 Wel, dyma'r gyfrindwyd. Rwy'n rhaid i'w gael o'r eich cyfnod wedi'i gweithio'r mhwyaf y pethau'u. Mae'n hoffi'n hwn yn ei wneud yn ymddangos i'w gweithio'r ffordd o'r hyn o'r ffordd yma. Rwy'n gweithio'n gwneud ydych chi'n ffordd o'r ei wneud, ac mae'n cyfnod o'r hyn o'r eu gweithio'r ystyried. Roeddwn i chi'n gweld ymynedig i'r ddysgu o eu hyfforddiad hyn ymweld Caerhaelmarat o hwn i chi i gweithio ymweld hwn yn casoudiaeth. Rwy'n gweld i chi hyn sydd wedi'u cael eu hwn yn hyfforddiad, ein hwn sy'n cymdeithas ymwygoedd hwn, daeth Fanlannu, a sy'n ymweld yw ei bod yn ei advise i'r tyfnodol i'w taelig i gynnwys ymweld o gofyn i'r oedd hwn yn wneud o bethau o bwyd. subscribe to toe. That experience really spurred him to enter this world of activism. I got to know how he worked really through his very successful MeTooOUGH campaign, which was rolled out, especially across social media. I think it really made a big difference to mobilising the OEGO community across borders. Thank you so much for coming today. Thank you. Thank you. Can you hear? Thank you for organising the Sevent and I'm really privileged and honoured to be part of it and thank you for the audience for coming here. My name is Hallomorat. I am actually born in a quite secular family. I never witnessed my parents actually practising religion so it's a little bit controversial like what other panellists try to highlight that it's more or less Islamophobic and it's main, how to say, well it's not the main reason why we are being targeted. I mean like before, how to say, I'm kind of from the privileged families that we never been targeted by the Chinese Communist Party because the Chinese Communist Party actually selectively targeted some group of Uighurs until 2017. So I wasn't an activist until 2017 first my mother detained in a concentration camp. So in the beginning I really don't know what it is. It was my birthday at the beginning of April and I tried to contact my mom because we have family tradition that every year when it's my birthday I call my mother and ask her bless me and she blessed me and I give thanks to her to bring me to this world. I don't know this world is such an awful place. But anyway, so 2017 at the April when I tried to reach my mom nobody answered the call then I called my father then I learned that my mom was sent to somewhere like a study facility that's what my father told me and it was like my mom is retired civil servant like used to work for Tropandale newspaper. Ironically it is Chinese Communist Party owned propaganda machine so my mom worked for the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda machine entire her life. Then at the end ended up in a concentration camp. So why we I mean like the in general overall why Uighurs so slow to act why nobody stand up at 2017 because we didn't really know what is really going on because there are you know the lack of informations because we cannot reach out to our homeland to ask people for help. People people all of a sudden blocked me from their we chats and when I tried to call my friends after you know did they hear my voice results saying goodbye did just hang out and I somehow I find a way to know and it confirms that my mom was really sent to one of this study facility so called. Then I I tried to find more informations to understand what it is that I ask other Uighurs who live at Dysborough abroad and many of Uighurs from the Dysborough they have at least one or more relatives are actually being sent to those facilities. Then I went to talk to you know some human rights organizations and some politicians. One thing in the beginning really offended me because when I trying to tell them that there are this kind of mass detention happened and thousands of people possibly even more are being sent to somewhere called. Relocation camp or study facilities and they say oh we don't know because no no one else actually came to us and no one else no one else from the community talking about this and they haven't asked me about is your parents so religious is your parents are you know how political ambitions. No you are not you were enjoying their retirement. Then I feel so offended and I start to have a question why my fellow Uighurs do not stand up and I start to make a videos uploaded to social media. A visit a couple of months I guess over 100 videos I recorded and uploaded social media tried to encourage my fellow Uighurs to start to speak up. I started to talk about this openly beginning of 2018 after my father to detain in concentration camp and right after my father detain it in one of this concentration camp I guess it's about two weeks later. My grandma passed away and I don't have anything to worry about and my mom sorry somebody tried to call me. Sorry maybe very important call I will answer later. Then so I people start to give testimonies and then the showing John start to post this pictures of the satellite images and the words start to know about this what is happening. Then I started this campaign called Freedom Tour which started from Helsinki. It is actually a serial demonstration. I went to almost all major Western European countries major capitals except England English Channel. I once again successfully stop at me like throughout history stop at other Europeans tried to come to England so I wasn't able to go through and then wherever I visit I talk to local Uighurs community and hear so many sad stories and encourage them to stand up and speak up against what is happening to their relatives and