 for the Uyghurs here on Global Connections with Henrik Sadsuski. Did I get that right, Henrik? I've been very close. You should just be. It wasn't all that close. You know, I've had some ones that are a little way off there. OK, that's a Polish name. But actually, Henrik was educated in the UK. And he's here in Hilo at the UH, just finished his PhD. And we are happy to have him on the show to talk about his experience with and his perceptions about China and the Uyghurs, you know, and other human rights violations, I think. Henrik, welcome to the show. So nice to have you here. Jay, it's my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me on. So let's talk about you first a little bit. You've completed your PhD at UH in Hilo. What subject? What was your dissertation about? Well, so I was actually I was in Manoa, but we we have a family home on the Big Island. So, you know, Honolulu real estate prices drove me back onto the Big Island. So I completed my my PhD here. And my my work for the for UH Manoa was focused on Chinese migrants and Chinese presence in Fiji. Of course, Fiji. But what you know, what that opens up to me is that you have Chinese migrants and Chinese presence everywhere in the world. So I suggest, Henrik, that you have a lot of additional PhDs to write. Well, absolutely. And that's just even focused on the Pacific. So my my next my next idea is to expand the work out of Fiji into other other parts of Oceania. That will totally justify your PhD. And that's only chapter one. The world is your oyster proverbially. So we will talk about the Uighurs. But before we do that, I want to talk about an article that you're collaborating with involving a missing student. Can you talk about that? Yeah, so I mean, this this was published as as an op ed in the Star Advertiser in conjunction with two other UH Manoa employees and faculty. This was an individual who was his name. He graduated out of the sociology department at UH Manoa and returned to China and particularly to Xinjiang, the northwestern part of of China, where where Uighurs reside. He went with the idea of using his PhD to further, you know, though to educate the next generation of Uighurs. Anyway, in the in the most recent intensification of the repression, he's since disappeared and the last known whereabouts, you know, we're talking sort of 2017, 18 and it's it's thought that he went into one of the camps that were created at that time. The retraining camps. That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of ways that that people have called these camps. I think they're most people outside of China would call these concentration camps and in China themselves, the state and the government refer to it as vocational and training centres. They're complete with torture. Am I right? Yeah, I mean, these centres are really I mean, they've they've swept up vast numbers of Uighurs. Scholarly peer reviewed work has put the number between one point one and one point five million Uighurs. They put that into context. There are roughly about ten million Uighurs in the entire region. And I think that a lot of the Uighurs who were put into these camps were for such minor infractions as religious expressions or having some sort of overseas connection. That's chilling. Now, in the case of this student, you think he's in a camp or could he be completely disappeared? And when I say completely disappeared, I mean, killed. Well, the range of options are out there. I mean, as you say, there's a chilling aspect to these camps and intellectuals who have gone into these camps have disappeared. And particularly, I can think of a couple of religious scholars who, I mean, of course, they were elderly. And so they were much more vulnerable to the conditions of the camps died in those facilities into in, you know, in Zulpecata's case, we don't really know is quite possible. He's been released is quite possible. He's been moved out of the camp system and imprisoned or maybe one of the maybe remaining within the camp system itself, perhaps also working within forced labor, too. So what that tells us mostly is that we're dealing with a real dearth of information to the extent that even relatives outside of China have little to no idea of what's happening to their relatives. So they don't know where he is. They don't know what he's doing in whatever facility he's in. And they have no idea when he's going to get out again. That's very troubling. Well, absolutely. I mean, of course, you know, this has all kinds of due process implications and China's obligations to international standards, not only just in the jurisprudence, but I think that what we have here is a situation that it's an individual from Hawaii, but we can magnify this out to many Uyghurs out there, particularly in the diaspora who have no idea where their family members are. Or if they do have some sort of contact, it's under conditions of coercion, meaning that authorities are overlooking the sort of shoulders of their relatives whilst they have these communications. Well, he has contact with people in Hawaii, including you. And I'm a rather he had contact with people in a way. But question, what can you do about it? How what steps can you take to try to get them out of there and to bring them back