Daniel Dumbrill, a Canadian businessman and youtuber in China. Image credit: CGTN.

Written by: William Ging Wee Dere

The “Xinjiang Victims Database” is claiming that Canadian YouTuber and businessman, Daniel Dumbrill, associated himself with the Xinjiang police force to round up millions of Uygurs to be incarcerated in “concentration camps”. Dumbrill, along with American Shaun Rein and New Zealander Andy Boreham are listed in this database. As Boreham noted on Twitter, he was listed as being linked to “detention, surveillance, denial/discrimination, and exploitation” of Uygurs, a charge shared by Dumbrill and Rein among others.

Dumbrill appears on YouTube regularly to present the reality of life and politics in China to counter the lies of the Western media. He has lived in China for the last 15 years and started a successful microbrew business in Shenzhen. The Canada Files reached out to Dumbrill for comment, but received no response.

The Xinjiang Victims Database was created by Gene Bunin in 2018, a researcher at the Ronin Institute in New Jersey. Bunin’s mission is to document all 1 million to 3 million detainees in the so-called Uygur detention camps. According to these numbers of 1 million people, the entire population of Ottawa would be incarcerated or at 3 million, the entire city of Toronto. So far, he has documented 16,000 “victims.” Some of the names are convicted terrorists publicly available in Chinese criminal documents and others do not exist. This is the same Database cited extensively by the International Labour Organization and the UN Human Rights Council Xinjiang Report.

The latest revelations from Xinjiang human rights propaganda industry has become even more ludicrous. The police officers’ list was released by Xinjiang Victims Database on its Twitter account on January 6, 2023. The link contains a list of over 2,000 Xinjiang police officers with their profile photos. It includes the three foreign “wumaos” mentioned above and the profiles of two Chinese superstars.

Those not familiar with the Hong Kong entertainment industry, Andy Lau and Chow Yun-Fat are both famous icons. Lau is a singer and film star, whereas Chow is known in the West for his starring role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In the hurry to manufacture and paste Chinese faces to the so called Xinjiang Victims Database, both Lau’s and Chow’s photos were included in the line-up of Xinjiang police officers, supposedly repressing, raping and forcing Uygur detainees to work in concentration camps. There was actually a caricature of a cartoon face featured in the police officers’ contact sheet of mugshots.

The comedy of the revelations was not lost on the Chinese Foreign ministry Spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, “Two famous Chinese actors Andy Lau and Chow Yan-fat found on #Xinjiang "victims" database... Could the rumormongers be a little more serious when they're lying?”

Nury Vittachi, the Hong Kong Youtuber and journalist displayed how this “victims” database was accepted wholeheartedly by the Western media and politicians.

There are also photos of “wumaos” in the database. Wumao, meaning “50 cents” is a derogatory term, originally used by Taiwanese to describe members of the Communist Party of China when Taiwan was one of the “four little dragons,” Asian economic powerhouses including South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. Mainland China was poor and developing in the 1970’s-80’s and the CPC was known as the “50 cent” party. Today, the term is used especially for Westerners in China who report favourably on everyday life in China. The wumao designation slanders these Westerners as being paid by the CPC. They include the Canadian Daniel Dumbrill, American Shaun Rein, and New Zealander Andy Boreham. All three are also listed in the “Xinjiang Victims Database.” Type in their names in the filter box and you will see their photos and affiliations.

When it comes to fake Uygur genocide, Western media does not apologize or retract

Despite this exposure of foolery of the Xinjiang Databases, the mainstream media which reported extensively over the last two years on these “secret, hacked or fabricated” files and were “verified by the BBC”, not one of these outlets offered a retraction or a correction of their original story.

The Xinjiang human rights industry, with financial support from the CIA spin-off National Endowment for Democracy, US State Department, several western governments, and the arms industry has been busy manufacturing consent by fabricating various “victims” documentation and databases.

There is the aforementioned Xinjiang Victims Database, Run by Gene Bunin. Bunin is accused of being funded by the US government through the NED, which he has denied. His GoFundMe target of $300,000 started in 2018, however is still not met, stuck at $195,000.

There is the Xinjiang Data Project, created by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), funded by the US government and various arms dealers to the tune of $11.4 million (2019-20) and $10.7 million dollars in 2020-21, from the arms industry, among seven other major funding sources, including foreign governments. ASPI also receives $4 million per year for a total of $20 million from 2018 to 2023 in a 5-year contract with the Australian Defense Department. ASPI got $5 million to open up an office in Washington, DC in 2021.