it's not a crime. Then according to Chinese law you can you know the in search of your relatives who are disappeared. So then the media start to get attention and I don't know how many journalists interviewed me after I start to become an activist. Then 24 December 2018 my both my parents have been released in the same day and after that I start to have this big dilemma whether should I continue my activism or should I just stop and disappear. But before you know the until this point I went to different countries I met with so many Uighurs I heard so many tragic stories their families stories and some of them actually themselves experienced unbelievable things. Then I start to have this responsibility I start to change and I start to want to take more risk to try to contribute my community. I was enjoying my life without you know how any ambition to get involved with human rights activities before like until 2017. I wasn't part of any organization until now I'm not part of any Uighur political organizations. I never involved with the Uighur political movement not like the other Uighur activists have been contributing for the Uighur cause you know how many years like 10 years 10 years. I started only 2017. Then okay then I continued then the then this chance appeared in February. I started. I launched the meet to Uighur campaign and all of a sudden it was in 24 hours hundreds of over a thousand with a few thousand Uighurs start to post about their relatives who've been missing who've been possibly sent to concentration camp or who've been detained in the post. Prisons or the sentence to the prisons then the other day the media's big media start to call me like New York Times saying then come on what's happened then all of a sudden this become one of the shifting point that Uighur cause or the Uighur plies that we are facing now the Uighur problem become one of the folks on the media. So I guess I should stop here right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. Okay. So I'm I'd like to just spend a couple of minutes to stimulate your thinking to reflect very briefly on some of the suggestions, the ideas, the themes that have come up at least for me during today. So I think one thing that really struck me in our conversations was this debate about ways of thinking about things ways of naming things. I think that's extremely important. We had a suggestion of how people adapt to living in a post truth world. So these very stark contrasts between ways of naming schools or concentration camps or genocide as opposed to a very successful anti extremism policy. You know you see these Chinese tech firms framing their work as leading the world in counterterrorism. So I mean it's just remarkable to to reflect on these very kind of divergent and parallel conversations that are going on. Is there any possibility of making these divergent naming practices meet of having a dialogue across these these different practices. So in in the same vein, I thought there was a very interesting caution from one of our speakers tomorrow. Sorry this morning. It's been a long day. This morning not so long ago. Talking of the problem of how human rights in China gets invoked in the West and really how we should be thinking instead about some how questions of human rights and how they discussed how these relate to market access questions and questions of power politics. So I think that's very important. I thought this afternoon's panel, you know, there was a there was a little sense of, you know, a lack of empowerment somehow a sense of, you know, so many things that will not work for us so perhaps we can start from there. Please don't rely on the law, I heard someone say. It'll take years to get anything done and the damage is done long ago. So that is salutary. Academic arguments is will not get things done. I heard that from the audience. Also a useful reminder. But in in response to that, perhaps this sense that civil society is our best way forward. Can we unify these struggles? We've heard the difficulties, of course, of taking this forward within China itself. But of course, we are all part of these transnational communities now. And perhaps there is where our effective models lie. So the campaign, the BDS campaign against Israel was very interesting example. The suggestion of following the money, of course, was very interesting. So just to heart back to this question of naming. I think the idea of a wiggle activist, you know, is a rather new name in my experience, which has come up in the last few years. You know, Hamarat and many within our own community here in the UK. And you know, I think that idea of wiggle activism is very powerful and is making a lot of difference. So really I think it was in the second panel this morning that for me had, you know, the greatest energy in the greatest sense that there was a possibility for change. Perhaps it is because these problems of technology, these are quite new problems. And so there is still a sense that, you know, there is a possibility to really do something about these issues that are coming up. So there were some very specific things raised here. Is the problem about the technologies themselves or is it just about who uses them? I think that is an important one to reflect on. And we should indeed, as some people suggested, be having conversations within universities about this as well as, of course, pursuing these companies in all sorts of ways. So again, in terms of these parallel conversations, you know, we have these