Press Release – For immediate release
24 January 2019
Contact: World Uyghur Congress www.uyghurcongress.org
0049 (0) 89 5432 1999 or [email protected]

The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) has joined the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), la Ligue des droits Humains, Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisations (UNPO) and the Tibetan Community of Belgium in sending an open letter to the Director General and Editing Director of Belgian Newspaper Le Soir, Oliver De Raeymaeker, urging him to stop publishing propaganda inserts from official Chinese press bodies in his newspaper.

The letter follows the publication by Le Soir of a double page insert from Chinese state media outlet Xinhua entitled “Focus Belgique-Chine” in its 29 November 2018 edition. The articles lauded President Xi Jinping’s policies, praised the prosperity and the harmonious development of China and highlighted the viewpoints of Belgian personalities who have parroted Beijing’s official propaganda.

These propaganda inserts are part of a broader initiative from the Chinese government to influence public opinion and policy makers in Belgium and around the world and to silence criticism of China’s abhorrent human rights record. As they are contained within the main newspaper, readers can be easily deceived into thinking that these paid propaganda articles are in fact endorsed by Le Soir. The payments from these media outlets controlled by the Chinese government also risks creating a relationship of dependence and may give the Chinese government more leverage over the content and opinions expressed in the newspaper.

This is a particularly crucial issue for the World Uyghur Congress. The free press has played an important role in highlighting what the current human rights crisis in East Turkistan and pushing for states and organisation to take concrete actions to close the camps are release all the innocent Uyghurs held in arbitrary detention. The Chinese government has tried to change the narrative and hide the reality of the situation through propaganda and misinformation. Media outlets who willingly accept and disseminate paid Chinese propaganda inserts have a detrimental affect on the advocacy efforts from human rights organisations and obsfucate the true situation in China.