 Hello. I'm Corey Andrews from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the U.S. Department of State here in Washington, D.C. Thank you for joining us for this discussion where we will address the Chinese government's campaign of repression against Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China. These human rights abuses have been well documented, but unfortunately in many parts of the world there is still a lack of awareness around the extent and intensity of the repression suffered by these groups at the hands of the Chinese government. Today we have with us a panel of experts with deep knowledge of what is happening on the ground in Xinjiang. We'll discuss many of the repressive policies of the Chinese government, including the mass detention of Muslim minorities in sprawling internment camps, the ramping up of high-tech surveillance, the banning of religious and cultural practices, and the Chinese government's widespread disinformation campaign to cover up or influence public perception of their actions. We'll start off by investigating each of these issues and getting the latest updates from our panel. Then we'll turn to you for your questions and thoughts. If you have a question for the panel, please submit it in the comment section next to the video player or on Twitter using the hashtag Xinjiang. Let me introduce our panel. To my left is Dr. Sophie Richardson. She's the China director at Human Rights Watch and the author of numerous articles on domestic Chinese political reform. She has testified before the European Parliament and the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Dr. Richardson has provided commentary to the BBC, CNN, The New York Times, and many other media organizations. Next to Sophie is Nuri Turkel, a U.S.-based Uighur rights advocate and attorney here in Washington. Nuri was born in a re-education camp in Xinjiang region at the height of the Cultural Revolution in China. He is chairman of the Board of the Uighur Human Rights Project and one of its co-founders, as well as a past president of the Uighur American Association. Nuri has been speaking publicly on nearly a nonstop basis over the past two years, advocating for a global response to the crisis of the Uighur people, appearing most recently as one of the opening speakers at the Oslo Freedom Forum in May. Also joining us is Alim Setoff, the director for the Uighur Service at Radio Free Asia. He previously served as the executive director for the Uighur Human Rights Project. In 1999, he started at RFA as a production coordinator and broadcaster. Throughout his career, Alim has written many articles on China's human rights violations of the Uighur people and is frequently interviewed about these issues by leading media outlets. Thank you all for being a part of this important discussion. Thank you. Thanks. Sophie, you and your organization, Human Rights Watch, have engaged directly on the Chinese government's actions in Xinjiang. What can you tell us about your organization's work and the issues on the issue and what you've learned? Yeah. We've been running about human rights violations against Uighurs for 25 years. A lot of that has been about restrictions on religious freedom, restrictions on movements, torture-enforced disappearances in the wake of the 2009 protests. But most recently, we've been quite focused on the establishment of these political re-education camps, for which there's literally no legal basis. People are being detained because they are Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims and subjected essentially to extensive political re-education to prove that they're loyal to the Chinese government. We've also spent a huge amount of time in the last few years writing about the abuses of surveillance technology in that region, in particular, to track people's movements but to literally gather and criminalize information about people's behavior that's legal but is now considered suspicious by authorities. We've also written about some of the Chinese companies that are involved in designing the architecture and the algorithms of repression. Thank you for your important work. Nuri, you've spent years working on these issues, but recently there has been a clear increase in the repressive actions of the Chinese authorities. Can you share your insights on what is happening right now in Xinjiang? Thank you very much for organizing this important panel discussion. In the last several years, particularly since July 5, 2009, the Chinese government was trying to find a way to solve the Uighur problem once for all. They realized that Uighur's ethno-national identity religious practices will be eventually a political threat to the Chinese state because of the insecurity that the Chinese officials sensed and CCP's concern that the Uighur ethno-national identity, if allowed to be continued, eventually pose a political threat against the Chinese state. So they ratched up the pressure since April 2017, to be exact, with a draconian legislation, a regulation called the Extremification Measure, enacted by the local government in Urumqi. That paid the way for today's atrocities that we have been learned about in the last couple of years. So as a result, the Chinese government have rounded up up to $3 million based on the U.S. government's estimate. Two to three million has been a figure that the U.S. government has been stating in public. So in addition to rounding up, detaining such a mass percentage of the Uighur population and others, they also created an open prison-like environment for the Uighurs who are outside of the camps. And also in addition to the domestic pressure and mass detention, the Chinese oppression also reached to the shores of the countries like the United