regional conferences. We have conferences with a human rights focus. But of course it is the colleagues working in STEM subjects, as has already been mentioned, who are really the ones who should be really made to be more aware of these issues. So that is the sum of my thoughts so far. I think we haven't spoken enough about forced labour today. I think this is really the big and very fast developing issue. And I hope perhaps that we can spend some of the time, the next 40 minutes or so, just to include that in our discussions. So can I please ask for our students with their roving mics to return where they so far that is great. So can I ask then for any thoughts and suggestions from the floor? We'll take again two or three. No, in fact, this is an open conversation. There is no response from the floor. So we'll just start over there. Shall we behind you, Sophia, and then move this direction? Hello. Sorry, it's a question for Halmarat himself. You mentioned that you're not from a religious background. In fact, it's a secular background. And yet when we looked at the conditions that were being placed as to who is the suspect, et cetera, they seem to be very much religious based. Is there any indication as to what was the reason perhaps that your parents were in fact put into this position? Recently, the New York Times released these cartgillic documents. According to these documents, if someone had four children or someone possessed, for example, a passport to Chinese passport, which is legal in China and all over the world, I think, then if someone who received calls from abroad or tried to reach someone who lives abroad, they also sent to the concentration camps. And China uses scoring while distalking people and how the system of scoring people, if someone who's in their circle is marked as rat or dangerous, then the one who may be lost their points. And the Chinese officials distalking people and the guill points to people and their comments on people that could be resulting at the end that the person could be sent to one of this concentration camp or not. In my parents' case, I live in abroad, I'm foreign national, and they are well educated, then they went abroad several times. Those two points could lost a lot of points. So they accumulate all these minor crimes and they can classify someone who is dangerous or not. Thank you. I think that takes us straight back to the question of surveillance, of course, and technologies and the way that these algorithms have such a powerful control over people's lives. So thank you. There was a question there. A quick point. The chair has just mentioned the expression of transnational communities. Doesn't the kind of trope encounter a deep problem, namely that right now one of the features of cultural fights and the international struggle is the resurgence of identitarian notions. We have identitarianism rampant worldwide. I mean, even in this country, like an immensely tolerant, at least on the face of the country, we have Brexit has put back the notion of identity, English-British identity. So how do we, does it not come down at the end of the day to who wins? How are we going to fight out this identitarian plague worse than coronavirus in a way, I say, in which ways are we going to fight this battle? That's great. Thank you. There's another question down there. The other gentleman down here, I think. Oh, there's a lady there. Go on then. No, no, no. In front of you, sorry. The gentleman had his hand up. No? Have you taken that away? Okay. The lady who, sorry. The lady you were first speaking with then. Sorry. Hello. First, I would just like to say thank you for having this question of what the future holds. And I was wondering for you, Helmratt, what you saw the impact of the Me Too Weaker movement was. And if you feel like social media is a way in which we can move forward. And I know that we talked a little bit about how the state uses technology to surveil. And I was wondering if social media or what kinds of technologies can be used to surveil the state and to hold the state accountable and if technology has a role. Okay, great. Thank you. Perhaps we can go to Aziz now. Sorry about that. Thank you. Yeah. I have no questions. I have my point. Yes, we covered many topics about your crisis. But I would like to say one even more urging which everyone is concerned here about coronavirus. As we know, only we know about 80,000 young, mostly girls and some of them are boys from Hota region sent to work in the Chinese factory for labor. But there is an estimated at least NGO organizations report is 1.8 million innocent Uyghur citizens are inside Chinese concentration camps. And we also estimated at this more than 3 million Uyghur people are in the camps. Now in Georgia, in the North, in Karamai, Urimchi, Kashkawiw, hearing now camps have lots of video clips now. People are starving. People are not allowed to go to the street and some people are even dying. And now we are hearing as well the coronavirus is hitting the concentration camps now that people could not imagine what consequences it will be. So can we talk about this? This is a matter of life and death for the innocent people overcrowded, overcrowded, overcrowded. Over a few years they are inside the camp. It already is a very poor condition, not any kind of where they are very easily catch the virus. That's also my most concern today. I would be appreciate if you can talk about this, what can we do about this, raise awareness and they will come up today. Thank