here? Well, yeah, this again is an ongoing campaign that particularly since the repression of 2017 that intensified. I mean, this has been a culmination of several years of pressure. And personally, of course, what we do as scholars is try to assemble the scholarly community and to try to advocate for his case. And but at the end of the day, the the discretion is with the Chinese state, pressure, shaming. These are the ways that we use as individuals and as collective groups. But there are broader, structurally legislative things that we can put in place, which are not always directly related to the persecution of intellectuals, but some of the other issues that are out there, for example, forced labor has been an issue that the United States has taken up quite enthusiastically in trying to limit import and exports from particularly Xinjiang imposing sanctions on officials complicit in the in the repression. So at the end of the day, it's it's the more the action is more about systemic advocacy rather than on these individual cases. We can do when you say advocate, you're talking about advocating with the Chinese government rather than the U.S. government, or is it both? Well, I mean, I think directly, if you if you're talking to the Chinese government, it falls on deaf ears. The Chinese government's narrative is completely different as as you could well expect. The the idea of the vocational and training centres is actually a what what the Chinese government calls a de-extremification move. They're they're making Uyghurs less radical. So a lot of what can be done has to be done overseas in terms of looking at China's global connections, how those those are vulnerable places of vulnerability. But it needs to be done through either multilateral organisations or sovereign governments. Shaming included. So you live there in in Xinjiang, you live there. And you've had a personal experience with the way this works. Yeah, I mean, so I lived there from 1994 to 1997. I lived in the city called Kashgar, which is in the very southwest of the region. Xinjiang is vast. I mean, it's the size of Alaska and it takes up about one sixth of the Chinese territory. So I was in the very, very southwest quite near the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan. Kashgar is a real cultural hub for Uyghurs. It has a very significant spiritual and emotional meaning for Uyghurs as a sort of centre of Uyghurness. I was there from 1994 to 97. And I think that most scholars would say that 97 is when you start seeing the real intensification of of the repression. So I was there in a period where I could see discrimination on the ground, but also some of the government systemic ways that impacts Uyghurs too. So those were those were my three years they're working at Kashgar Teachers College. Henry, can you go back? I can't. No, I mean, I am assuming I can't. I'll put it that way. I haven't actually applied for a visa and my name is attached to enough research that's critical of the policies in Xinjiang that I doubt the likes of critical researchers and scholars are wanted anymore in Xinjiang. It's a shame, of course. I think that we need to have a lot more of those boots on the ground taking a look. And in fact, I think the Chinese government's policies would be better informed by a number of people who have expertise and who have different perspectives, but certainly the other aspect of going back, though, is that my my fear is, is that, let's say everything happened and the planets aligned. I was allowed to go. Anybody I talked to, I think would would have some sort of consequence once I left the area. So I think that there's a personal and ethical reason not to go back. So let's talk for a minute about the Uighurs. The Uighurs are Muslim, but they're Chinese. How did how did Islam get into an area the size of Alaska in China? Did they did these people come from the Middle East? You know, the seat of Islam or did Islam come to them? And when? Yeah, I mean, Islam came came to the Uighurs around about the 10th century. Prior to that, Uighurs were either Nestorian Christians or Manicheans or Buddhists and a lot of the fame of the historical fame of of Xinjiang comes from the Silk Road cities that were trading posts. So Islam came to them. They I think that most Uighurs would probably not agree with the idea that they're Chinese. I think that they would say that they're Chinese citizens, you know, informally on their on their passports. However, I think that their most their identity lies within the Turkic world. So looking across the borders to places like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan as well and Turkey as well, being another sort of cultural cousin. So there it's a really uniquely placed region in that it has this sort of conduit over to into Eurasia, South Asia, Central Asia, and and as a result is strategically key. But their their influence is a manifold and currently that they are Muslims and and have been and I think that a vast number of Uighurs would equate their ethnic identity with being Muslims. But that's not to say there aren't there are numbers of Uighurs who are secular or believe in other religions. I wonder if that helps them in dealing with the Chinese government that they can say, wait, stop stop