YouTube Censors Watchdog Exposing Chinese Human Rights Violations

P. Gardner Goldsmith | June 30, 2021
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People who love government must be thirsting for what might be called the CensorChip.

Such an invention would be inserted into every human brain, allowing Big Tech overlords and freedom-hating politicians to constantly update the chip with new words, ideas, and images they want purged from polite society.

That would make it easier for Google-Alphabet’s pet censoring machine, YouTube, to decrease its authoritarian and arbitrary policing of pro-freedom channels. YouTube simply could shut down the thoughts of people trying to post pro-freedom videos. The corporate board could skip its tedious algorithmic jerry-rigging and “strike” system, could avoid the bad press of removing popular sites, and just stop the thoughts at the cerebral level.

Until that wondrous day, of course, the demigods at YouTube will have to employ their lackeys and programs and continue their quest: to silence the backers of liberty and peace – people like those who run the Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights channel, which had published on YouTube thousands of testimonials from people reporting on Chinese persecution of their friends and relatives.

Reuters’ Victoria Waldersee and Paresh Dave note that, thanks to YouTube’s long-standing hatred of anything remotely resembling a respect for freedom, the channel is now gone:

Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights' channel has published nearly 11,000 videos on YouTube totaling over 120 million views since 2017, thousands of which feature people speaking to camera about relatives they say have disappeared without a trace in China's Xinjiang region, where UN experts and rights groups estimate over a million people have been detained in recent years.

But YouTube’s string-pullers must think such reportage is inherently evil, because, much like the Chinese, Canadian, and numerous US state governments have done to churchgoers, that pro-freedom message has been crushed.

On June 15, the channel was blocked for violating YouTube's guidelines, according to a screenshot seen by Reuters, after twelve of its videos had been reported for breaching its 'cyberbullying and harassment' policy.


Related: Dr. Drew Slams YouTube’s Censorship of His Channel in 'Rubin Report' Interview

That would be… bullying the Chinese government by reporting on its wicked treatment of people in Xinjiang and occupied Kazakhstan?

Serikzhan Bilash, a Xinjiang-born Kazakh activist who co-founded the channel and has been arrested multiple times for his activism, said government advisors told him five years ago to stop using the word ‘genocide’ to describe the situation in Xinjiang - an order he assumed came from pressure from China's government on Kazakhstan.

Bilash and his colleagues at the channel post video testimony from loved-ones who describe the treatment of those whom the government has prevented from having voices. But YouTube seems not to like that.

’They're just facts,’ Bilash said to Reuters in a phone interview, referring to the content of Atajurt's videos. ‘The people giving the testimonies are talking about their loved ones.’

The YouTube censors cited 12 videos for “cyberbullying and harassment,” and, upon receiving questions about specifics from Reuters, replied that it objected to the Atajurt practice of having speakers show IDs as proof of their relationships to the missing victims of government terror.

On June 18, write Waldersee and Dave, YouTube reinstated the channel, but demanded that Bilash blur those IDs, something Bilash is reluctant to do, since that would undercut the veracity of the videos.

So the Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights Channel is moving to libertarian-oriented Odysee, which is part of the LBRY blockchain system:

Fearing further blocking by YouTube, they decided to back up content to Odysee, a website built on a blockchain protocol called LBRY, designed to give creators more control. About 975 videos https://odysee.com/@ATAJURT:8 have been moved so far.

And Bilash offers one final comment:

’There is another excuse every day. I never trusted YouTube, ’Serikzhan Bilash, one of Atajurt's founders, told Reuters in a phone interview. ‘But we're not afraid anymore, because we are backing ourselves up with LBRY. The most important thing is our material's safety.’

The more YouTube engages in this kind of behavior, almost as if it is defending China, the more people will go to alternatives – especially ones like Odysee, which utilizes the blockchain to prevent videos from being purged.

As long as the information is being released, we will find it.

Related: Now That's Funny! YouTube CEO Wins Free Speech Award at Event Sponsored by...YouTube

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