Adrian Zenz
 Adrian Zenz    (politician) | |
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| Born | 29 September 1943 |
| Nationality | USA |
| Member of | Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation |
Adrian Zenz is a theologist and self-declared China expert (with an online doctoral degree) who is frequently used by mainstream media as an original source for the claim that 1 million Uighurs are imprisoned in internment camps in the Chinese Xinjiang province. When MSM repeats and thereby reinforces his claims, they are using a classic propaganda technique for making dubious claims stick in public opinion.
Career
From 2014 until present (2019), he is working at European School of Culture and Theology, a missionary school in Korntal, Germany, as a Researcher and PhD supervisor. This school is connected to Columbia International University, an evangelical Christian university in South Carolina (US. [1]; the doctorate degrees from CIU can be acquired online.[2] In MSM, this school is (deliberately or sloppily) confused with the prestigious academic institution Columbia University in New York.
Zenz is also Senior Fellow for China Studies at the think-tank Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation[3]. The Foundation has close connections both to the CIA and right wing extremist networks like the World Anti-Communist League.
Xingjiang
According to himself, Adrian Zenz has been once in the Xinjiang-province - in 2007 as a tourist. For his research backing his claim of 1 million internees, he used open source Internet resources, such as calls for tenders and job offers from the Chinese government in Xinjiang province, and then making estimates about the extent of those interned in Chinese reeducation camps. In some interviews, he himself describes these estimates as "speculative".[4], which doesn't stop the MSM from giving the readers the strong impression that this is a serious estimate.
