Emin (2nd L), a resident of Uygur ethnic group, chats with his neighbors in Tacheng city, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, April 2, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]
VII. The "First Independent Report" on Xinjiang which was widely reported in Western media actually came from an institution funded by a sham university.
◆In March 2021, the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a self-styled think tank, published the so-called "first independent report" on Xinjiang. The report claims that China has breached "each and every act" of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in its treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjinag. The report and the Institute received extensive coverage by mainstream media outlets such as CNN, The Guardian and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
◆Founded in 2019 and based in Washington D.C., the Newlines Institute purportedly aims to "enhance US foreign policy based on a deep understanding of the geopolitics of the different regions of the world and their value systems". Its founder and president once served as a member of the advisory board for the US military's Africa Command. Anti-China scholar Adrian Zenz is also on its team.
◆Tom Fowdy, an Oxford graduate and East Asia specialist, revealed in Chollima Report, a website he runs, that the Newlines Institute is actually a front for the Institute of Islamic Thought, an Islamist neo-conservative organization in the US linked to Egypt's Muslim brotherhood, whose members have pleaded guilty to sponsoring terrorism.
◆The Newlines Institute is funded by Fairfax University of America (FXUA), an unaccredited sham university formerly known as Virginia International University. In 2019, state regulators of Virginia found the academic quality and rigor of FXUA's online education "patently deficient" and the university's certificate to operate was almost revoked. Data from the US Department of Education show that between 2020 and 2021, the university has 153 registered students, and its official Twitter account has only 13 followers.
◆The advisory board of the FXUA is composed of heads of military contractors. The Consolidated Analysis Centers Incorporated (CACI), which was involved in the Abu Ghraib prison incident in Iraq, is one of them.
◆According to a report carried by Xinhuanet in 2007, lawyers from the US Center for Constitutional Rights note that a group of more than 250 former Iraqi prisoners filed a lawsuit against CACI for torture during interrogation in Iraq.
