YouTube removes videos documenting alleged human rights abuse in China

YouTube removed videos of alleged human rights violations in China, filmed by an activist group.

By / / Technology
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YouTube reportedly took down videos filmed by a human rights activist group about the disappearance of the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang region, in China.

YouTube disables the human rights channel

The Youtube channel, Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights, was created in 2017 to fight for human rights in the Xijiang region and it has recently filmed testimonies from people who lost their family members to alleged human rights abuse and detention in one of the provinces in China.

Serikzhan Bilash, who is co-founder of the group told Reuters that he has been arrested several times and that government advisers had told him to stop using the word “genocide” to refer to the situation in Xinjiang.

“They’re just facts. The people giving the testimonies are talking about their loved ones” Bilash said in an interview with Reuters.

On Tuesday 15 June 2021, YouTube took down the channel, claiming that it had violated one of its policies by revealing private information. In their defence, Bilash and his group said they had to include that information for evidence that indeed the people in the videos were related to those who went missing.

After a series of inquiries from the activist group administrators YouTube restored the channel three days later. However, Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights were asked to blur the IDs of the people in the videos.

Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights have since uploaded all the videos to Odysee, a lesser-known platform in which content you upload on your profile can never be deleted because of its blockchain protocol.

Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities detained in Xijiang

According to Reuters, the U.N reports that over a million people have been detained in Xinjian camps, mostly Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups. China, however, denies these claims. Other reports by the U.N allege that Uyghur people are exploited and forced to work in factories for well-known brands.