States and elsewhere. So they have been engaging in both domestic and international front to silence international community, the Uighur community, while they are engaging in a modern-day interment camps. And then implementing, after testing it for the last couple of years, what's called a digital authoritarian police state. Thank you. Alim, through your work at Radio Free Asia, you focus the spotlight on Chinese government's campaign of repression in Xinjiang. What can you share with us from your perspective, and why is it important to raise awareness about these human rights abuses? Yeah, the Uighur service at Radio Free Asia is probably the only one independent media, Uighur media in the world. We are specifically focused on reporting on the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. And since past three years, especially after Chen Chenguo became the party secretary of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in August 2016, then we had seen through our reports massive policy change. In the early 2017, we began to report the disappearance of large numbers of Uighur people. For example, in Kashgar prefecture alone, we were able to confirm that 120,000 Uighurs were mostly males, working-age males were detained. And in place like Hottan, Karkash County, and others, we were able to confirm that up to 40 percent of the local population were detained. At the time, it was unclear under what kind of laws, what kind of places they were detained. Then soon we were able to interview the officials and the people who were teaching in these camps. Then it was a large-scale detentions of these people. Then we began to realize through our reports that a number of many police stations were set up as checkpoints to specifically target the Uighur Muslim population. And so we have reported on the massive scale of these detentions of the Uighurs. Then later we realized these people were detained in these internment camps, what the Chinese government later called as vocational skills training centers. But in fact, through our interviews with Chinese officials, Uighur officials, local Uighurs, and former detainees, that these were no ordinary vocational skills training center. In fact, these were internment camps, and these Uighurs were detained arbitrarily. They did not have any legal recourse, and they were detained indefinitely. Not a single Uighur in the camp knew they were going to ever be released. And the physical mental torture were involved. And it wasn't something like described by the Chinese government. So I think through our reporting, then later through the reporting of other international media, the world began to gradually grasp what was happening and understand the nature of Chinese policies in the region and nature of internment camps, and even the nature of what Nuri just described, the high-tech police state the Chinese government established. Thank you. Let's now talk about the rapid and expansive growth of these internment camps we've been discussing and what is happening inside of them. Nuri, can you update us on this? Yes. The re-education camps, what we used to know as daily re-education camps were in existence before the construction of this massive internment camps that the Chinese government built since late 2016. Based on various reports, the camps are still in the process of being upgraded and expended as we speak. Late last year, two credible reports were published, one by Australian think tank and the Reuters. It states that the expansion rate of these camps in less than 20-month period was 465%. The area of expansion is equivalent of 140 soccer fields. And just on the outside of the regional capital, Rimchi, based on BBC, is in the process of building the world's largest prison camp. So there's no end in sight as we speak on these camps that also the Chinese government have turned this into a sort of a political economy system that they invested a massive amount of money in these camps and some of them already been turned into forced labor camps. So the world needs to pay attention to this. This is not just something that's happening to the Uyghurs because the Chinese government is using these camps as a laboratory to test out how these high tech methods works to squelch political resentment and keep an eye on a potential political appeal. So if it's not handled properly urgently, this will expand and becomes a bigger problem for the world. So in essence, the Chinese government has put a considerable investment in this over a very short period of time? Absolutely. Another issue that has received a lot of attention recently and is a key focus of our discussion today is the increasing use of sophisticated high tech surveillance as a tool of control and repression in Xinjiang. From widespread installation of security cameras to phone monitoring apps, compulsory DNA samples and police checkpoints, the Chinese government is heightening its police state control and monitoring of the lives of everyday people in Xinjiang. Nuri, what can you tell us about the growing dystopian reality in Xinjiang? Imagine that you just wanted to go about with your daily routine. You get up in the morning, try to go to work, try to go to school, what take your children to daycare. You have to pass through security checkpoints. You are forced to surrender your phone for data scan. You are allowing the officials to do iris scans, in some instance, biometric data collection. And while all this happening, you see non-weager individuals waving hands or not showing any sympathy for you to go through a different method to allow yourself to be subjected to this kind of surveillance illegal search. So that's kind of the daily routine for the weagers. And this is so invasive and pervasive around the