you. Great. Thank you. I think it is very important to raise awareness of that. Since we are meant to be focusing in this session on actual mechanisms of strategies moving forward, I wonder if I could now invite Nicola McBean to have a chat because I know that she's been engaged in some activities. Thank you very much Rachel and first of all thank you very much to everyone for today's meeting which has certainly given us an awful lot to think about. I should just briefly say I'm Nicola around the rights practice and we're an NGO in the UK. We support human rights in China. We're not primarily an advocacy NGO and I think that's been kind of one of the challenges for us as a sort of civil society organisation to find ways to respond because we don't have huge amount of expertise in how to kind of undertake the kind of advocacy which I think is needed. Because as Ava said earlier, it's so difficult for a whole host of reasons about the kind of country China is for the kind of activism within China to put some pressure on the government. So that strategy and that's an area where we've been as an organisation more active in supporting human rights lawyers and civil society groups in China. So I think for a lot of us it's kind of been a challenge. Perhaps just reflect briefly on a couple of the things that we've been trying to do. I think raising awareness has been a central concern and certainly Rachel was one of the participants in the panel we did back in 2018 I think when we started engaging with the British Parliament and trying to get parliamentarians to sort of be more aware of the issues. I think I was struck by Penny's comment earlier about the genocide being a process like I think our response also from civil society is also very much a process and particularly when, you know, I suspect all of us, you know, we were working on China, we hadn't sort of engaged on this issues or thought about strategy and response and so we've all been trying to learn. I would like to sort of reassure people that there is quite a lot of concern going on at the moment and I think it's moved on now from initially the sort of civil society concern being focused on what, you know, amongst the sort of more China focused groups and there aren't that many of us and also with restructuring so amnesty doesn't have very much presence here in that respect so it's a small group who've been engaged but that is broadening now and specifically in response to the information about forced labour that has now mobilised a lot of the groups who are concerned with modern slavery, forced labour in this country and that's also part of a kind of transnational so I can't go into the details but I think you'll see shortly I think some evidence of people coming together pushing brands to take a stand and so a lot of the background work is going on at the moment in trying to sort of put that together. So that's very much that engagement around sort of trying to get brands to that are engaging but that's on the probably more on the textile side, I think there's another piece of work that people are now thinking about, I know some of them in the states are looking at this around the digital tech industry to, but part of it's getting all the data. So there's quite a lot of collaboration going on, there are lawyers also involved in this, I think again looking at pursuing legal strategies that look at complicity of companies but all of this takes a lot of time and resources for people to sort of look into it. But just to sort of say it's out there, if people have particular issues, I mean I think it's really important to keep MPs informed. There is quite a sense of concern, cross party concern in parliament, both in Commons and the Lords on it. It's not huge but there are MPs who are really concerned but they're not very well informed about details. So really if you've got a way of communicating and come to me afterwards we can put you in touch with people, do keep them informed if you've got specific knowledge or suggestions of strategies they could sort of follow. There is a group, there's an all party parliamentary group looking at Xinjiang in particular, so they are trying to develop their strategy at the moment. Thank you. Great, thank you very much. Any more comments? I can see a couple, oh right lots, okay. There's two bearded gentlemen there, should we give them both very illegal beards? Two Davids as well. Thank you. My question's for Halmarat, thank you very much for your presentation and you know I really admire your work. I think it's an amazing attempt to hashtag to reach a broader audience and you mentioned a little bit about how much attention it got amongst the weaker community but I wonder how you feel it was received beyond that because it seems to me that is one of the primary issues now how to reach an audience that is not as informed as ourselves. Great, actually Halmarat has had two questions and I didn't give him a chance to respond to the first so perhaps you could take both of those together. We took the social media for all advantage because first everybody on social media, second it's free, third you know you can hide behind fake profile so you can do different kind of activism. This is one thing we girls are most comfortable of because once there is oppression and if someone come up with resistance then which follows by the retaliation not necessarily it comes to the person who live abroad but to their relatives back in our homeland. Social media campaigns to help us rise