Another interesting file is the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database (UTJD) out of Norway, created by the Norwegian branch of the separatist World Uygur Congress which is also funded by the NED. However, the UTJD seems to have lost interest in their project. There is no entry to their database since January 21, 2020, standing at a total number of 5031 Uygur men and women “incarcerated.”

We cannot leave out the “leaked Xinjiang Police Files” that was sprung on the world by the infamous Adrian Zenz of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in May 2022. Zenz claims he obtained these files by hacking into the Chinese security database. According to Zenz, the files contain 2800 images and 23,000 detainee records.

Not to feel left out, Canada has its own Uygur “victims” project. Run out of the University of British Columbia under the cloak of academia, the Xinjiang Documentation Project regurgitates the fabrications from the above major anti-Xinjiang “think tanks.” The UBC project is run by Darren Byler, a notorious anti-China academic and Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University.

All these databases have been used extensively by the NED funded Uygur Rights Advocacy Project (URAP) in Canada and the Uygur Human Rights Project (UHRP) in the US. Both organizations have been exposed at length by The Canada Files. The UHRP bibliography was the basis for the so-called UN Assessment on Human Rights in Xinjiang released under the cover of Michelle Bachelet, UN Human Rights Commissioner, 15 minutes before her term as Commissioner expired.

The Western mainstream media, like the BBC, CBC, CNN and so on, naturally maintain that the databases are credible and reported on them expansively to continue the narrative of an “authoritarian” China as the gross violator of human rights. Even with the latest revelations of fakery of the databases, the western media has not retracted or even acknowledge the false findings.

The creator of the Xinjiang Victims Database, Gene Bunin has even come out to criticize BBC reporting on his Facebook page:

Gene Bunin: On Facebook, Feb 3, 2021

“You cannot write a news story claiming systematic rape based on three eyewitness accounts, not all of whom are reliable and for whom their testimonies (given 2-3 years after the fact) are currency. You just can't, and the BBC should know better. … Ex-detainees should not be used as commodities by the media or by activists who want these headlines to push their cause.”

Bunin also criticizes the Western media and politicians using the word genocide being applied to the Uygurs. On his FB page, “don't encourage the blind throwing around of 'genocide' alone, especially by people who get all their news about the region from the media.”

Ma Haiyun, is an associate professor of history at Frostburg State University in Maryland, and a Hui (Chinese Muslim minority) exile; descended from an anti-Communist pedigree. His grandfather was part of a reactionary Hui Muslim warlord clique and died fighting Communists in the 1950s, right after the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed. Ma disavows the use of the term genocide but he cannot openly say it as, “In the current political climate, if you publicly state that there is no genocide in Xinjiang, it will affect your reputation to the point where if I said this, half of my friends would cut me off.” Ma added that this was created by Uygur activist organisations that often used sensationalist language bordering on fabrication.

Will Canadian Members of Parliament admit their mistaken thinking of Uygur “genocide”?

The databases, the files, documentations and assessments of human rights in Xinjiang are somewhat incestuous, since they are the same data and files being referenced by the same people in the Uygur human rights industry. The danger of repeating the same fabrications often enough and loud enough is that there will be people who actually believe them. Case in point: the Canadian Members of Parliament who voted unanimously in 2021 to condemn China for genocide against the Uygurs in Xinjiang, only on the testimonies of URAP and others in their circle. If the Canadian MP’s did some independent research, they would have discovered the following chart, exposing the lies of the Uygur “genocide”.

Shameless Ideological Stand of Western Media

At the beginning of 2023, a delegation of 30 Islamic figures and scholars from 14 countries, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Tunisia and Bosnia and Herzegovina visited Xinjiang on Jan 8. News of this delegation was ignored by the Western media, except for the negative spin of the fringe Radio Free Asia, the US government mouthpiece, which headlined the visit, “Uyghurs abroad, rights groups condemn visit to Xinjiang by Muslim delegation.” Whereas Asian media like The Manila Times reprinted the Global Times article with the headline “Muslim scholars visit Xinjiang, praise efforts on fighting terrorism.”

Anti-imperialist journalists in the West and media in the Global South have an arduous job to break though the domination of the corporate media. They have to fight, to report what is positive and on the important struggles of the peoples in the world. The monopoly of the Western media will be chipped away by each story of truth that the West tries to cover up. The Xinjiang “Victims” Database is but one example.

Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support. The Canada Files has just begun a fundraising campaign!

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William Ging Wee Dere is a member of The Canada Files’ Advisory Board. He is the author of the award-winning “Being Chinese in Canada, The Struggle for Identity, Redress and Belonging.” (Douglas & McIntyre, 2019). He was a political organizer and a leading activist in the 2-decade movement for redress of the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act. He is a member of the Progressive Chinese of Quebec.

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