region. Some policy experts liken it to an open air prison. Oftentimes we focus rightly so on the people who have been detained in the camps, but the life of the weagers who are outside of the camps probably even worse to the extent because it's happening every day to them. In addition to this digital surveillance that they set up, they're also invading in private homes of the weagers. Even in some instance, in the reports written by scholars, American scholars, they're forcing the children to spy on their parents about the communication, what they talk, how they express their grievances, what do they tell their children. So oftentimes we have a difficulty to even describe because I don't think that anyone was prepared this level of brutality, this level of high-tech or technology-oriented way of destroying people's normal livelihood. So it sounds like a science fiction dystopian novel, but it's reality. Sophie, can you weigh in on this surveillance state? Sure. I mean, there are a couple of important sort of contextual factors to consider. One is that the Chinese Communist Party has had a long-standing impulse to gather lots of information about people. What's different now is the technological capacity they have to both gather it and process it and use it. And this is a country that has no effective privacy rights. So there's really no way to combat or push back against the idea that certain kinds of information are being gathered about you. In May of this year, we published a report in which we described having reverse-engineered an app that's used by police in Xinjiang. And we had seen references in work about other kinds of technology, some of which you've just mentioned, to this app. It's called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform. And essentially what this system does, it's sort of the central nervous system of surveillance in the region. And it gathers different streams of data from things like CCTV cameras, from data doors, from other kinds of publicly available information. But the app in particular is used by police to both check information about an individual, but it's also used to prompt police to go and investigate people. And we wanted to know what behavior was of concern to police. And in breaking this thing apart, we could see that even though there are no laws about which door of your house you use or whether you talk twice a day to your neighbors or just once, that this kind of behavior was now actually being tracked by the authorities. And if the app decided that your behavior was suspicious, you were going to get a visit from local authorities. And in some cases, if they didn't like your answers or the answers that they plugged into the app said that the person should be detained, that person could be detained. So the authorities in the region now have the capacity to collect massive amounts of data about people. And even if there's no legal basis for detaining someone, they're doing that. Wow. Thank you both. Now, let's take some questions from the comments section, or those following along on Twitter using the hashtag Xinjiang. Here's one question. Why should the rest of the world care about what the Chinese do to their own people in their country? Isn't it their right to govern themselves as they want? Alim, would you like to try this one? Sure. I think that's a very interesting question. They're a very good question as well. It is very much from the Chinese government standpoint. It is China's internal issue. It's our business. It's none of the rest of the world's business. But I think both Nuri and Sophia agreed this and interconnected the world. And nobody is an island. And what happens in your neighbor's house does happen in your own house. If there is a fire in your neighbor's house in an apartment building, if you do not put out the fire in that house, then the whole building will be in flames. So in this logic, whatever happens in China, it's not China's internal business. Because the way China treats the Uyghur people, like what we major media all reported, this is not something that has been seen, as Secretary Pompeo others said. This is the things that were happening in the 1930s in Nazi Germany, in Soviet Gulags. So this is not something that international community that can just turn a blind eye, just keep their mouth shut. This is something that should wake up the world. And this is 21st century. And things like that should not belong or happen in the 21st century. I'll just add that, of course, we believe that everybody has political rights. And if they actually got to participate in these decisions, that would be one thing. But the Chinese Communist Party has held soul power for 70 years now. It's not a democracy. And so to suggest that the policies that are currently being pursued are somehow the result of an open democratic participatory political system is simply not correct. I mean, let's not conflate China with the Chinese government or the Chinese Communist Party. And I think that in a way, one of the, if there's been any, I wouldn't even call it a silver lining, but one of the slightly reassuring aspects of the growing global concern about what's happening to Uyghurs is to see lots of people inside and outside China who are Han or of other ethnicities express a sense of concern and solidarity with Uyghurs who are suffering from some of the same kinds of persecution that those other communities have. But those are not the people who are running the government. One more quick addition to Sophie and Alamo's point. I think the vow never again should mean something. We were told after the Second World War that no one would be persecuted to the extent of being subject to cultural genocide after we have seen during the Second World War and