 Okay, I think we'll get started. I'm Betsy Peck-Learned, Dean of University Library Services, and I'd like to welcome you all to our second Talking in the Library event this fall. All of our talking in the library events are from the generosity of Mary Teft-White, who endowed a fund for us to support bringing speakers here to talk about their experiences and their writings. We also want to thank the Stample Foundation for helping us bring our speaker tonight, Johar Ilham, to Roger Williams. And we're pleased to welcome her back. She actually was here about five years ago to speak about a book that she published, and she was interviewed by Professor Adam Braver, who's going to introduce her again. And a student, whose name is Ashley Barton, maybe some of you knew Ashley or probably not if it was five years ago, but. Professor Braver is our library program director and a professor of creative writing, and he's going to introduce Johar in just a moment. But I just wanted to briefly mention our final Talking in the Library event, which will be November 20th with Robert Boyers, a public intellectual and editor of the quarterly journal Selma Gundy, and professor of English at Skidmore College, where he's taught for 50 years, 50 years is a long time. And he's going to speak about his most recent book, The Tyranny of Virtue. Identity, The Academy, and The Hunt for Political Heresies. And it's currently on our new bookshelf. It just came in a couple of days ago. So please check it out. And now I'd like to ask Professor Braver to introduce our speaker. Thank you. All right, thank you all for coming out. It's great to see so many people in the room, especially on a topic that is important to contemporary times, and also one which is also complicated and complex, so good to get some understanding of that. In brief, Johar, as Betsy indicated, has a little bit of a history here with Roger Williams in that in 2015, well, in 2014, went to the U.S. In 2013. 2013, okay. That's right, it all seems like yesterday. In 2013, Johar was accompanying her father on a visit to the United States, where he was going to be a visiting lecturer, a fellow at Indiana University. Johar was 18 at that time. She just finished her first semester of college. And she was coming here for a couple of weeks with him to help him get set up, established in the U.S., visit the U.S. And as they were getting ready to board the plane, he was detained by the police and taken to custody. Johar was, somebody turned to Johar and said, well, are you still going to the U.S.? Which turns out may have been something of a mistake on that end. And our father said, go, go, go. So at 18 years old with one semester of college under her belt and I met Johar not long after that, pretty good English, but yeah. Okay, English. Got on a plane with the wrong paperwork to get here and no standing in the U.S. and showed up and landed in Chicago on her way to Bloomington, Indiana. And there's obviously a lot of story that falls after that, but I told you how it connects with Roger Williams around that time. Our student advocacy seminar, which is still continuous to this day and I hope some of you in here may consider working on that as well in the future, which works with the organization Scholars at Risk, advocating on behalf of threatened and imprisoned scholars, we got assigned her father's case and we were told, well, his daughter is here in the U.S. Some students reached out to Johar and within about three or four weeks, we were all meeting in Washington, D.C. and taking her around to meet with various U.S. representatives to discuss her father's case. And I will fast forward to say that within the last six, so that was about five, that was about six years ago and obviously it was very new to Johar, very nerve-wracking to Johar in many respects, but within the last six months, Johar has met with President Trump in the Oval Office. She's presented at the General Assembly of the United Nations alongside the Secretary of State and the Vice President and the President and attended numerous meetings with European officials. So a long and sort of swift journey for someone who was perhaps called on but was not asking to be called upon. But what has, and what she's here to talk about tonight is what is going on. So tomorrow, by the way, there will be a, this is a talking in the library, there will be a talking beyond the library that Dr. Cole is hosting in his classroom at GHH 205, 206, where Johar will be a little more informal and we'll talk more about the story. I was just telling you more about her experience. But you know, at this time, while there were issues affecting Uyghur people, including her father, in these last five or six years, it's turned into something much more expansive, much more massive and much more concerning at least in the eyes of most of the world and yet another new calling for Johar and to be concerned about her people. And so I do want to not, don't want to forget as I did last time, in the back are copies of the book Johar work done and they're for sale from our bookstore for $14.25 with tax included. Checks, credit cards taken and cash. Johar, I'm sure would be happy to sign them if you are so inclined. But you did not come to hear me talk. So I will hand it over to Johar. Can