surveilling me. Don't take me away to a training camp. I am secular. Does that help? Not really. No, I think, you know, in the early days of this and I'm calling this the sort of real intensification of the repression in 2017, prior to that, there was this, you know, perhaps campaign influenced assaults on on Islam. But after 2000, 17, it was quite widespread. So the early days, if you were, you know, if you were praying or if you received some sort of religious education outside of the formal system, this was enough to land you in a camp. However, particularly in a study that I did and with other members of my organization on Uighur intellectuals, I mean, at the last count, we were able to document 312 of those intellectuals who have been detained or imprisoned. There are many of those individuals were almost models of the state, secular in mind and and praised prior to 2017. Since that time, that hasn't saved them from the camps. It it almost amounts to a criminalization of from of ethnicity. Now, when you say ethnicity, I mean, is it is it cultural or is it also racial? This sounds to me like this was on the Silk Road. It sounds to me like plenty of traffic to and from China over a thousand years. So so query whether these people are, you know, Chinese in the full racial racial sense or whether they're a mixed bag in terms of, you know, their origins on the Silk Road. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's there's being mountains of books written about how did the Uighurs get to be Uighurs? And a lot of the recent scholarship talks about how Soviet national policy influenced the Chinese to group the Turkic Muslims of of this part. I mean, many Uighurs would call this Eastern Turkestan and Western Turkestan being places in the Soviet Union, like Kazakhstan and so on. I think that, yes, there has been a vast number of influences and their language is a real gateway into understanding that if you look at if you look at Uighur has influences from from Persian, from Arabic, from obviously the Turkic languages and more recently from Chinese, too. However, I think that if you were to talk to a Uighur about self identifying, I think that they would distance themselves from the dominant hand culture quite clearly, and it's very much an aspect of the current assimilation policy in that the the Chinese government would like to hannify or signify Uighurs, making sure that Mandarin is their first language, and and I think that there's plenty of resistance to that. So so I think that they're there at this point, I think that there is this sort of identity conflict going on internally and also on the ground. It all reminds me of Falangang, although it's an imperfect comparison. Can you compare, contrast the experience of members of the Falangang in China with the Uighurs? Yeah, I mean, I think that that's there have been number of points where Falangang have had a similar experience in terms of being their their religious expressions being being closed down. And for Uighurs, as I said, there are two very core aspects of their identity that that are asserted as difference from the Han Chinese. One is language and one is religion and and religion has been heavily suppressed, and that has happened prior to 2017. And so I think that the Falangang experience, too, is is similar in that way, that there's this belief system separate from the state. And and what I what I see, and I think many other scholars see, is that these external affinities outside of the state or outside of the Communist Party are a threat to the to the control that the state likes to exert over its citizens. You know, that was a movie three or four years ago, around the same time as a 2017 intensification, you mentioned, where this fellow was was Falangang and he was taken to training camp. The movie was a real movie. It was a documentary called Letters from Massangia. It was popular because he wrote little letters and put them in the Christmas toys that were being sent to the US. And women received the Christmas toy. She published it in the newspaper in Seattle, I think. And then she wound up feeling badly that she had undermined his position in the camp there, and she went to try to help him. In the in the end, the Chinese intelligence caught him and killed him. Bottom line, though, is that there is a haunting comparison between the rendition of the punishment in Massangia as the training camps you're talking about in your Xinjiang. And by the way, are the camps these facilities in or near Xinjiang or are they somewhere else in China? They are there predominantly in the predominant they are in Xinjiang. And the it's interesting you bring up this link of forced labor. There is a very clear pathway between camp and forced labor. Forced labor is also a way of transferring Uyghurs to other parts of China. And there have been incredible reports of Uyghurs transferred to places in northeastern China and as cheap labor pools. So, yeah, there are some of the ways to think about this is that China's competitive competitiveness on the world market is being somewhat undermined, mainly because labor is becoming more expensive. And and I think that Uyghurs are being used in a way to provide a cheaper labor pool, making Chinese manufactured products much more