what happened to the Jews. So never again is happening again in China today. That's why one of the reasons that the world should pay attention to this. Number two, the Chinese government already been quite comfortably through global times, even through the ambassador here in Washington D.C., that the Muslim problem should be dealt with the way that the China is dealing with the Uyghurs. The world should look at this as a model. This should give you a chilling effect. I mean, this should be a chilling to people, for reasonable people. Do we really have to follow a Chinese model to deal with Muslim problems, so-called Muslim problems? And then three, and Chinese government is publicly stating that they're trying to convert the Uyghurs to normal human beings, under what standard? What makes the Chinese government official to believe that their culture, their language, their way of life is superior to that of the Uyghurs, so that the Uyghurs and others should adopt it? What kind of world do we want for ourselves and for the future generation? The question is very simple. What kind of world do we want to live for the next generation? What kind of society do we want to have? What kind of privacy rights do we want to enjoy? These are the questions that the people in the liberal societies or civilized societies or anywhere around the world should think about. Right. So governments and private individuals need to be asking themselves these questions, but what about the private sector? How can global technology companies use their economic power to influence China on this issue? Sophie, do you want to take this one? Sure. Everybody should weigh in on this. But I think it's not even just a question about their economic influence as their own business practices and their ethics. You know, we have been really pushing a number of companies, international firms, you know, to explain what their due diligence strategies are to make sure that their business practices are not enabling or creating or in any way contributing to serious human rights violations. And I have to say, you know, the responses that we get from some of these companies is pretty unimpressive. You know, we found a Massachusetts-based company called Thermo Fisher Scientific that was selling DNA sequencers to the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau at the same time that we were documenting those authorities forcibly gathering information. And I want to be very clear about this. We were not able to show that that company's sequencers were necessarily being used in that campaign, but we wrote to them and said, you need to be aware that this campaign is happening. What steps are you taking to make sure that your technology is not being used? Well, it took about 18 months, letters from us, interventions from members of Congress, and finally an expose by the New York Times to get the company to stop selling that particular technology in that particular region. But we still don't have an answer from them or from lots of other companies. And bear in mind, this is a region where there's a lot of investment from major companies like Halliburton or Volkswagen. What steps are they taking to make sure that they are not complicit in forced labor in creating, you know, the technological architecture of repression? And these are all companies that say they have corporate social responsibility policies. And, you know, we certainly hope that they take seriously the reputational risk that they run as well as, you know, the potential to actually set a positive standard by, you know, making sure they're not part of the problem. We can also talk about the role of Chinese, big Chinese tech companies that have been implicated in abuses in Xinjiang that are investing worldwide and are concerned about that too. But you guys may want to jump in on this. Sure. In our reports, we did cover some of the Chinese companies that were involved, high-tech companies, especially using facial recognition, because the way that Chinese government control the Uyghur population, who are not in the internment camps but outside, is using this large numbers of facial recognition cameras. They are pretty much everywhere in addition to the police checkpoints. So they have these cameras they can recognize the face of the Uyghurs and others. And also with the work of the U.S. scientists helping China with the separating the Uyghur DNA from the Chinese DNA so they can effectively, you know, separate the Uyghurs from other non-Uyghur population in the region. So the Uyghurs who are living outside, although technically they are not in the camps, but under this high-tech Orwellian state, it is like they also live in a camp. So the Western companies, a lot of these companies and a lot of these Western American and European, Australian, who knows. And all of these scientists, they also work closely with the Chinese government and their research facilities. Basically, they are in a way also aiding and abiding Chinese government and perpetrating the police state. All right, we have a question from our audience. Do the three of you believe that life in the Uyghur region could improve or return to, quote, normal in the future under the Chinese Communist Party, like it was before 2009 or at least before 2016? Is it still possible under Chinese Communist rule? I'll take a job at that question. I think it would be very difficult for Uyghurs, at least for at least two, three generations to have a normal life because the oppression has been so brutal. The Uyghur people are proud people, resilient people, brave people by nature. But the current wave of oppression, this level of brutality can break anyone. The Uyghur spirit is still there, but the normalcy of Uyghur livelihood, families have