[FooBarWidget]

I'm not, but I'm in contact with a Uyhur as well as a non-Uyghur Xinjiang resident, and I've researched this topic for a long time. See also my other reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34789836

TLDR: heavy-handed anti-terrorism response, even if it deserves criticism, is not at all the same as "millions in concentration camps", "forced labor" or even "genocide". Many allegations you read in the media are grave distortions of reality for the purpose of geopolitical attacks and fostering consent for a war against China.

[vain]

Modi apologists seem to make similar attacks on the media and the west. They claim that the media is biased and out to get him, any criticism of him is anti-national and so on.

You're claiming that the Uighur women that got forcibly sterilized are terrorists? Modi similarly uses the terrorism bogeyman to suppress criticism. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/10/how-terrorism-...)

And why isn't it easy for western journalists to report from Xinjiang, if it is as you describe it, a benign situation?

[FooBarWidget]

No that isn't what I said at all. I never said that Xinjiang is a "benign" situation, I said that Xinjiang's reality is very different from media reporting. Big difference. It's entirely possible for reality to be not benign, but also very far removed from the hellhole that's painted by media. Reality can be complex.

And no, I'm not claiming that Uyghur women who got sterilized are terrorists. I'm claiming that the entire story of there being widespread, systematic, forced sterilization for the purpose of genociding a people, is a false. The source for the forced sterilization claim is Adrien Zenz, who in his "research paper" said that IUD usage in Xinjing accounted for 80% of the country. But when you go to his cited source for that 80% figure, you see that the source actually said 8%. Then when some people made a fuss about that, he... wait for it... changed the 80% into 8% but did not change the paper's conclusion, and tried covering up the fact that he changed the paper at all! Meanwhile, no media is interested in reporting this.

"Modi apologists" have got absolutely nothing with me, but by citing them you're making the claim that everybody who claims that the media is biased is nuts. Then pray tell, what do you call media who looks the other way while a "researcher" fudges his numbers like that? What part of me pointing out shoddy research is "nationalism"?

I dare you to read Adrien Zenz's paper and tell me that it's reliable.