you guys hear me? There are a few more chairs here if you want to come to the front and show them. So my name is Johar Alham. Well, even though I've been spending time like for six years here, I still don't speak very good English. So please forgive me if I make any grammatical mistakes, just ignore it. And so today we'll be talking about who are the Uyghurs and what happened to them or what is happening to them. You can see there's a, this is like a keyboard thing. You can see it's like Arabic letters and this is our Uyghur writing system. Among the world, Uyghurs are one of the most ancient Turkic people. Uyghur language is a Turkic language and it's most closely resembles Uzbek language. It is also similar to other Turkic languages like Kazakh and Kyrgyz and most of us we all use those Arabic letters for our writing system. Uyghurs have approximately 15 to 20 million population in China. The Uyghur region, which is also called as Xinjiang in Chinese language. Here are two maps of Uyghur region. As you can see, it is considered as a huge area and we all know China is a huge country. This is a map that was released by the Chinese government and if I translate to English, it'll be Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and here's a map of Google. It is located at Northwest part of China and it's connected to all the stands over there in Central Asia and connects to Tibet over here and Mongolia over here. The Uyghur region is known for their natural resources like gold, uranium, natural gas and oil. Also, as I just mentioned, Uyghur region is a huge area and it makes up to one sixth of the land mass but only 1% of the total population. For the past decades, the Chinese government has been sending Han Chinese to the Uyghur region in order to solve the overcrowdedness issue and Han Chinese is the dominant group in China and the group most people would think when they think of Chinese people. Yeah. Uyghurs have lived in Xinjiang region for over 2,000 years and over the past 2,000 years, Uyghurs have lived in Tanguism, Shamanism, Manichaeism and Buddhism and today majority of the Uyghurs are Sunni Muslims. I would say Uyghurs nowadays are as diverse as Americans. Here are the picture of all kinds of Uyghurs. You can see men in Dopa which is a traditional Uyghur hat or you can see women in hijab. You can see girls in colorful Uyghur at less dresses. It's also a traditional pattern. You can also see stylish men with glasses. Yes. So now, the happy part passed. Here comes the question which is also the main topic of my presentation today. What is happening to the Uyghurs and what happened to them? You can see two pictures, two photos here. One was taken in 2015. One was taken in 2017. Did you tell the difference? We have those games that you can find the difference. Yeah. So I think it's not too difficult to find the difference, right? You can see the minerals have been taken down from this Islamic traditional architecture. And this is not very rare. It's happening to most of the buildings or architectures that have Islamic patterns or pictures on it and before after. Here is an Islamic saying of there is no God but Allah. And it has been switched to a Chinese government slogan. Love communist party, love China, love country. That's what it means literally. Yeah. And also the minerals have been taken down and switched to a Chinese flag. It's all by the way, it's the exact same building. And another love communist party, love China. And the doors of a mosque, it's padlocked in Turpan. Turpan is a city in Xinjiang. And why is it padlocked? Because Muslims are afraid to practice their religion, which can cause them consequences of worshiping in public. And Shanzhang is a person I will be introducing him later on. He posed this picture and you can see this historic mosque has been taken down in Kashgar. And this is a very interesting example of restrictions about Islam in Xinjiang region. So before I came here, this was the sign I see the most when I wanted to purchase Uyghur halal, or halal, not Uyghur, halal food. And this is the sign. You can also find similar signs here. If you go to Costco, they have the lamb, they have signs like this. And so far, these two are the only signs that are allowed for saying halal, which means halal in Chinese language. But other pictures that has anything like Christian moon and those Islamic symbols, patterns, and Arabic writings are all not allowed. And you can also see this is a store, a signboard for a store. You can see the halal words are wiped out of the signboard. And of course, checkpoints. Police are on the streets all the time. Not like here, people might run into a police. You can see every 20 centimeters or 50 centimeters. I don't know when to become inches or a mile. I still can't do that. Sorry. And you can, it's like the spy movies, you know. You can find those. And checkpoints for men and women on the streets. Checkpoints. Oh, your police brothers are waiting for you on the streets to wait for you to hand over your phones so they can install tracking applications into your phone. Checkpoints, checkpoints, checkpoints. And those are when I mentioned about the applications in your phone, it can tell the policemen, your usage for your electricity, the website you've been