been broken. So it will be impossible for me to say that life will be back to normal in two weeks and a month, even a year, because this is massive. We're talking about more than 10% of the population, at least based on what we know remotely through satellite imageries or the government construction bits, kind of a calculation of percentage. So the large number of people already been affected, even people who are outside of the country have been affected by this. So the normalcy is very difficult to imagine. But what I worry the most is that either Chinese win or lose in this effort to stamp out Uyghur ethno-national identity of religion. If they fail with such a big investment and such a massive detention, what are they going to do with people in their custody? If they succeed, our Uyghur ethno-national identity will be destroyed, at least for the individuals who live in China proper. We have interviewed the survivors of the camps. And if you listen to them, their stories are extremely, not just the heartbreaking, and you can see not just the physical torture part by the psychological torture, the effects of psychological torture on these people. And these are not people who had committed any criminals. They are just ordinary people, they happen to be Uyghurs, happen to be religious, or happen to pray five times a day, or went to mosque regularly, or went to study, like for example, Egypt. Then upon return, the Chinese government detained them for months, now years. And even if they were released, they are not coming out in their normal, previous normal state. So a lot of them have psychological problems. And the survivors, when you listen to them, what they had witnessed, even though some of them may or may not have been tortured, what they had witnessed, the torture of others, the death in the camps, all of them is already an extremely horrifying experience for them. The pain, the psychological pain that has inflicted upon them is life-long. There is no medicine that can help them. And a lot of them develop, like in a way, PTSD kind of syndrome. Not just Uyghurs in these detention facilities, or even outside. What you are seeing with the Uyghurs outside, who have lost in touch with their parents, with their loved ones, husband and wives, and even their own kids for the past several years, they are also having problems. We did at least two stories. One Uyghur man in Turkey recognized his own son in China. Basically, the Chinese police official is asking his son to repeat Chinese propaganda in the Chinese language. And so this man told us that he basically said he saw his own son being culturally assimilated, maybe eating pork now. And at the end of the day, he may grow up, become my own enemy. And another Uyghur lady also in Turkey recognized her own daughter, you know, just a six, seven-year-old daughter, in a Chinese government propaganda video, that she was basically speaking in Chinese, repeating Chinese propaganda as well. And these parents' hearts have been broken. They cannot see their own children. They cannot take custody of their children. They can do nothing for their own children. In addition to that, we also did a lot of reporting about the children of the detained parents. In a lot of cases, both parents have been detained by the Chinese state. And the children left, sometimes left with the grandparents. They're aging and ailing, cannot take care of the kids. Then the Chinese government takes them to the orphanages. And there, the government basically brainwashed them. No Uyghur language education, no Uyghur food. And there is no love. There are parents, no care. It's just state foster care and cultural assimilation. And recently, just German researcher Adrian Zanz called that, that is cultural genocide, basically, what China is doing, especially to the Uyghur children. Bring up the next generation of Uyghurs without any kind of Uyghur tradition, Uyghur education, or Islamic faith. We have another question from the field, from Don Eswari, joining from at America in Jakarta, Indonesia. What can the world be doing for Muslims in China to make them feel safe? Sophie. Sure, I'll try that. I mean, one of the most urgent things to do is to, for people who are concerned around the world about this situation, is to press their own governments to challenge China over these policies. And we were very encouraged when, a few weeks ago, a group of 24 governments submitted a letter expressing concern about Xinjiang and asking for access to the region for international observers, like the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights. That letter was submitted to the President of the Human Rights Council. And China quickly countered by organizing a letter that had 50 signatories, including disturbingly a number of governments that themselves represent large numbers of Muslims. And I think it's especially painful to see a lack of solidarity. And so to the extent that civic groups or faith-based groups are willing to press their own governments to join a positive rights-oriented critique of China, I think that's an incredibly important step. But also, I think what Nuri and Aleem have just described is important and so moving. I think we're in awe of people in the community who are fighting so hard in such a dignified way, among other things now, to preserve culture, to teach language, to keep religious practices alive, even if they can only do it in the diaspora. But I think there's a lot of room for supporting those kinds of efforts too, so that when the time comes that things are different for Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims inside the country, that there are still, there are texts to teach kids. There are, you know, there's been preservation of cultural traditions