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Notes -
By reading only Western media, you can't. By reading all kinds of media - including, but not only, Western - you can make some progress towards it.
If they are in China at the moment, or their relatives or family are - no, they are probably just afraid. Justifiably, I may notice, as we have examples of people persecuted for saying things the regime does not like. I wouldn't call a dirty liar a person that says something he knows to be not true, but also knows if he says the truth he'd risk his life and maybe the lives of others. I'll rather call him a victim. If they are outside China's control - I'd have to look into them further to determine whether or not they are liars, so it'd go on case by case basis. If they say there are no human rights violations in China - they are liars for sure, as there are documented examples of them. If they say the specific violation did not happen - it may be true, or they may be mistaken, or they may be lying, again - case by case.
Answer definitely? No. Get to a high degree of certainty? Yes. Just as it is done with all other things we can not observe or perceive directly - by carefully collecting, evaluating and filtering available pieces of circumstantial evidence, until a general picture starts to become clear. And then updating this picture once new pieces of evidence come in. Current picture suggests China is under a totalitarian fascist regime which has a complete disdain for anything called "human rights" in the West (I'm not sure there's such concept in China at all?), routinely prosecutes dissidents and anybody who dares to contradict the party line, operates concentration camps and performs multiple atrocities.
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