An Australian-Chinese journalist has come under bombardment with labels such as “traitor” and “drug addict” in an online harassment campaign against her exposé about forced labor in Xinjiang cotton production and other rights abuses.

The name-calling does not move Vicky Xu one iota. As many as 7.36 million clicks have been recorded for the malicious internet article on the Chinese Twitter-like Weibo that is trying to paint her as a “demon who loves group sex,” she tweets on her own page.

“A wonderful way to alert the public something is up in Xinjiang, something echoing the cultural revolution and worse,” was how Xu on Tuesday described the attempt to take her down.

The Chinese-born Xu was a self-professed member of the nationalist Little Pink community who became a dissenter and started writing for the New York Times and the Australian Broadcasting Corp in 2017 on issues about China. She conducted interviews with Uyghur people in Australia and, through their testimonies, lifted the lid on the Chinese government’s suppression of their race and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

In 2019, Xu joined the government-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute as a researcher delving into China’s use of technology to carry out mandatory work in Xinjiang and widespread surveillance.

The recent smear effort emerged after Xu and her colleagues in March 2020 released a report that revealed 83 international companies had direct or indirect ties to forced labor in Xinjiang through their supply chains. The report forced a number of big corporations to stop buying cotton produced in the far western Chinese region.

Beijing’s propaganda machine got down to work calling for a boycott of foreign apparel brands that took a stance against alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang.

On April 1, Xu made the rare move of writing in Chinese, to respond to the days-long drive to bring her into disrepute using the wildly shared Weibo article.

“When I read about how tens of Chinese media organizations were describing me as a ‘female demon’ and a ‘traitor,’ I felt helpless and yet amused,” she wrote on Twitter.

“I used to be a journalist who did not dare to express a personal opinion in the newsroom and only wanted to record history with my humble use of English. But now, I am being forcibly touted by the state machinery as a ‘female demon’ who could hurt tens of millions of Chinese nationals.”

Xu reiterated that she would continue to report on the plight of the Uyghurs as more than a million of them had been sent into so-called vocational centers.

She further disclosed that state security officers had in recent years threatened people close to her in mainland China. Those people were being locked up, interrogated and isolated, she said.

Xu said she believed that the detention facilities housing Uyghurs and other minority groups originated in a mission of the ethnic Han government to destroy their people and culture.

“As a human being and as a Han Chinese who took full advantage of resources during my years of growing up in China, I cannot possibly stand by and watch,” Xu wrote.

Click here for Chinese version

---------------------------------

Apple Daily’s all-new English Edition is now available on the mobile app: bit.ly/2yMMfQE

To download the latest version,

iOS: bit.ly/AD_iOS

Android: bit.ly/AD_android

Or search Appledaily in App Store or Google Play