including the World Uyghur Congress and the American Uyghur Association, both of which are funded by the CIA front, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). He is a lecturer at the European School of Culture and Theology in Germany and a senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington. He is featured by media such as Radio Free Asia (the US State Department propaganda outlet) and Bitter Winter, published by the Italian-based Center for Studies in New Religions (see: “The New York Times and its Uyghur ‘activist’”).

The documents released last Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists do appear to give a glimpse of the oppressive regime inside China’s detention centres in Xinjiang, but they do not represent a vast trove nor are theyoutrage and encouraging, or even fomenting, opposition and unrest in Xinjiang, the US calculates that it can disrupt Beijing’s plans.

The CIA and US State Department not only have close, longstanding links to the Uyghur diaspora in Europe and the United States via organisations such as the World Uyghur Congress and the American Uyghur Association, but have forged new ties with Uyghur Islamist extremists fighting in the Middle East. The CIA and US military have relied on Al Qaeda-linked fighters in the dirty war in Syria, nominally targeted against Islamic State, but, in reality, aimed primarily at toppling the Assad regime backed by Russia and Iran.

According to a 2017 policy brief by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague, thousands of Uyghur extremists have been fighting in Syria.