As tedious as it is, I think you do have to dig into the details of stories like these to show that they're not fully reliable. For instance:
Abdulghafur, a poet and activist living in Australia, said she last heard from her father in April 2016 when he left her a voice message on WeChat saying: “‘I have something urgent to tell you please call me’, but when I called him back he wasn’t there.”...
Abdulghafur believes her father was sent to the camps in March 2017...
One of thousands of Uighurs now living in Australia, Abdulghafur said it’s not safe for her to contact her family in Xinjiang directly
How does she know where her father was in March 2017 if she hadn't heard from him since April 2016? And what does she mean by "it's not safe to contact family directly" when she's reporting WeChat calls between her and her father?
These aren't "gotcha" questions. They're not conspiracy-brained overthinking of irrelevant details. They're basic follow up about how she knew what she's claiming to know and how consistent the main narrative of her story is. It's rudimentary factual stuff like "if you were on Baker Street at 7:00, how did you see what was going on five blocks away at 7:05?" The explanation for these discrepancies doesn't have to be her lying, either. Maybe she was understandably fucked up over a parent's death and -- because the whole Anglo world is beating the "China bad" drum and she lives in Australia -- her response was to look for someone to blame.
As tedious as it is, I think you do have to dig into the details of stories like these to show that they're not fully reliable. For instance:
How does she know where her father was in March 2017 if she hadn't heard from him since April 2016? And what does she mean by "it's not safe to contact family directly" when she's reporting WeChat calls between her and her father?
These aren't "gotcha" questions. They're not conspiracy-brained overthinking of irrelevant details. They're basic follow up about how she knew what she's claiming to know and how consistent the main narrative of her story is. It's rudimentary factual stuff like "if you were on Baker Street at 7:00, how did you see what was going on five blocks away at 7:05?" The explanation for these discrepancies doesn't have to be her lying, either. Maybe she was understandably fucked up over a parent's death and -- because the whole Anglo world is beating the "China bad" drum and she lives in Australia -- her response was to look for someone to blame.