(New York Post) Microsoft, the world’s most valuable company, is “erasing” the suffering of the persecuted Uyghur minority from internet searches in China, The Post has learned.
Results from the tech giant’s Bing search engine show how its Chinese users are presented with different results from American users.
And in the most egregious example, Bing image results for the term “Uyghur” when entered in China display cheerful Uyghurs smiling and dancing — part of a larger propaganda effort to persuade the world Uyghurs lead idyllic lives under Chinese rule.
The Chinese Communist regime in Beijing has run a scorched earth campaign against the Uyghurs, a predominantly-Muslim ethnic minority officially number 12 million people living in Xinjiang province, in the far west of China, which has included imprisoning more than one million in concentration camps since 2017 — and has been officially declared a “genocide” by the State Department.
The U.N. has accused China of “serious human rights violations” but Beijing has denied committing abuses and has even suggested the claims are from “anti-China voices trying to smear China.”
Search results seen by The Post show Microsoft — founded by Bill Gates, who met Chinese leader Xi Jinping for one-on-one talks last June, and helmed by Satya Nadlla — apparently acting to help the Communist campaign by offering different results on its Bing search engine in China from those in the US.
Results from a search in the US for “Uighurs” show links to news stories which mention “oppression” and “suffering,” and images of Uyghurs wearing masks in the sky blue of the ethnic group’s flag in protest at the Chinese government.
But results using a Chinese VPN to mirror domestic Chinese results show images of Uyghur people singing and dancing.
Louisa Coan Greve, Director of Global Advocacy at Uyghur Human Rights Project told The Post that portraying Uyghur life as joyful and ignoring protests and evidence of human rights abuses was part of a systemic campaign by Beijing.
“Uyghur culture is being commodified as their poets and musicians are serving 10 or 20 years in concentration camps,” Greve said.
“The CCP playbook to get away with atrocities was first to hide, and then deny, and then justify the brutality as ‘re-education.’ Now Microsoft is helping with the next step.”
A Microsoft spokesperson said: “Search results may vary due to a variety of factors including the language used. When generating search results, we return content within the original language used in the search query.
“If the same search is performed in a different language, different results may occur.”
Microsoft has faced some backlash for its involvement with China. The company came under fire when reports surfaced in 2021 it failed to display images of Tiananmen Square and didn’t auto-populate search results of individuals the CCP dislikes on its Bing search engine.