to go back to, that there's sort of a repository of these kinds of practices that can be referred to in hopes that it can again be transmitted from one generation to the next. And to the extent that that can be supported outside the country, I think that's a very important kind of work to do too. The late Senator John McGowan said that the hope is the best weapon against the oppression. The Uyghur people desperately need hope. The joint letter that Sophie is citing is one of those examples, give exactly the needed, desperately needed hope for the Uyghur people. And that makes them feel safe because they believe that, and they will see that as a sign that the world is speaking for them in the face of this oppressive regime that has not been feeling or experiencing seeing any cause for their brutality. So as a community, as a government, collectively or individually have to speak out, especially the Muslim countries, it's disheartening that the Chinese government relying on their Muslim allies to justify their oppression, their war on Islam. You know, this sounds like a political statement, but there are systematically, very deliberately trying to debase Uyghur Islam, especially the Muslim people in liberal Muslim societies have to realize that their religion is under attack. All three of you are very connected to the diaspora community. And Volzak asks, what are the current efforts in the United States to help Kazakh and Uyghur political immigrants come to the United States? Nori, I'd like to direct this one to you in light of the recent asylum of Ablakim Yusuf. The Uyghur American community has been very vocal, organized, active, effective because there is a organization and also a very united, the diaspora community exists in the United States. And one effective method that the Uyghur Americans have been using is to utilize their access to their government officials. In the United States Congress, there are two pieces of legislation have been considered. Just a quick example that the Uyghur Americans come together, went to the United States Congress, knocking on doors and handing out pamphlets, educating staff members. That's one of the legislative advocacy efforts that the Uyghurs have been undertaking. They're also in a regular contact with the government officials. In addition to the government contacts, the Uyghur American community is also very active engaging with NGOs such as Sophie's organization, providing information, updating, recommending individuals, survivors, victims to tell their stories. This has been, and also Radio Free Asia that happened to be in Washington, D.C. So this has been a collaborated effort. As a result, we have a delightfully good visibility, credibility, and working relationship with people from media, government, and NGOs. So this should be a model that the other Uyghur communities around the world should consider. As for the asylum, the asylum claim has not been made yet. The gentleman just arrived yesterday with the help of NGOs such as Sophie's organization, my organization, and then the U.S. government, obviously, managed to rescue this individual who was in a life and death situation just three days ago. In something related to the asylum claim, the United States government has been very supportive of the Uyghur refugees. I could say this with certainty that Uyghurs enjoy one of the highest asylum approval rate in this country. Despite the fact that the process has been slowed down, but on the merits, Uyghurs have a pretty high percentage of approval rate. Compared to other asylum sequels in the United States. Let's also just make sure to give credit to, in this recent case, to authorities in Qatar for not putting Mr. Yusuf on a plane back to China and recognizing that that was not an option. We have seen other governments like Germany, excuse me, and Sweden now effectively say publicly that they will not send people back. And so I think more governments are waking up to the serious threats that Uyghurs would face if they were sent back. And it would be good to see more publicly take that position. There are other governments that implicitly are of that view, but I think being clear about that at a time when I think people's well-fatted fear of persecution is even more pronounced would be a positive step. Yeah, we did a lot of reporting on the Uyghurs in Egypt in 2017, thousands of Uyghurs had no choice but to return because their parents were held hostage by the Chinese authorities, basically forcing those Uyghurs students in Egypt to return. And a lot of them out of love, their parents had no choice but to return. Some of them were able to escape to countries like Turkey and other countries. And with the support of Egyptian authorities and the Chinese government was able to have most of them return. Some of them basically detained by the Egyptian authorities and sent them, deport them back to China. And most of those Uyghurs were detained in the camps. We were also able to verify some of the Uyghurs who came back basically from Egypt to actually even tortured to death in this detention, in this internment camps. And other countries like Pakistan and Central Asian countries in the past did deport Uyghur dissidents back to China. They were sentenced to life, some of them to death, and some of them simply disappeared. Another disturbing aspect of this issue is the Chinese government's repression of religious and cultural expression in Xinjiang. This has taken shape in many ways, including the banning of religious ceremonies, public wearing of Islamic dress, possession of Korans, and relatedly forced cynicization, restricting the use of Uyghur, Kazakh, and other languages, and imposing pro-Chinese Communist Party ideology. Aileen, can you share your insights