this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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Adrian Zens is integral to the Uyghur Human Rights Project. I suppose I don't do new research, I just follow links until I find something I've judged as untrustworthy before. He's not directly credited as a contributor, but Uyghur Human Rights Project uses him as their source for all their publishing, and invites him to their events.
Well, I don't know what else to tell you. I couldn't find anything about him on their site or him being used for any of research that I looked into. Now, I didn't go over everything so it is possible he's worked with them in the past but I don't think that would be a reason to discredit all the work the UHRP.
What am I seeing is anything critical of China getting downvoted and a bunch of people congrating themselves for not falling for the propaganda when I literally looked and could not find anything they were claiming as part of the article.
I encourage anyone seeing all these comments discrediting this story and look into the details yourself. I could not find any evidence for all the claims they are making to discredit this. There has been some good thoughtful discussion and I appreciate that but lots of knee jerk reactions that people not doing proper research when even just a cursory check doesn't back up what they are claiming.
Okay. I think this is a very fair and good comment. So this is their most recent published work. https://uhrp.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/UHRP-Humanitarian-Needs-Report_2023-02-01.pdf.pdf
Ctrl F, RFA 7 matches, RFERL 6 matches, radio free 7 matches, uhrp.org to see how many times they source themselves. There are 23 matches but only 19 instances of them using circular sourcing. ASPI 1 match. Jamestown 2 matches. There are some better sources in there, like Human Rights Watch, but the HRW article in question uses Adrian Zenz as their source. The only source I'm seeing quickly that isn't directly with zero steps of separation tied to a NATO member spy agency or propaganda agency is NY Times.
For the New York Times article though be careful following their Tinyurl link because it goes through a Viglink reroute that is unlikely to be safe. I can't imagine why else they'd find it appropriate to use a tinyurl link in their paper if not to attack readers. You can use an extractor service. But anyway if you read that article you'll see that their source is only Uyghur Human Rights Project so it's a circular citation again. No I don't check stuff like this every time. But by now we should know that Uyghur Human Rights Project is an untrustworthy front for Adrian Zenz and stop when we encounter it.
That's not their most recent published work. That was published in Feb 2023 and they released a more recent report on Jul 2023 (and I believe it has less troublesome references but I'll admit I don't have the time to go through them all):
https://uhrp.org/statement/uhrp-submits-comprehensive-report-for-un-consideration-of-chinas-human-rights-record/
Regardless, your point still stands, there's likely more circular referencing than I originally believed. I'm still not convinced it is as much of a conspiracy as others have claimed, but it is food for thought. I appreciate the less combative tone and a willingness to discuss in good faith.
Two things about this:
It doesn't require "conspiracy" on the scale of dozens of different international organizations conspiring and then working in lock step. What you have is a set of media entities (following the governments who they have a vested interest in getting along with) following their individual interests of publishing bullshit, and when another company publishes bullshit of the same genre you are publishing, there's a good chance you will find it worthwhile to recycle their reporting (as many do with AP and BBC articles, for example). There is no need for these groups to "conspire" to produce this result, there is only need for common interests that are observably true to us. Circular citations making spurious claims again, say, China is the natural result of media outlets being aligned with an entity like NATO because of a number of factors like funding and access journalism. That's the market for you.
The view that conspiracy is an epistemic hazard (though it does certainly happen) is correct and important. I encourage you to keep that in mind next time you read an article about North Korea calling basically every observed part of the country a potemkin village, or all the flimsy claims of subterfuge by China when they do things that are normal for other states but blown up into world-domination catastrophizing when the BBC puts it through its very filtered lens.
I apologise for linking the wrong report. I genuinely had trouble with their website, because some articles aren't original research.