awareness and media reports, media outlets, the documentaries, it help us to rise awareness but orientation is not just to let people feel bad. We really want people could involve it with what we are dealing with now because I don't want demonized our enemy but Chinese long arms already reached out to many other countries. First for example many of our activists are being threatened or intimidated by the Chinese government so many are actually under threat and some actually choose to stop their activism. So we really need the people or the organizations or even countries could help us empower us or at least facilitate us with educating us. For example like the how to do advocacy to the different politicians or the different civil groups, how can we work together and like this from this Kashmiri that Mr he asked that he was really dedicated to rise his own case. So we hope others who oppresed by the other authoritarian or the other regimes could sympathize each other, could understand each other so we could do something together because it is something maybe global like economically like what Mr Darren studied. Uygrws are marginalized and they become a subject of the how to say the economic exploitation so I don't know like it's not only our problem at the same time China try to legitimize what they're doing to Uygrws by selling out a narrative that it is better way to counter terrorism. So I think this is the beginning of exporting their own identity to the other countries like what India do to Kashmir is now it could be the first very first example and I'm afraid it would be in the future adapted by many other countries. We see only 22 countries signed the letter of rebooking China but over 30 countries most of them are Muslim countries are sign it to sympathize and stand solidarity with China. I don't know what's behind that could be the there how to say the economic interest or diplomatic interest or I don't know. But we really need more people will involved with that and it's big challenge for us because we live in a remote place from the Europe and most people see don't really care if something is not directly related to them. So yeah very much great great let's move some time for more questions David. Thanks yeah and in this question would I would address to anybody that's presented a homerate or anybody else. You know like like a lot of us I'm an educator and I view this as part of my responsibility to teach about this to inform students inform people who might not know. And sometimes it feels like you know you're just giving a litany of terrible facts about what's going on and it feels very depressing. But I've always been encouraged that my students whether here in the UK or previously in the States frequently come up to me after the lecture on class day on this and say what we didn't know is this bad what can we do. And you know you give them the same boilerplate response about you know make make sure that you write your MP or you call your representative in Congress or whatever. But I often wonder are there things that we can do with our wallets or our daily habits like concrete specific things that you know somebody asks us whether it's a student or a family member or somebody who wants to do something. What can we tell them is a step that we can take besides just the same usual things that we ask about. Thank you I think that's very helpful. Who's our question down here. Hi I'm Jonathan Liebner from London School of Economics. I'd just like to reflect a bit on the discussion about technologies surveillance technologies and other kinds of technologies. And point out that it would be completely wrong to think that the oppression of people would use anything other than the most modern technologies. The fact that the Chinese have access to this technology is representation of the state of their technologies. Of course technologies are interesting because of the way in which they scale the extent to which they can be thorough in certain kinds of analysis. But it's not really that different from the oppression of other people in previous times using what was then the latest technologies technologies of the media. The Jews of Berlin were rounded up because there was a post there was a book of addresses which the community uses to keep in touch. It was a phenomenon of the postal system in the telegraph system. There are a few telephone numbers there too and we should not I think focus on what's special about the technologies. What we should focus on is the way in which resources of any kind are being used in order to mobilize a policy and focusing then on the policies and the politics of it. I think that the effort to promote activism through the relatively soft underbelly of the companies and the economic interests that are presented is perhaps a good tactic. But it doesn't address the larger profound strategic concerns that we ought to have. Thank you very much for that. Again, it's that sense of follow the money. Thank you. This is regarding your wider question around solidarity, way forward and everything. I was thinking of my initial work was on Tibet, not Uighurs. We can see commonalities and differences. One aspect of Tibetan struggle is that internationally it has got much higher profile compared to population. You'd see that there's a lot of support here in general. So that support comes in its own problems in terms of disciplining them and sidelining them and controlling them, but it's very much there. So I do think that one in which some of us