searching, your name, your information, your age, everything. And QR code. Just like going to a Zara store and looking for a size you want, a policeman can go in front of your door and scan the QR code in front of your door and to get all the personal information of you. State press photos showing Chinese officials sharing sleeping quarters with Turkic Muslim families during compulsory home state becoming family program in Xinjiang. Just two days ago, there were reports of Chinese government has been sending men to sleep in the same beds as Uighur Muslim women while their husbands are in concentration camps. And please look at this picture. Here's that game again. Find the difference. I'm going to show you the next picture. Maybe because of the color, you will be mostly paying attention to those flags. But the most important thing is went too far. Yep. Cameras, cameras. There has been lots of reports about their surveillance system that targets the Muslim community in China. And reports, reports. Do any of you recognize these brands? Dahua and Hicvision are two major video surveillance companies in China. And the Hicvision, this one right here, is the world's largest video surveillance geomarker. You can find them on Amazon, sometimes even Walmart. And it was proven true that it was the main provider for the Chinese government to target and monitor the Muslim community in Uighur region. Yeah, here's a look. You see the prime here, Hicvision? Yeah, this is the person that I said I will be introducing to you. He was the first person who exposed the picture or the exact location of the first few camps. Shan Zhang can read a little tweet of him here. And with this, if you type in from Google ABC Net Australian News on November 1st, you will see a very detailed reports of when they first revealed the locations and satellite photos of the concentration camps. Here's the grand opening of a new camps. You see the red ribbons to celebrate the opening of a camp. And also another picture of a re-education camp, concentration camp. In early 2017, there were rumors going around about the existence of their re-education camps. In fact, back then lots of people, Uighur people, didn't even know the term concentration camp or re-education camp. The Uighurs know there were masses of Uighurs were disappearing, but they didn't know where they've been taken to. They don't know why they disappeared. Lots of Uighurs didn't know that terms like concentration camp and re-education camp even existed. Or else you can say many people couldn't accept the fact that in modern days things like this could still be a thing and still could exist. Until 2018, Shan Zhang was the first person who actually finally found out the evidence of proving the concentration camp or the re-education camp, according to a Chinese language, that actually exist. And this is the location. You can see this empty landscape. In 2014, it was empty. And 2018, a huge area was built. And empty in 2016, full of buildings. 1 to 3 million Uighurs have been sent to large modern day concentration camps. It is also called as re-education camp, as I said, in a Chinese government's language. The camps are the culmination of decades of repressive and policies of assimilations by the Chinese government as they aim to socially re-engineer the Uighur people. Everything that makes the Uighur people unique has been treated as abnormality and mental disease. And here's a form that I would like to show you. It says population data collection form. It is also a form can show you, which can show you a possible reason could send you to a concentration camp, religious faith, Uighur or unemployed, passport holder, praise daily, religious training, visited one of 26 countries. Do you have contacts abroad? Be careful if you have contacts overseas. You've got to go into jail. And social stability situation, persons of interest, or members of special population, relatives in detention, safe average and safe, all these could be possible reasons for you to be sent to a concentration camp or re-education camp, scholars and universities. This is a number that UHRP Uighur Human Rights Project have collected. There were 338 people reported they have family members who are from those categories or confirmed that they were sent to the camps. And this data was collected in January 2019. And the number goes up in March. And it goes higher in 2019. So not everyone has overseas contacts. And so far, there were 435 people reported about having family members are sent to a concentration camp. And those people are only the ones who are able to testify outside of China. And what about those who don't even have a family members in overseas? Or their family members are too scared to testify? What about those people? This is a picture of so far what we have proven that those people have been sent to camps. And this picture right here is my father. He has been sent to a prison, not a camp. But he was one of the very first person who was arrested for a wrong reason. This is also family members and overseas holding up. They are family members or friends who have been disappeared by Chinese government or who have been sent to a concentration camp by Chinese government in their pictures. So those people in the last picture were mainly