel very safe here,\u201d he said. \u201cBakhyt\u201d last called him on September 9, when Otarbay was already in London. Since then, he has changed his phone number, and the calls have stopped.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Link to article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY\u00a0ISOBEL COCKERELL When Xinjiang camp survivor Erbakit Otarbay, from Kazakhstan, decided to give evidence at London\u2019s Uyghur Tribunal earlier this week, he felt proud of himself. 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