Learn from recent history: almost all US-UK accusations against strategic targets are lies

In one of the most shameful acts in Australian history, on 20 March 2003 then-Prime Minister John Howard gave a televised address to the nation announcing his decision to commit Australian troops to the invasion of Iraq. The reasons Howard gave in that speech for supporting the war proved to be lies, including the main pretext of weapons of mass destruction, which Iraq didn’t have (as proved later but which weapons inspectors had already insisted). He also made this claim: “This week the Times of London detailed the use of a human shredding machine as a vehicle for putting to death critics of Saddam Hussein. This is the man, this is the apparatus of terror we are dealing with”, he said. “The removal of Saddam Hussein will lift this immense burden of terror from the Iraqi people.”

We now know—after launching a war that would kill a million Iraqis and set in train the events that unleashed the ISIS terror monsters on Iraq and Syria—the human shredding machine didn’t exist either. Yet we had been assured this claim came from a “witness”.

Senators should consider this recent history before voting for Senator Rex Patrick’s motion this week, which seeks to copy the United States in accusing China of committing “genocide” against the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. Senator Patrick’s motion reads:

That the Senate (a) notes:

(i) the finding of the United States Government on 19 January 2021 that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has committed and continues to commit genocide against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang,

(ii) that official determination continues under the new United States Administration of President Joe Biden, …

(b) agrees that the PRC’s treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang constitutes the crime of genocide …

The motion goes on to allege “torture and abuse” in “mass internment camps”, “forced labour” and “coercive population control measures”, and ends with a call for Australia to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

The Citizens Party has repeatedly investigated the specific claims about Xinjiang since 2018, and found them to be lacking actual proof. They are based entirely on “research” from organisations that are paid by the US and UK governments to wage information warfare against their strategic rivals, and from so-called “East Turkistan” separatists who are enemies of China—neither of which are reliable sources of evidence. Recent history bears out how willing US and British intelligence agencies, politicians and media are to invent lies against their latest strategic targets.

First Gulf War

The 11 October 1990 LA Times headline blared: “Witnesses Tell of Iraqi Atrocities in Kuwait: Congress: Members are shaken by what they hear. Kuwait’s ambassador warns that ‘time is running out.’” It reported testimony given to the US Congress by a 15-year-old eyewitness that “Iraqi soldiers with guns” had removed Kuwaiti “babies from the incubators … leaving the babies to die on the cold floor”. It was entirely made up—the 15-year-old “witness” hadn’t even been in Kuwait; she was the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to Washington.

Iraq invasion

As is now proven, the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq saw lie after lie repeated in media headlines, most attributed to “witnesses”:

2001 New York Times: “Iraqi Tells of Renovations at Sites For Chemical and Nuclear Arms”;
2002 CNN: “Experts: Iraq has tons of chemical weapons”;
2002 The Star: “Mad Saddam ready to attack: 45 minutes from a chemical war”;
2002 The Sun: “Brits 45 mins from doom”;
2002 New York Times: “US Scoffs at Iraq Claim of No Weapons of Mass Destruction”;
2003 Baltimore Sun: “CIA said Iraq had nuclear program”.

Worldwide, thousands of media headlines faithfully repeated the same lies. The British and American liars got the war, destroyed the country and the region—and got away with it.

Libya ‘intervention’

The world witnessed a repeat in Libya in 2011, when Qaddafi was accused of mass-rape and planning genocide against the rebels based in Benghazi:

The Guardian: “Gaddafi ‘supplies troops with Viagra to encourage mass rape’, claims diplomat”;
Washington Times: “Rebels say Gadhafi uses rape as fear tactic in war”;
CNN: “Libyan rebels say captured cell phone videos show rape, torture”.

In 2016, the UK House of Commons Libya Report acknowledged the 2011 intervention by the USA, UK, and France to “protect” Libyan civilians from “genocide”—which had resulted in the brutal murder of Qaddafi and the collapse of Libya into a failed state and haven for slave-traders and terrorists—had been a mistake: “This policy was not informed by accurate intelligence”, it stated. “In particular, the Government failed to identify that the threat to civilians was overstated and that the rebels included a significant Islamist element. … The result was … widespread human rights violations … and the growth of ISIL in North Africa.” (Emphasis added.)

The accusations about Xinjiang should be suspicious to anyone with a memory of these lies. They are contradicted by the high population growth rate of the Uyghur Muslim population, who were always exempted from China’s One Child policy when it was in effect, and the endorsement of many majority Muslim countries of China’s policy of deradicalisation and poverty reduction programs in Xinjiang. As with anything, there may be grounds to criticise some aspects of the policy, but it is in no way comparable to genocide (a gross insult to victims of the Holocaust).

China’s accusers virtually never acknowledge the wave of Islamist terrorism China endured before 2017, which claimed around 800 lives in a decade, mostly in Xinjiang, including both Han Chinese and Uyghur Muslims. Even though the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, the separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement (a.k.a. Turkistan Islamic Party), has as many as 20,000 members in Syria fighting alongside ISIS and vowing to return to wage jihad in China, in January outgoing US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo removed the ETIM from the US State Department’s list of terrorist organisations—just before he designated China’s Xinjiang policy as genocide.

It’s time Australian politicians asserted independence instead of following extremist US and UK politicians into yet another conflict and possible war.

Click here to watch “Citizens Insight: Is China committing genocide against Uyghur Muslims?”, an interview with former British and Australian policeman and security consultant Jerry Grey, who now lives in China and has travelled extensively through Xinjiang.