scholars, intellectuals. And China claims that these sprawling camps with barbed wire and armed guard towers are vocational training centers. Detainees include medical doctors, academics, businessmen, singers, soccer players, comedian, as well as young children and the elder people. None of them, none of them, they need a job training. And many people have asked me, what can they do to help? I have been asked for this question for so many times. And since I'm at a university today, and some of you might be scholars, some of you might be students, and there's a lot of things you can't do. Here's a link. If you're a scholar, you can go to this link and sign a statement. There are tons of forms you can sign. There's tons of petitions you can sign. There are tons of statements you can go sign. And with every country, scholars is a scholar. The community of scholars is a main community that every government or every country values a lot. So if you show your concern, the government could also show their concern, could maybe trigger them to speak up for the Uyghur cause. And until 2019, this May, there were more than 700 signatures from 700 scholars from 42 countries have signed the statement, and you can do that too. You can also visit the website. If you just type in UHRP in Google, I don't work with them. But I think they have been doing a great job on showing people the specific steps on what they can do to help or where to gather those information. And UHRP, Uyghur Human Rights Project. See, this side of the website can show you. Just click into it. They have a list of things you can do before this. Oh, yeah. Very first one. And it's the most important one, I would say. House resolution, HR 649. It's a bill that Uyghur people are trying to pass in the U.S. It has just recently passed the Senate when we're still trying to push it and to pass the House. It'd be great if no matter if you can sign the statement that I just showed you in the previous slide. But as long as you have a phone, you can call your local governors, call your representative, your congressman, and to make them push this bill. This bill means a lot for the Uyghurs. You can share the UHRP's report. You can write to the International Federation of Red Cross. You can write to the International Olympic Committee, which China is holding the, oops, sorry, 2020's Winter Olympics. And you can write to the companies with operations in Xinjiang, like Dahua Equation. And there are tons of other companies have been doing, have been cooperating with the Chinese government with financial advice. And you can help to avoid that. I'm pretty sure the businessmen can find other way to earn their money, not by supporting a concentration camp. I would like to say that this is my first presentation about the concentration camp. For the past five years, I've only been advocating for my father's freedom in order to get him free. I am not an expert on Xinjiang. I did not even grow up in Xinjiang. I was born and raised in Beijing. I didn't speak Uyghur very well until I came to US. I took classes at Indiana University in order to learn my own culture and my own language. I didn't think I was ready to speak up for my people or for the Uyghurs. I still don't think I'm ready. I still don't think I know enough, but too bad. Most of the people who know better than me are sent to camps now. And I cannot give up opportunities like this, opportunities to speak freely, to stand on a stage like this, to speak up for my people. Because many, many others, they can't have an opportunity like this anymore. They can't even have to speak about concentration camp. They can't even meet their families anymore. They don't even have a chance to speak about what they want to have for dinner anymore. And I can't give up a chance like this to talk about my people. This is not only about Uyghurs. If I was not an Uyghur, I would do so. Because this is not about one community. This is a humanitarian issue. And this is one of the largest humanitarian crises after the World War II. History repeats itself. And we do not want to see the same thing happen again. Everything looks so familiar, right? I wanted to put some comparison pictures. But I think it's too crucial. I didn't want to do that to your normal Wednesday night. So I wanted to make it more peaceful, look more peaceful. But if you are willing to learn more or torture yourself, you can go on Google or at the Q&A question part. You can ask me, and I'm happy. I'm open to any questions. Thank you. Anyone have a question? So how badly mistreated are they being abused? Yes. Yes, there has been. I also wanted to put that in. But the image is too bad, so I didn't want to. There has been a report. By the way, I've been working on a documentary film. That's how I got a chance to interview a lot of camp survivors. Few of my camp survivors managed to be able to skip to the US. And in her testimony, she stated that there has been raping going on. 30 people share one prison room. It's not, promise me, it's not half. The prison room is not half size of this room. So it's a very small room. People will have to, 10 people sleep on the floor. The rest of the 20 would stand against the wall. And they would take turns. Every two hours, they would change in order to go to sleep and deny for