are already working on Rachel, you're there and Joe and some of us have been doing that is around focusing not only on Uighurs or Tibetans or Hong Kong separately, but focusing on the let's see the victims of Chinese empire in general. So that's something we should do academically. We should do it together through workshops through events like this. We should also do it through protests, exploring that option. So activism, academia divide. So challenge that part. Look at that. But something else which I think I will refer back to, let's say earlier Natasha's presentation or pennies one later on Rohingyas. So not only look at let's say China and victims of Chinese empire, but maybe look at victims of state crimes in China, Myanmar, India together. So again, in terms of the kind of work people do on Kashmir or Assam or on Myanmar. So that might connect, right? So broadly speaking, one is around China. Second is around generally problems with Asia. But that's something we can do and I'll just invite you though I'm not a Tibetan person. 10th of March is Tibetan Uprising Day. There's March from Downing Street to the Chinese Embassy and Rahima is one of the speakers with Rahima. She's there, yes. And I'm also one of the speakers in solidarity. But please join us if you can or that's on 10th of March. And you may find, and I'm giving example, in Strasbourg recently there was a workshop organised by European Youth Association of Tibetans. World Weaker Congress, Hong Kong protesters, Tibetan activists and I was also one of the people there. And the discussion there was so good. You could also see the commonalities part. I just was wishing we wish we had that in the UK. Actually we have more opportunity in the UK than in Europe, but we have to take that opportunity up. So I think thank you very much for organising this conference because it allows us to build those connections. Thank you Divyaesh, that's great. Anyone else has any events to advertise while we're here? We're very happy to hear. Ava. Thank you so much. I wanted to come back to the point that Nicola made earlier about exposing complicity and perhaps pursuing legal liability of complicit actors like corporate actors who use forced labour indirectly that comes from Xinjiang. I think that there are more ways of thinking about this and I think exposing sort of using the complicity point really relies on the idea that we can get at actors who really can be compelled to follow the law. And I think that for instance we could think of government authorities, like for example there was the great example of Com, the media regulator, essentially being made the subject of a legal complaint by Peter Humphrey who had been coerced into a televised confession with collusion from China Global Television. This morning we heard from Aziz this really heartbreaking story about his mother being coerced to do the same thing. We can get creative about then going after the UK government authority that is responsible for giving a licence to China Global Television, opening up European headquarters in Chiswick as I recall. That sort of thing. I also think that taking that point closer to home we must think about the various ways in which universities have become complicit in for instance the context of research on surveillance technology and we have to think about political or legal ways of exposing that potential complicity and of course that requires a lot of work not least in terms of gathering the evidence etc etc but those I think are very specific and concrete strategies that could be pursued and just to mention one more point not about complicity but another potential strategy that I'm aware of that I understand has been discussed of course and indeed to some extent been used. There's this question that human rights advocates ask themselves if facing these hugely powerful actors like the Chinese party state there might be some advantage in trying to go after individual perpetrators so that would be for example officials within the Chinese party state who let's say want to travel here or open up bank accounts etc etc and in that context one approach that has been used has been the so-called Magnitsky legislation so basically legislation that empowers other governments the US government for example to then impose travel bans or asset freezers now I would say that I mean I wanted to mention this as a mechanism that is potentially available but I would also like to say that I think it is a potentially highly problematic mechanism because of course it can be used for a particular political agenda and it raises its own human rights issues about how to identify perpetrators and then also why and how to hold perpetrators responsible who are actors within a system that is itself highly repressive but nevertheless I think it is something that ought to be considered. Thank you, Eva. I mean as far as I understand this has been you know this is part of the the Wiggle Human Rights Bill which is making its way through Congress rather slowly but the EU is also introducing this kind of legislation so it's good that these moves are afoot I don't know whether the UK stands in that now of course but you know, Rocky Mayor, there we go. I just would like to make some comments about looking to the future of the response to the crisis and I believe we need to be brave and loud. I think that's very important and for example I know it's very difficult to achieve something from the Chinese government of course what we can do in this country and to