DM Monitoring
BEIJING: BBC on Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region are filled with false and farfetched information that has been deliberately pieced together and filled with subjective assumption, said a statement Chinese Foreign Ministry posted on Friday.
The Foreign Ministry’s Department of Information lodged a solemn representation on Thursday to Beijing-based BBC journalists about the production and broadcasting of false reports related to Xinjiang.
The department pointed out that the reports are seriously inaccurate in accusing the Chinese government of “torturing” a large number of Uygurs who are deceitfully held in “internment camps” based on a video made by a drug trafficker and a few text messages. Such reports are full of ideological biases, violate the professional ethics of journalism and seriously mislead the audience and the fake news damages the credibility of the BBC, it said. The department expressed strong opposition to the broadcasting corporation’s ideological bias against China and its fabrication of fake news using the excuse of so-called freedom of the press.
“We urge the BBC to take immediate measures to correct its mistakes, discard ideological bias and report China in an objective and impartial manner,” said the department in the statement.
China has exposed a number of Xinjiang-related lies concocted by the BBC.
The BBC interviewed a Uygur woman named Zumrat Dawut [in July] who claimed she was detained in a re-education camp and her father has recently died during detention by the Xinjiang government.
It was later found that she had never studied at any vocational education and training center in Xinjiang and her father had lived with his family until he died on October 12, 2019 of heart disease, according to a statement by the Chinese Embassy in France on August 2 in response to France’s suggestion that a UN-led observer mission be sent to Xinjiang to evaluate the treatment of the Uygurs in the autonomous region.
China’s Ambassador to the UK Liu Xiaoming also refuted a video clip shown to him while he was being interviewed by the BBC in July, which claimed to show a large number of Uygurs detained in Xinjiang. The video actually shows the normal transfer of prisoners in the region, according to local authorities.
