Aydidar Kahar tucks her long hair behind her ear and smiles at the camera.

Key points: Uyghurs are using #StillNoInfo to demand news about their missing loved ones

Uyghurs are using #StillNoInfo to demand news about their missing loved ones Chinese state media releases a slew of testimonies from relatives to say they're "safe and sound"

Chinese state media releases a slew of testimonies from relatives to say they're "safe and sound" Experts say the family members are coerced or intimidated for propaganda purposes

She takes the viewer on a tour of a mall in Xinjiang — decked out with luxury brands like Versace, Gucci and Dior — before the video abruptly cuts to her sitting at a desk, staring straight into the camera lens.

"Isn't the department store and the subway you just saw an epitome of the dramatic changes in Xinjiang?" she said, in a video broadcast by Chinese state-owned Global Times.

"Grandma, you have been defaming Xinjiang … people in Xinjiang are living a decent life."

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Her sister Kedirya Keyser chimes in with a monologue of her own:

"I learned about your misdeeds. You constantly accuse the Chinese Government of engaging in Uyghur cultural genocide. It's totally untrue."

The young women are the granddaughters of Rebiya Kadeer, an exiled Uyghur political activist based in the United States.

Ms Kadeer, who was arrested in China in 1999 and later fled to the US, has highlighted the plight of the Uyghur people in China's far-north-western autonomous region of Xinjiang.

More than 1 million people from the ethnic Muslim Turkic-speaking group have been rounded up in internment camps, the UN found, prompting allegations that China is committing "cultural genocide".

In December, Xinjiang Governor Shohrat Zakir told reporters that people held in detention camps have "graduated" and are now free "to come and go", but he did not provide evidence.

That announcement sparked the hashtag #StillNoInfo, with Uyghurs the world over demanding news about their missing relatives.

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The testimony from Ms Kadeer's granddaughters is the latest instalment of what Uyghur activists have called a "propaganda blitz" launched by China's state media.

Global Times and CGTN, the international arm of China Central Television (CCTV) news, have broadcast a slew of videos purporting to show the family members of Uyghurs abroad are safe and sound.

The ramped-up coverage of Xinjiang is an overt attempt to counter narratives of widespread Uyghur oppression aired by Western media outlets like the New York Times, BBC and CNN.

Paired with the testimonials, in the past month CGTN has also aired "documentaries" about fighting terrorism in Xinjiang — which has long been China's justification for what it calls "vocational centres" and "boarding schools", not "camps".

But some observers say the propaganda is backfiring and it reveals just how concerned the Chinese Communist Party is about international condemnation of Xinjiang.

With Chinese media so closely entwined with the state — it is often seen as the "throat and tongue" of the Party — academics said their reports lack credibility.

'They are hostages'

The Uyghur Human Rights Project executive director Omer Kanat slammed "China's propaganda videos" as "ineffective".

"No objective observer can believe that Ms Kadeer's relatives are speaking freely," he said.

"They are hostages, in effect, and the video is yet another source of emotional pain for their family members abroad."

Ms Kadeer is not alone — in recent months relatives of Uyghurs including Ferkat Jawdat, Arfat Erkin and World Uyghur Congress President Dolkun Isa, and more recently Aziz Isa Elkun, have appeared in videos circulated by state media.

Journalist and academic Louisa Lim pointed out family members of outspoken Uyghurs are often used as "bargaining chips".

"This type of coverage undoubtedly depends on coercion, or intimidation, of family members in Xinjiang," she told the ABC.

"There have recently been a lot of reports, for example by the New York Times and others, about how people are selectively and temporarily released from camps in order to say they are safe and sound."

Magnus Fiskesjo, associate professor of anthropology at Cornell University, described the recent videos as "a sign of desperation", especially after damning leaks revealed the scale of China's crackdown on the Muslim minority.

"The regime is noticing that people hear about the abuses in Xinjiang and it is having an effect, so they try to counter that by spreading this sort of propaganda," he said.

"There's definitely an information war that's going on — disinformation warfare attempts on the part of the Chinese Government."

Dr Fiskesjo has studied Chinese televised forced confessions and said videos of relatives discrediting their family members' accounts often took on an awkward, scripted quality.

"There's just no way that they can say no, because they know that if they did, they would personally end up in camps or in prison," he said.

Accusations of 'cherry-picking'

In the past month, CGTN has also released two slick productions, Fighting Extremism in Xinjiang and The Black Hand, which highlighted past terrorist attacks in Xinjiang.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying admonished reporters for not watching the programs last month.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying chastised reporters for not watching CGTN's series Xinjiang. ( Supplied: Chinese MOFA )

"I want to do a survey on the spot. How many of you, my foreign friends from the press, have watched these two documentaries? Please raise your hand. Anyone? No. None of you, actually. I'm disappointed," she said.

"When those ill-intentioned spread lies about Xinjiang, you flock to hear them. But when the facts and truth are readily available at hand, you sidestep it. Why is that?"

One video highlights the 2009 Urumqi riots, where nearly 200 people — most of them Han Chinese — were killed, and the 2014 stabbing rampage in Kunming, in a bid to justify "counter-terrorism" measures.

But Numuhammad Majid, president of the East Turkistan Association Australia in Adelaide, said a handful of violent incidents didn't justify the mass incarceration of more than a million people based on their ethnicity and religious beliefs.

