YOUTUBE TAKES DOWN XINJIANG VIDEOS UNDER CHINESE PRESSURE

A human rights group that attracted millions of views on YouTube to testimonies from people who say their families have disappeared in China's Xinjiang region is moving its videos to little-known service Odysee after some were taken down by the Google-owned streaming giant, two sources told Reuters.

The group, credited by international organizations like Human Rights Watch for drawing attention to human rights violations in Xinjiang, has come under fire from Kazakh authorities since its founding in 2017, Victoria Waldersee and Paresh Dave reported.

Serikzhan Bilash, a Xinjiang-born Kazakh activist who co-founded the channel and has been arrested multiple times for his activism, said government advisors told him five years ago to stop using the word "genocide" to describe the situation in Xinjiang - an order he assumed came from pressure from China's government on Kazakhstan.

"They're just facts," Bilash told Reuters in a phone interview, referring to the content of Atajurt's videos.

"The people giving the testimonies are talking about their loved ones."

Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights' channel has published nearly 11,000 videos on YouTube totaling over 120 million views since 2017, thousands of which feature people speaking to camera about relatives they say have disappeared without a trace in China's Xinjiang region, where UN experts and rights groups estimate over a million people have been detained in recent years.

On June 15, the channel was blocked for violating YouTube's guidelines, according to a screenshot seen by Reuters, after 12 of its videos had been reported for breaching its 'cyberbullying and harassment' policy.

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