food. Sitting on electronic chairs, feeding unknown medications for God knows what reasons it's for. We don't know if it's for experiment or for other. She said she got fed for medicines. And she started vomiting white foams. And she started having illusions. And they would torture her psychologically and physically when they're trying to question her. In the beginning, they would feed her medicine and then started telling her, we killed your dad. We killed your mom. We just killed your children. And you have no one left. All you can do is just to tell us the truth. Because there is no one left in the world that cares about you. And stuff like this, in order to brainwash her. But she didn't do anything. So there was nothing coming out of her mouth. And she got tortured more for not saying other useful information. Also, very recently, unfortunately, I don't have a proof for what I'm going to tell you. Also, there has been a report of organ harvesting. That I have a picture of, which is a fast lane in the airport for transporting organs. So there's a fast lane, says organs only. So that shows how common it is. Because you have organs going in this airport lane every day. So they have a specific lane for that. Yes, that's. Is your father living in conditions like this? To be honest, I haven't heard about my father since 2017. According to the Chinese law, the family members should be allowed to visit the political prisoner every month. But my father was only allowed to be visited every three months in the beginning. But everything stopped in 2017. I think it's directly related to the concentration camp. My family members are not allowed to visit him anymore. And we don't know if he is still held in the same prison room or the same prison. And we don't know if he's safe. He's healthy, or if he's even alive. But before 2017, when my stepmother was able to visit him, he lost 40 pounds. He was denied food twice, each time 10 days. He was shackled, beaten. He's almost half bald now. And the only hair he has left are all white. And he's only, he just turned 50 years old two weeks ago. So it's not time. So it means he has been through a lot, but we don't know what he has been through inside. Any other questions? Was there one single event that started this persecution? Was it just the number upon moving into the Uyghur region? The oppression has started back in time gates ago. But people only noticing, or the things gone very, very bad in late 2016. People started realizing, oh, there's something going on. And it's very bad only in early 2017. Have you gone back to your country since you moved here? Unfortunately, I'm too scared. I don't think, if I ever go back there, I will be able to, I don't think I will be able to go anywhere outside of a prison. So, yes, I haven't been able to go back. There's prejudice against Muslims throughout the entire world. But do you think there's a reason why not as many people are talking about this? It took me and other Uyghur community here a very hard time to gain awareness for us. First of all, Uyghurs have been living in, first of all, China is a country that doesn't allow Twitter, Facebook, social media platforms like this. So it's very difficult to let the news out. That's the first case. And second of all, once they try to contact people here, they can be sent to a prison or a concentration camp. And people are scared in there. So getting first hand information has been very difficult. That was the first case. Second, Islamophobia has been going on all over the world. People are scared to talk about or support Muslims when they hear Muslim. But I am glad that nowadays we have made huge progress. We can't say that every single person knows about Uyghur, but most of the people who read news or who go to school somehow have an idea of if they don't know Uyghur, they know there's a Muslim population in China has been under suppression by the Chinese government. And I'm still looking forward to push the case more. Getting awareness is not the only goal for me. Fixing the issue is the main goal for me. Now I'm looking forward to... I've been cooperating with the US government and the European Parliament in order to take actions on helping those Uyghurs to release by the Chinese government. Do the Han Chinese repopulating Xinjiang province are they aware of the Chinese government's policy towards Uyghurs? That I'm not sure, but I do know the Han Chinese here. Most of them don't know. So one of the reasons is it's a habit that Han Chinese students don't really use western media outlets. Most of my friends, they've been here for many, many years Chinese friends, Han Chinese friends, they do not use Google. They still use Baidu. That's a searching engine in China. It's a Chinese version of Google. And of course, when you search stuff in Baidu, you do not get the information you want. You only get the information what the Chinese government wants you to see. Everything is censored and it's selected. So I remember when this issue first happened, or not first time, it's been, I think it was last year, it's been a while. I told my very close friend about this and she goes to dental school. So she's pretty smart. And she looked at me and said, Jiaohar, I feel so bad for you. And I thought, oh, you're so brainwashed