CGTN has a vast reach, with 92 million followers on Facebook, and is beamed into more than 100 countries across the globe.

Last year, the UK broadcasting regulator launched investigations into CGTN after allegations it aired prisoners' forced confessions and breached impartiality with its coverage of Hong Kong protests.

Chinese President Xi Jinping during a media tour in 2016 urged journalists to "tell true stories of China", with the understanding that the media "must love the Party, protect the Party and closely align themselves with the Party leadership in thought, politics and action".

A leaked 2013 document repudiated "the West's idea of journalism", saying it undermines "our country's principle that the media should be infused with the spirit of the Party".

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 12 minutes 16 seconds 12 m China Watch: "Never telling the whole truth"

CGTN has also broadcast panels asking why the West "ignores the truth" about Xinjiang, and accusing the US of double standards on countering terrorism.

In one, law professor Huo Zhengxin said the documentaries provide "a lot of concrete evidence to justify the Chinese policy and the measures taken in Xinjiang", while Global Times reporter Wang Cong said that when it comes to China, Western media outlets "cherry-pick information that suits the narrative that suits them".

CGTN, The Global Times, and China's Embassy in Australia were approached for comment but did not respond by deadline.

Grave disputes

Earlier this month, CNN reported more than 100 Uyghur cemeteries have been destroyed in Xinjiang, investigating satellite imagery and building on other reports from French news agency AFP last year.

CGTN said the Uyghur gravesites were relocated, but researchers say the destruction of traditional graveyards is an affront to Uyghur culture. ( CGTN )

But this week, CGTN accused CNN of "fake news", claiming human remains and gravesites weren't destroyed, just removed to a new location.

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They tracked down Hepizem Nizamidin, the mother of London-based Uyghur poet and academic Aziz Isa Elkun, who told CNN he didn't know what had happened to his deceased father's remains and he hadn't been able to contact his mother in years.

The program criticises him for not calling his mother and shows her gesturing to a new grave where she says her husband's remains rest.

CGTN says the old gravesite was "dusty and unkempt" and susceptible to erosion, so Mr Elkun's family applied to relocate to "a standard, concrete cemetery" close by.

Mr Elkun's distrust of Chinese state media runs deep — "I don't believe what they claim," he told the ABC.

He said he had mixed feelings about seeing his 78-year-old mother on screen.

"CGTN, they forced my poor mother to give an interview … I feel very angry and sad about this reality," he said.

"I was glad to hear my mother's voice — she's alive, but she's very fragile. You can see from my mum's expression, and my sister, clearly they were forced to speak to the media."

Aziz Isa Elkun, right, pictured with his father before his death in 2017. ( Supplied: Aziz Isa Elkun )

The story, he said, also spells out a fundamental problem, in that China maintains a chokehold on information — Uyghurs overseas have been cut off from contact with their loved ones, sometimes fearing a simple phone call could land their relative in detention.

A traditional Uyghur shrine in the Sultanim cemetery in Khotan, Xinjiang, China. ( Supplied: Rian Thum )

Rian Thum, a senior research fellow at the University of Nottingham, said the CGTN story in fact showed an admission that traditional Uyghur burial sites had been demolished — even if human remains have been relocated as the report claims.

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"They actually accept that these sacred places have had been flattened," he said.

The scale and regularity "clearly demonstrates that this is an intentional and systematic program of removing traditional-style graveyards and moving the remains to new facilities that fit more of a Chinese cultural expectation of graveyards," he said.

He said the CGTN story missed the point about how the destruction of such sites, which hold historical and religious significance and included the graves of saints, was an affront to Uyghur culture.

Kernels of truth sow doubt

The Chinese Communist Party has dramatically expanded its global megaphone through propaganda and censorship, according to a report by Freedom House released this week.

Senior analyst Sarah Cook, who authored a report, told the ABC that a key tactic of the CCP was to sprinkle in elements of truth to add a hint of authenticity.

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"With this type of propaganda, it's not that it's all false — it's not that it's all completely made up," she said.

With CGTN's videos, she said there can be a mixture of real events and victims but this can then be distorted by the framing, or false points of information can be injected into the narrative.

Dr Fiskesjo pointed to the case of Uyghur poet Abdurehim Heyit, who was reported dead but then appeared on Chinese state media saying he was "in good health", as an example of how China could sow seeds of uncertainty.

"There can always be a kernel of truth in the propaganda, which is then twisted in favour of the CGTN purpose," he said.

He said the CCP has taken a leaf out of Russian President Vladimir Putin's playbook, deploying a "tactic of not necessarily denying something but spreading 20 different theories about it".

"They don't necessarily hope that each and every counter-move they make will be a fatal blow," he said.

Uyghur community leader Nurmuhammad Majid says the fate of his family members in Xinjiang is constantly on his mind. ( ABC )

"They decided to produce a lot of this stuff and then send it out again and again in different versions, and hope that this creates enough of a question mark around facts."

For Mr Majid in Adelaide, this issue is not merely an academic question but an intensely personal one.

He told the ABC he fears 10 of his immediate family members were incarcerated in re-education camps.

"Uyghurs are at risk of extinction at this stage," he said.

He added it was devastating for family members to be cut off from their loved ones for three years, only to see them paraded in front of the cameras for political purposes.

"In the morning, we wake up with a worry about our family members. At night time, before we go to bed, the worry still comes into our minds," he said.

"Miraculously, we are still living, but with a hope that the situation could change."