on this? Sure, Uyghurs are Muslims. Uyghurs have accepted Islam for more than 1,000 years. Islam is part of Uyghur identity and Uyghur culture is Islamic. And being Muslims, of course, you know, you have religious duties and you have religious ceremonies. And being Muslim, you need to pray, you need to go to mosque, you need to learn Quran. And also being Muslim, from birth to death, it's all religious. You name your child and that's your basic right as parents. You give them Muslim names, but the Chinese government banned the Uyghur parents from giving certain names to their children. So it's no longer the choice of their, and the rights of their parents to give the names to their own kids. And Uyghurs also for boys, they have circumcision, and that's a religious event. When Uyghur men and women get married, it's a religious event. Imams involved, prayers involved, religious blessings involved. All of this have been practically outlawed by the Chinese government, with what Nuri earlier stated, that de-extremification regulation and studying Quran and possessing Quran and possessing religious apps on your phone. All of them are deemed extremist by the authorities. We did a number of reports on all of this. And going to like country like Egypt to study Islam, that's the sign of extremism. And going to one of the Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia or even Qatar, that is also not that if you're upon return day it will detain you because you went to the Muslim country. If you want to eat halal as a Muslim, you cannot eat pork and drink alcohol, which are both forbidden in Islam, that's the sign of extremism. And you have to eat a pork together. That's what is being promoted by the Chinese government. And now you cannot label any Uyghur restaurant as a halal restaurant. Not only that, just last week, the Chinese government took down all the signs of halal in restaurants in Beijing, for example. That's not only happening for the Uyghurs, for the Kazakhs, everybody who is Muslim. And we had a report that Uyghurs who got married, who a government official got married with religious ceremony, then they were detained because that's the sign of extremism. So everything Uyghurs do in terms of religion. This is labeled as the sign of extremism by the Chinese authorities. Basically, the Chinese government doesn't want the Uyghur people to believe in Islam, to practice Islam, to pass on Islamic knowledge to their own children. Just last week, the Chinese government had their white paper on the Uyghurs, on Xinjiang. On that, two key points. Basically one, they are stating that Uyghurs are not Turkic people. The second major point is about religion. They say Uyghur people did not voluntarily accept Islam. Islam came by force. And the meaning is, because Islam came by force more than a thousand years ago, that's why Uyghurs should accept Chinese Communist parties, basically atheistic ideology. And the Chinese government also announced a few months ago that the Chinese government would synthesize Islam, basically change Islam into a Chinese version of Islam. China is run by the Chinese Communist Party. It's an atheist party. The Chinese Communist Party sees, not just Islam, all religion, like what Marx said, a religion is an opium to the masses. So that's the view of the Chinese government. So it's unclear how China wants to synthesize Islam. So basically any kind of practice or expression of Islam by the Uyghurs and other Kazakh Kurdish Muslim populations is basically outlawed by the Chinese government at the moment. And as we've mentioned before, clearly Chinese disinformation on this issue is pervasive and unfortunately has a strong effect on downplaying the realities of life for Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. Whether it's labeling of the internment camps as quote re-education camps or framing the repressive tactics in Xinjiang as fighting quote terrorism and secession, this tactic has been used to block and divide international criticism, especially with majority Muslim countries. So briefly, what effect has the Chinese government's false portrayal of their treatment of Muslim minorities had on sidelining important Muslim and Turkic voices around the world? So just a reminder to keep your answers brief as possible, we're running out of time. We wanna make sure we get as many as questions as possible, but please, Sophie, you wanna take that question? Well, very quickly, I mean, look, any government's disinformation is problematic. But I think what we need to focus on here are the facts and assessing independently and credibly what specifically is happening. The Chinese government has gone to institutions like the Human Rights Council and been wildly dishonest about its policies there. And it is precisely on these issues. Is detention voluntary or not? How many people are there? Are these people somehow guilty of actually committing a crime? If not, why are they detained? It's assessing those facts through an independent and credible institution that's essential. And that's why, if China is to have any credibility on this issue, those questions have to be posed by credible outside observers and not just a battle of the propaganda departments that's not gonna help anybody. Not only it's not credible, it's unverifiable. There's no way of verifying what the Chinese government has been floating around. They've been very effective changing the narrative or changing the restructuring of the headline. Hosting propaganda. Hosting propaganda tours to visit Potamkin villages. But the truth is that this is not about terrorism, number two, and China's government is even violating its counter-terrorism law. There's no due process. There's no nothing. No access to the lawyers, no