by the western media. I thought, oh, I am so brainwashed. Interesting. Yes. So she said, I checked all over Weibo, which is a Chinese version of Facebook. There's no concentration camp. It's a lie. So after I showed her all the images, videos, if you check YouTube, you can also find a train station video. If you just check train station, you will find the video that I'm talking about, which can prove that concentration camp also exists. And the satellite pictures, you can also prove that they exist. Now she believes it, but she rejects to, she doesn't want to talk about it. Deep in her heart, she knows it's wrong, but she also rejects that Chinese government, her beloved country's leader would do such a thing to any group of people, no matter inside China or outside China. She knows that this is not supposed to be happening, but she is too sad or cared too much to admit that this is happening. And I'm sure a lot of people are like that, too. But that's just one single example that I have. You're extremely brave. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. The solution that you are trying to work for is for you, what's the best case scenario? I know. Well, this sounds kind of not very optimistic, but I know in the short term, there's no way for the Uyghurs, all the Uyghurs to be released from the concentration camp. But I think it will be more practical to start from small steps, first gaining awareness to make Chinese government realize people around the world care. That's my first step, second step, letting the U.S. government or any other governments to push China to release those names. Many, many others who don't even have family members overseas. Many, many people, they've never been out of their village or their town their entire life who has been sent to a camp. Nobody knows that this person is in a camp. We urge the Chinese government to release the names, at least their family members inside China or outside China can know where their family members or friends or no matter what relationship is, where they are and how they're doing. And then slowly, slowly build up. And everything, it depends on the time. And I know this is a long fight, but I'm ready for it, so let's go. What has the UN been doing to help you combat this issue? Just this September at the UNGA event, they hosted this whole event about Uyghur concentration camp. President was there and vice president and also the UN general was there. And I was lucky enough to be invited to that event and speak about it. I think that would be the first, let's say, concrete step for the UN to show support, because admitting the existence of camp is the most important. Many, many, most of the other countries have not been able to do so. Admitting it means they know this as well. So, and I would hope UN can do more and looking forward to it. What do you think are the objectives of the Chinese government? And I would definitely say it got worse in 2016, 2017. That's when Xi Jinping was meeting again to consolidate his power. So this must be something directly associated with him. But why is he doing this? Do you think, is there an endpoint for them that they're trying to achieve something? First of all, as I mentioned, I'm not an expert on Xinjiang, but also I mentioned in the very beginning of my presentation, Uyghur region is a region that's full of resources. Gold, oil, every country is fried for it. And our region is full of natural resources and that's something I would say any government leaders would be really, really want thirst for. That could be part of their reason. And also, there's one thing in Chinese it's called fēi wǒ du lèi qīxīn bi yī. Which means if you're not one of our kind your heart is also not one of our kind. You're always thinking of some other way. And also lack of understanding, I would say. When you don't understand each other you always think the other side is the other person is the evil other side. According to some scholars there's also possibility of Belt and Road initiative. Belt and Road, what is it called? What is it called again? Belt and Road initiative? Yes, I think that's the word. I told you my English is not quite good enough yet. That could be part of their reason. It's located in the Silk Road area it's connected to all the Central Asian countries and the oil transporting goods oil could all be part of the reason. I'm sorry, but is there an end point? Are they going to keep these people or your people in these camps forever? They're hoping to... So far Chinese government has been doing a job of using our people as labors like creating... In the past China has been famous for cheap labors and now they got free labors. So we can support... Uyghurs can support the cost of the concentration camps now. So if they really want to do it long term they can possibly do it. That's why we can't just leave it there and let them go fix themselves. Have you been able to communicate with family members at home or not? Yes. I cannot contact my stepmother and my two little brothers directly because obviously the technology is now so developed they can directly cut off our phone lines. When I call them it's empty number but when I use other people's phones it can go through and all my Chinese social media accounts have been hacked. And I stopped