competitive, right? However, I mean, I think that the those movements of Uyghurs I mean, it amounts to a pool that sometimes are advertised even online. Yeah, we have 200 Uyghurs does your factory need these people? You can purchase this and transfer them to to your facility. So I think that they're it's bound up with also the economics and and also the challenges that China is facing in terms of a slowing economy, but also the way it's thinking globally as well. If I were a Uyghur person in Xinjiang and I woke up one Monday morning and said, yeah, I'd like to get out of here. I don't I appreciate the family, the religion would have you the community here, but I want to go to Shanghai. I can make more money in Shanghai. My options are much greater in the business community there. Why can't I just stand up and walk out and go to Shanghai? Will will there be some obstacle? Yeah, I mean, I think, first of all, the Chinese Hukou system, meaning that you have to register and have a formal residency in a you have to transfer your residency from one part of the China, the world of where you're living now into into the new place that you want to go. That is extraordinarily difficult, particularly for Uyghurs. It has a racialized element and even travel itself without the desire to relocate is difficult enough. Hotels are either forbidding Uyghurs to stay there. Or if they do, then everything has to be registered. Your movements have to be monitored. And places in China themselves have dedicated Xinjiang offices, which are designed to monitor that kind of movement. So no, I mean, in some getting up, moving and going to other city. I mean, I'm not saying it's out of the realm of possibility. It's it certainly is very difficult. You know, in 2017, the intensification, let's call it at this discussion, Xi Jinping was the president. And the question is, is he carrying a certain part of the burden here? Is he responsible for the intensification? And then my next question to you, Henry, is going to be why? What's the problem? Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it has to go all the way to the top without a shadow of a doubt in my in my in my opinion. I think that Xi Jinping in recently leaked documents has talked about how the the Uyghur problem needs to be dealt with. Yeah. And and I think that officials have, of course, as you go lower down the chain, I think intent that gets intensified. So in meaning that the lower officials need to please the hierarchy, so it gets a lot more intense as you go down. So, you know, Uyghurs being called enemies, Islam being referred to as a contagion. And and I think Xi Jinping is also his signature policy of the of the Belt Road Initiative is one where he sees Xinjiang as a pivot as important and that has to be cleansed so that that policy, his legacy, in fact, is not impeded by by these by these people. So I would say that, yes, I think that we we have to look to the top. Also, there's an entire system that is that looks upward in order to please and meet those expectations. This is a problem in an autocracy. You know, one thing that strikes me is this is tantamount to see if you agree, tantamount to cultural genocide. In other words, over the years, it would appear that the ultimate goal of this initiative to, you know, change the the way they they they live is a tantamount to cultural genocide. You you want to stamp out Islam. You want to make them into Han Chinese. You want to bring them into the fold and have the next generation not know anything about it, which you disagree with my characterization. Well, you know, I think that in my opinion, whatever there's nothing I disagree with with what you're saying, I think that the the cultural dimensions are are in play and have been for several years. I think that the you know, the erosion of Islam and the erosion, particularly of the language in the education system is well documented. I think where a lot of people's minds are now is on a broader definition of genocide in December 2021 and independent Uyghur tribunal found China to be committing genocide through its coercive birth control policies. And a number of governments, too, have made genocide determinations, including the United States. Now, some might argue that those are, you know, embedded in the political relationships that go on with China. However, I think that the scholarly research that backs up that the the poll that the Uyghur population is being targeted for for family planning policies in with the aim of reducing the population, which is one of the one of the articles in the genocide convention is in play. Oh, where is this going? I mean, I mean, none of this is a surprise in the sense that we have known for several years, you know, that there was this horrible repression of Uyghurs and everything Uyghur in China. But where is it going? Are they succeeding in this effort? That is the government. And where is it going to wind up? Will will they succeed in stamping out Uyghur Uyghurs and Uyghurisms and the cultural and, in fact, population of Uyghurs? Is that where it's going? And and the second part of my question is what, if anything, is is is being done to stop this? Because it is it is a, you know, a human rights outrage. Absolutely. I mean, I think that