change the mindset or decisions. For example just share my experience when Boris Johnson announced Huawei 5G Network Limited Access I wrote immediately after I heard that announcement I wrote to all the media who interviewed me in the past and then straight away I got an email back from Radio 4 so the next day I spoke and I said that the human rights issue has not mentioned it only talked about the security concern and then someone, I'm not going to name a quite well-known journalist emailed me saying that can we meet and then he put me in touch with many important MPs so I have been meeting them and I think this is quite important and it gives me kind of hope and it's also a feeling of some kind of achievement that gives you sort of satisfaction so I think people should just take action when you are also, for example, on the 26th of March in LSE someone is giving a lecture, pro Huawei lecture so now we mobilized one world movement and other experts trying to also put I've been contacting people who are writing articles about Huawei and to get them there and then we asked tough questions maybe have some protest outside so there are a lot of things that we can do we just need to be active for example on the 5th of February no, on the 5th of March, two days ago we held a demonstration outside the Chinese embassy led by the Labour movement and after the report about the modern the Labour Workers Union now they are trying to mobilize the whole union members to take action we walked March to Oxford Street handing leaflets and trying to tell people to educate people that there are this forced labour is going on and maybe the items you are buying is from forced labour so there are hell a lot of things that people can do but we need a lot more people engage and to do something thank you thank you very much I'd like now please to invite Darren Byler if I might to just give us some sense of the kind of activities he's been observing or engaged with in the US because I know a lot of work has been going on around surveillance and forced labour so if you have a couple of comments, that would be great a few stories to tell a week or two ago I was on the east coast in a major city at a major institution talking to someone who is one of the leading researchers around computer vision machine learning those sorts of technologies she works on really basic technologies and she wanted to know what she should do because reading about what's happening to the Uighurs really made her feel horrible and she could see that the sort of thing she was working on was being used in these ways and she was wondering if she should just leave her job and go live on a farm and not work at all on technology anymore because of the effects of it and I was telling her, no don't do that you are in a position of authority to speak to these issues that very few people are able to do because of her institutional standing and that is something that she should leverage that she could begin to build a movement but it's also illustrative of the kind of position that people of conscience are in in technology industry in machine learning all of those spaces that they are feeling quite embattled as well because they have to push back against these forces that are much larger than them so I think what we need is probably not like a sort of consumerist or individual approach to pushing back against this we need to organize at a larger scale and have collective actions and one of the things that is coming out of the college campuses in the US is in April we are going to have a which I guess is at the same time a spring break here we are going to have a so it's not good internationally and we are going to have a collective action that will have a week of teachings on the legal issue across college campuses all across the US and in Canada and hopefully that will really take this to another level in terms of awareness on campuses and will bring awareness to this issue that maybe wasn't there before and I think that's the type of actions that we need to really kind of move the needle on this because really if we don't have sustained action if we don't make the cost of doing nothing too high we won't have responses at the same time there's still so many it never feels like it's enough so that's why we need to use all approaches and so it's exciting to hear that the brands are being held to account or will be at some point and that there's movements in government as well so that's kind of the state of things that's great Darren thank you it's a shame we didn't manage to align with the US teachings there we could do a pan-European teaching couldn't we that would be nice we have time for a few more comments I think before we wrap up oh yes sorry you're sitting so far back I can hardly see you okay thank you all that sounds really interesting so pardon me in advance for perhaps sounding a note that's a little cynical if not pessimist worried about the fact that we are in this post Brexit policy landscape trade landscape where challenging these things without we are of course in a sense craving for the you know the liberal hypocrisies even with all their selectiveness and hollowness but at the same time when you look at how things have been recently is it realistic to just expect that sort of change to come from powers up when you think of India think of China think of these various countries doing these things combined with the fact that there are these very good global alliances between these leaders so partly I'm just a