creating new ones. I've already created 10 of them. I'm tired of it. So I try to communicate with other friends and let them try to talk to them and send each other gifts and pictures. And they live in Beijing. So far they're safe but in the beginning when my father first got arrested for eight months there were six to eight policemen in one of our door every single day to monitor my two little brothers the older one was seven years old the youngest one was four years old and they were escorted to school every single day just like bodyguards and then the older one unfortunately he was at the age of already understanding stuff so he saw my father got taken away in front of his eye so he already had a sense of what was going on and he was accompanied by all the policemen to school and escorted back every single day to grocery shopping and he was not able to play with the neighborhood kids anymore and it affected him somehow psychologically and also physically he started having some heart issues when he was seven years old now he's feeling so much better but I realized that the best way for them to stay safe is to keep them out of this after cooperating with some U.S. government officials finally the Chinese government have let all those six to eight policemen leave our apartment finally so they were able to go to school or go to any other places by themselves we might still have some there might be some people monitoring them every day but secretly at least not like they won't be they're at least visible not visible and I try not to contact them there often because I am in the category of sensitive people now by the Chinese government and letting them contacting a member of sensitive people it's not very good for them especially I want to let them have the best life that they can get they were to come over here or try to, would they be arrested at the airport? I don't think it's possible because they don't have a passport their birth certificates were confiscated so even if they want to travel to another city they will need to report to the police station first and the police station will need to watch them buy tickets and escort them so like that so there's no way for them I would wish them to be here I would be very happy and very relieved there's a very small chance for that Can you talk about being in Beijing because I know you're talking about Xinjiang but one of your people in Beijing under the same kind of threat or is it more about people in the region and also I know you had some experiences partly because people didn't assume that you spoke about Chinese being in Beijing and in Xinjiang I think it's kind of pretty different I didn't speak Uyghur very well but I looked not very Han Chinese so there are not many foreigners in China so if you ever visited China you might experience someone asking you to take a photo together because you look different I see people not yet so I've experienced that even though I lived there for 18 years I got that all the time because I looked kind of different I would going on the bus and people would start talking about me in Chinese assume that I don't speak Chinese and once they figure out that I speak Chinese then they're all Xinjiang people from Xinjiang not very polite face but I would say but also when I was in my classroom if anybody's stuff gets stolen they would assume that I was the one who stole it even though I had the most pocket money than anyone in my class so I was really upset about it many times and they always find out that I was somebody else or they just lost it by by themselves somewhere else but I've never received any apologies because of their treatment or reaction I kind of got used to it I didn't even think it was a thing anymore until when we were working on the book together we were talking about yes I'm pretty mad about that I thought that was an issue yes it's not very healthy that you can think things like this to be considered as normality it should be abnormal but it happens so often that we thought oh yeah this is how things is this is how it is and are people in Beijing that you're aware of anyway that people they've talked to Uyghur people currently worry that they're going to be taken so I didn't talk to any of the Uyghurs in Beijing how they black blacklisted everyone blacklisted me so but I do know that when my father first guard arrested or still recent recent some of them in order to show their respect or loyalty to the Chinese government in order to grant themselves safety or their families well which I completely understand everyone would think consider their families at the first place some of them spit my step mother's face literally spit said oh because of your family we are under like we're living in fear children their parents would tell children not to play with my brothers and my my step mother's coworkers or my mom's coworkers would isolate my both of them in order to show that they are they have no relationship with sensitive people like me and my family I don't consider that not like some action that is not respectful it is not respectful but I completely understand everyone is living in fear there any reaction any behavior I completely understand now I don't know if I can do better than them if I was in their place I am only able to speak