Chinese nationalist group stages two-hour ‘attack’ on Uygur websites
- Move was ‘a brute-force effort to pledge thoughtless allegiance to the Communist Party’, project manager for World Uygur Congress says
- Organiser says aim was to ‘maintain national dignity, dispel rumours and show the whole world the facts’
A coordinated “attack” by a Chinese nationalist group on the Facebook pages of the World Uygur Congress and online media outlet Talk to East Turkestan was driven by the desire to “rationalise … crimes against humanity”, according to an official from the WUC.
The incident, which lasted from 8pm to 10pm on Wednesday, saw thousands of members of the Diba forum – a group set up in 2004 by soccer fans that is now more associated with fomenting nationalist sentiment – bombarding the websites with patriotic messages, photographs and memes.
Yin Yuancheng, one of the organisers, said the aim of the attack was “to maintain national dignity, dispel rumours and show the whole world the facts”.
WUC project manager Peter Irwin, however, took a different view.
“The messages and posts are not a result of a careful consideration of the issue, but simply a brute-force effort to pledge thoughtless allegiance to the Communist Party,” he said.
“The action … illustrates the need for Chinese citizens to further rationalise what many now consider crimes against humanity perpetrated by their government.
“There’s no sense that the comments indicate a nuanced or even a basic understanding of what’s actually happening on the ground in the Uygur region, [which is] likely a symptom of state control over information.”