courts, nothing. People have been indefinitely detained. And three, this is not about re-educating university professor, well-known scholars. They don't need education. Doctors don't need education. The university professors don't need education. Stage actors don't need education. Athletes once glorifying Chinese government don't need re-education. This is all bogus way of justifying the brutal behavior. So the world needs to be mindful. There's nothing to be verified and be acceptable about this behavior. You cannot just lock up someone based on their ethnicity and religion under the claim of fighting against extremism. Now it looks like we have time for one or two last questions from our online viewers. Pete Irwin asks, how do we combat the Chinese government's claim that the Uyghur issue is merely a tool of Western governments to criticize China and not a true human rights crisis? We have, through our reporting at Radio Free Asia, for the past three years, especially past two years, I would say, since April 2017, we have been able to confirm their large-scale detentions. And there are all kinds of evidence, not just Radio Free Asia, we have done an excellent job, I believe. And in addition to that, the Chinese government targeted Radio Free Asia journalists, detained their parents, loved ones. They're still in detention. That's not something we're making up. And in addition to that, satellite images, they can see the camps from satellite images. If they can have unfettered access, whether that's UN or special repertoires or foreign governments, if they could request unfettered access, they would be able to see the real nature of these camps. It is, as Sophie and I already talked about, the disinformation campaign. And also, their Chinese government, using their investment, buying other countries to stand on the side of the Chinese government to spread more disinformation, like they're helping the local population, but all evidence, especially through our reports, prove that that's not the case there. Right. And we have a final question from my America, Jakarta. An audience member asks, what can young people do to prevent China from continuing this practice in the future? Also, how can we prevent another country from imposing these same regulations on a population within its borders? I'll take a stab at the youth activism question, because I think the engagement of young people in politics and human rights issues worldwide is probably one of the most reassuring trends in the world today. Look, engage your own governments. Get out and talk to your own communities. Reach out to the Uyghur diaspora communities in your country and get to know people and take some cues from them about what sort of support they need. I think it's precisely that kind of welcoming and communication and collaborative work that, among other things, is very hard for governments to ignore. The Chinese government already been in the process of exporting these technologies, these methods. New York Times reported about 18 countries already adopted the Chinese way of dealing with political resentment through technology. So, this need to be talked about. If they talk enough about this, and that will force the government to take an action. Okay, it looks like we're almost out of time. Thank you all for your questions and comments. We've really covered a lot of ground today. Hopefully those of you watching will continue engaging on this critical issue. Sophie, do you have any final thoughts to share? Just this one, which is that, I think if any government in the world, other than China's, was committing abuses on this scale towards a Muslim population, we would see a very different response. Imagine if the US was doing this or some other government. And I think on some level, the world's response to the crisis for Uyghurs is fundamentally about holding China to the same standard that all other governments are expected to live by under international human rights law, and that to fail on this issue will really be to embolden China to commit more in different kinds of violations inside and outside the country, which I think speaks to some of the questions that implicitly some of your viewers have been asking about. And Nuri, how about you very briefly? This is not about Uyghurs anymore. This should be a global concern for the citizens who can express their views and can influence their governments. And also this is a matter for governments to focus on a human aspect, human toll of what's happening in China, not on the political expediency. At the end of the day, the history will not be kind to those who are feigning ignorance or focusing too much on their political interest or their leadership or maintaining their leadership role. And finally, I worry that if this is not treated as an urgent matter, I think we're kind of getting used to it and this will become new normal. I don't think it's good for humanity. And Alayne, your final thoughts? My final thoughts are, this is not some American propaganda as the Chinese government stated. This is real and this is happening to millions of Uyghur people. And every Uyghur in exile has one or more relatives who are in those detention camps now who have not been able to be in touch for the last two years. I'd like to thank all three of you and for your important work that you're all doing. So thank you and to our audience and we'd like to acknowledge At America and My America in Jakarta, Indonesia for hosting viewing groups for today's program. In closing, I'd like to thank our panelists for their important insights. Hopefully this discussion can serve as a catalyst for greater awareness of the abuses in Xinjiang and the critical role we all play in confronting them. Thank you and have a good day.