up about my people and trying to pretend like oh I'm so brave here because I'm safe I have my freedom here but I might not be able to do any of what I'm doing now if I was in China well even I try to be able to so do you ever get like any looks or would you say like mistreatment from like people like Chinese people who live here not here actually um most of them ignore me because they think I'm just one American person they don't think I'm Uyghur because sometimes people think I'm Mexican or Hispanic um they don't really they wouldn't think that I'm Uyghur or something but when I speak Chinese I say oh your Chinese is really good yes I think so too um but yeah most of well most of I grew up with Chinese people I don't hate Han Chinese um before coming to here before coming to US to the US I could count with my 10 fingers of how many Uyghurs I know personally so I don't it's not the problem of Han Chinese group it's a problem of the government and also Adam was telling me that in one of the lecture he went to there was a scholar made a presentation about Uyghurs and he said um China doesn't have an Uyghur issue Uyghurs have a China issue so it's not about the Chinese people it's about the government and once the government's policy changed I'm being optimistic I think everything will be fine but you did run into some problems with say parents of fellow students Chinese students exchange students you here they're families you mean my roommate who wanted to move out oh yeah oh yeah so I had a very close friend oh I don't feel good to say I feel like I'm betraying her but yeah so I had a very close friend so very good friends now so I also completely understand her decision we lived together for a while she's also from China after my father got arrested she always knew that there was something going on with my family and the Chinese government but she pretended like she didn't want to talk about it we always avoid this but after my father got arrested she got really scared and she decided to move out she said please understand I have to think about my parents and my family members they still live in China I'm afraid they will be in trouble so from her what she says you can also realize she also knows there's something going on in China that is not right because hanging out with someone's daughter you should not be afraid of getting punished in a normal country so she also knows that there is something going on not right in China but I don't think she realizes it it's in her conscience or instinct but maybe she doesn't want to admit it and she thinks China is a great country which I respect her it is a great country just not a very great government it would be definitely better if no matter if the communist party or other party as long as they change their treatments to treatments to people then then it would be better than ever questions anything you would like me to talk about yes we can like inform the Chinese people because I know you said that everything is like censored and it's really hard to we're overseas so it's very hard for us to go and advocate and stuff like that thank you so much for bringing that up I wanted to talk about it too it is another thing that I've been trying to work on is to get Chinese citizens to gain awareness of what is actually going on inside China before coming to the U.S. I didn't know about the June 4th Tiananmen Square incident even though I was from Beijing and I did not know what happened in Beijing I didn't know about the how do I translate it the great leap leap forward I knew about this happening but I didn't know about the details I only learned about it after coming to the U.S. so that shows how much the classrooms lack of academic freedoms in China so it is very important that students here since they have the academic freedom or they have all these access to free media outlets it's very important to let them gain awareness every revolution, every changes in a country it's made by the people inside that country no matter where it is well it could be because of other countries but the best way I would say it is from their own people so it would be great if I can get help from you if you can tell all your friends including Chinese friends to know what is going on I'm sure they are going to be like no you are being disrespectful maybe start from a softer tone not like I know better than you tone just show them China is a great country this is what I know what's your thought about it not like oh this is bad everyone they have too much pride they don't want to be pointed out on their face start from a softer way and then approach more times show some proves people like to see visual stuff they believe what they can see so I think that would be a great way to start thank you for bringing that up oh yeah try to let your friends get rid of weibo, Baidu all these they don't need that here thank you Johar and again I'll remind you at 5 o'clock tomorrow in GHH 206 Johar will also again more informally really to talk more about her a little more about her father and the experience she had and more about how she became an advocate I think and sort of grew into this role which was not the same person six years ago or a different version upgraded one so again thank you Johar thank you thank you for coming