to address the first question, we're at a very critical point, right? And it sort of leads into the second question about what can be done, because now is the time to do it, right? And and I think that the first aspect to this is that in the Chinese disinformation and the propaganda that we see, Uyghurs have been re-tooled, right? They have been remade as productive citizens, de-extremified in their in their words. And we have this new, clean Xinjiang ready for investment. Of course, you have the diaspora who are interpreting their own identity in different ways and also being very vibrant in particularly cultural ways. What can be done? States, multilateral organizations are working hard on this. I think that we see in the US key legislation that's been put in place that, as I said, imposes sanctions, but also incorporates the State Department to report on the on the situation. Civil society is also a key aspect to this. You and I can do things. There are many, many, many options. I would encourage people to go to the Uyghur human rights project page that is called What You Can Do. And there are eight very key things right there that just you and I can do today. I would be remiss if I didn't ask you for the common denominator, common to what the Chinese are doing with the Uyghurs and Falangang, for that matter, and their position on Ukraine. There's a common government, political, maybe cultural denominator here that we should discuss. Can you address that? Yeah, China is obviously has made this a very important strategic alliance with Russia. And then the next thing we know is that, of course, after the Olympics and it seems like Putin and Xi may have had an agreement that the invasion go ahead after the Olympics so that China could have its moment. But I think that where the key here is that there's an issue of sovereignty. China's main foreign policy thrust is about sovereignty. And the fact that they have not come out forcefully to say Ukrainians deserve a right to their sovereignty and puts them in quite a difficult situation. If that is the case, I think that with Uyghurs, Tibetans, Southern Mongolians, other captured nations within China may also see, well, we have our rights to self-determination too, particularly under the UN Charters. So it would be interesting to see where China goes at this point. I think that at this present moment, they are somewhat sitting in the fence, but still putting out the disinformation that is coming out of Russia. Yeah, one thing you mentioned I'd like to follow up on and that's the Olympics. Something outrageous happened with respect to the Olympics. Can you talk about it? Yeah, well, I mean, the fact that the Olympics went ahead in February of this year when there is an ongoing genocide in that country really puts the IOC in a position of complicity. Thomas Bach and other senior members of the IOC who denied, I mean, there's one member of that committee, Dick Pound, who actually said, I don't know anything about it. I think about Uyghurs, which I find alarming that a senior member of the International Olympic Committee could not know anything about what's going on in a country where the Olympics is being hosted. So, of course, the parallels with Berlin are right there. History, I think he's going to be the main determinant, but what drove that Olympics obviously was money and also a China that is now projecting itself on a global stage. And Rick, you mentioned InterAlea, an organization that you were involved with that deals with these issues. What's the name of the organization and how can I read up on it? Yeah, that's the Uyghur Human Rights Project. I've actually worked there since 2008. So I feel like a veteran of working there and it's an organization that does research-based advocacy. Website is uhuhrp.org and there's lots of information on our research and the kinds of information that I've shared today, particularly about what you can do and what's happening across the globe in terms of advocacy and just how we can get involved with people and citizens. And that organization just is doing that sort of hard work of trying to document all of these incidents that we've discussed today. Henrik, you are an activist and you are a great asset to Hawaii. Hawaii needs to be aware of these things and you're part of the intellectual structure that makes us aware. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much for helping us understand these things and I hope we can circle back at a later time because I know there will be further events and issues along the same lines and it's important from an international point of view, especially now. Let me try one more time Sir Jeff Ski. It's been an absolute pleasure and thank you for opening this forum up to Hawaiians to be able to learn about Uyghurs and engage with the issue. It's important to us and it's important to us on so many reasons in that China is targeting US citizens who are Uyghurs. Also, their surveillance technologies are beginning to become a globalized issue. And I think that we can certainly engage as Hawaiians. It's been my honor and pleasure to talk to you today. Thank you, Henrik. Henrik Sajewski. I think I got it now. It certainly did. Aloha, Henrik. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.