bit worried that we are I want to be optimistic but I'm just thinking about the actual so in that sense the person who spoke earlier before the British as well but Jonathan the thing is not just so much only technology so technology is part of that story but what the chief minister of the most popular state in India today did is that his he approved it for his followers to just go and paste large hoardings of protesters with their names addresses and pictures so technology is part of how these oppressions are happening but low-tech oppressions are also equally you know kind of really violent and happening so there's this I'm just I guess partly I'm just saying that the technology and the state level things have to happen but they're not all of that story for me so I would say that given that even in a democracy can you really elect a government that will make markets fail do you do you do we really expect that weapons sales will not shoot up every time these sorts of things happen sorry I'm not I'm not like trying to rain on everyone's you know optimism but I do want to say that this is real now having said that having sounded that note I do want to think of what can we do in sort of disruptive ways that actually does make this matter and I think one of the ways in on the campus situations since you know being being an academic myself I feel like why don't we have this sort of thing matter for the curricula why don't we have a concerted demand across universities from students or others to actually say please teach us about Xinjiang please teach us about Kashmiris teach us about Hong Kong like make it matter make it somehow require for people to actually find this out at a very kind of even basic undergrad level so that you don't just have five you know PhDs and postdocs who know about it and a group of people who gather in a room but these things have to like be somehow mandatory part of how everyone is learning about what's going on in the world so I would say at the level of ideas doing something like that for me is building out towards making things change otherwise I don't really want to just be naive and think that this will change so that's so I would want something like that to happen like curricular level changes education level changes and also kind of more things around Chinese again this is you know Xinjiang is your maybe I wanted to actually ask this of the second panel so you know how do people in China how is it isn't it possible at all to look at the ways in which consent apart from intimidation consent is created around this like are there ways of non coercive consent which is kind of ideological consent can that be somehow seen against the grain in these countries India, China, wherever this is happening I know with Trump and all of these people it's just really hard but I just feel that that is something that ought to also be on the story because you know a lot of the thing the consent, the conditioning and the consensus part of that story is as important although not either or as the material and the other factors so thanks Thanks, great, that's very I think we should give a few moments of voice to the remotes or is it Sophia herself also allowed so the remotes gave up to us they were still watching but there were no comments no I've just wanted to say something very quick I really agree with Natasha's points I think these things need to be and other issues in the world need to be brought into the curriculum in different ways but one very specific, I had one very specific suggestion that could we make a pledge that people in different universities could sign to say any conference that mentions the Belt and Road has to invite somebody to talk about the Wiga issue and that we will not tolerate a conference that is so intimately related to this repression that does not invite somebody who's going to talk about the repression forced labour etc and that would be quite a simple thing to do to create a pledge and try to get people in different universities to sign up to it Yes, I support that Well, I can see a few more hands up but I think probably I should take chairs prerogative now and start drawing us to a close, yeah So, thank you all very much this has been a really great crowd the numbers that we were expecting from the registrations which is something interesting that we will explore there's usually a bit of drop out but we were expecting a much more crowded room than this but the people who have been in the room have been fantastic and I think most of you have been with us all the way through this day so thank you, the audience thank you to our heroic technicians you're still there we really appreciate your work guys, thank you and thank you to the South China Institute we've said this already, yes, we really appreciate the support especially from our wonderful organisers within the South China Institute and the CASH thank you so much for our speakers it has been really very interesting and quite wonderful to get these conversations going across different regions and different approaches and I really hope we can do more of this so thank you thank you to the Organising Committee let me name you all Ava Pilfs from Kings College London Jude Howell from the London School of Economics Sophia Woodman from Edinburgh Matthew Burney from Queen Mary's Tim Pringle from SOAS thank you so I think our emails are available online if you have any further suggestions or ideas or reflections on this conference please do get in touch and thank you again