Pinchbeck speaks with Salih Hudayar, foreign minister of the East Turkistan Government in Exile, about the Uyghur population of the region China administers as Xinjiang. Hudayar gives an extended historical account: the Qing invasion of 1759, the independent state declared in 1864 under Yaqub Beg and recognized by the British, Russian and Ottoman empires, its overthrow in 1877 after both Britain and Russia backed the Qing reconquest, the short-lived republics of 1933 and 1944, and the Chinese Communist takeover in December 1949. He argues that Beijing's campaign is driven by colonial control of territory rather than by religion, noting that China's ethnically Chinese Muslims face no comparable persecution. Both raise the claim that American firms, Oracle among them, supplied and field-tested surveillance systems on Uyghurs that are now being adopted domestically.
Guest: Salih Hudayar
In brief
- Hudayar argues the surveillance apparatus refined on Uyghurs was built with Western corporate technology and is now being quietly implemented in the United States and elsewhere, which makes the issue directly relevant to viewers' own freedom.
- He rejects the framing that Uyghurs are targeted for being Muslim, pointing to the ten to fifteen million ethnically Chinese Muslims who are not persecuted, and attributes the campaign to colonial control of land.
- Hudayar recounts that Stalin abandoned the 1944 East Turkistan Republic to Mao in 1949, with its leaders killed at a meeting in Almaty and their deaths attributed to a staged plane crash.
- He argues that neither the United States nor the United Nations will secure Uyghur rights, so restoring an independent state is the only route to survival.
- Hudayar asks people to begin by using the name East Turkistan rather than Xinjiang, which he translates as new territory and traces to a nineteenth-century dictionary rendering as colony.
- Pinchbeck raises reports of organ harvesting and frames the episode as filling a gap in what Western audiences know about the region.
Full text
the surveillance technology that China perfected and is perfecting in East Turkiststan actually much of it has been supplied and so that China can test it by none other than American and western companies we're talking about Oracle we're talking about all of these other companies that are engaging in AI databases and all these types of thing and surveillance tech all of them they marketed it they let the Chinese test it on us to see how it works and now they're trying to quietly implement it here in the US and other western parts of the world. This is why speaking and learning about that part especially speaking out against that part and learning about it is relevant to your own freedom to your own um you know absolutely I couldn't agree more. Hey everybody, uh welcome to Liinal News. Uh so today I'm speaking with Sali Houd who's the foreign minister of the East Turkystan government in exile. In other words, he's one of the leaders of the Weaguer people who live in kind of a northwest uh province of China, Shing Jang.
There's about 11 million of them there. And there's also there sort of Turkish Muslim descents. There's some of them in Turkey, 30 50,000. I think probably most of us have heard that this is a very oppressed minority kind of like the Tibetans in Tibet but uh I felt that I didn't really know that much about the weaguers or what was going on. So I thought it would be like a public service to talk to Sali and get more information. Um yeah it's kind of a difficult tragic situation. I mean one thing that um is important maybe for us to know is that a lot of US companies were down there uh creating these sort of data you know digital surveillance systems that were used on the weaguers and unfortunately through ICE and and you know FBI and so they're now being applied more upon us here.
So they were like a test case where the sort of digital surveillance infrastructure and yeah there's like some really horrible reports from the weaguers about like organ harvesting and um yeah it's it's pretty brutal but you'll hear about that from Celi and you know so yeah I mean this is um you know please if you if you think this type of information is of value and it's important to keep talking about these kind of oppressions around the world please subscribe to the channel please like and share this content and thanks for joining me today. Yeah. So um in 1759 the Manchu Ching Empire invaded East Turkiststan and then in 18 uh in 1762 they um set up a military colonial administration where it was indirect rule um uh to the Qing Empire by the Qing Empire. Um during 1759 to 1863, our people um rebelled, organized 42 major uprisings, and we were able to successfully um declare our independence uh on November 12th, 1864 as the state of Yet Shadow, the seven cities, also known as Qashqaria. Um during that period uh under Yakube we were able to get um diplomatic uh recognition from the British Empire, the Russian Empire and the uh Ottoman Empire.
However, in 1876, um because of the great came, the Russians were worried about um the Brit us becoming too close to the British and then using, you know, us teaming up with the British to press the Russians out of Central Asia. So, u and likewise, the British were also afraid of the same thing. So they were both paranoid uh by our um existence being potentially used by another the other great power against them. And so both sides decided to um you know uh fund the Manchu Ching um occupation of East Takistan. Um the Hong Kong sh uh the Hong Kong the sh uh Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation provided the uh loans to the Qing Empire to you know carry out this uh military uh invasion whereas the Russian Empire provided them with the logistics and in 18 in November 187 uh7 our state was overthrown and in 1884 The Qing Empire decided to rename East Turkiststan as Shing Jang, meaning the new territory.
Um, however, we continued to resist. Uh, there was uprisings in 1902, 1905, 1907. Um, and then in 1912, the 1912 revolution inside China collapsed the Manchuing Empire. Um, however, East Turkiststan was governed by uh remnants of the previous Qing administration. their warlords um backed by initially uh backed by the Russians and then later the Chinese. In the 1931 we declared independent uh we staged another uh uprising um which spread throughout the country and we were able to declare independence as the East Turkystan Republic on November 12th, 1933. However, it was shortlived because of a Soviet invasion. And then a decade later um well during briefly in 1937 we uh had another ma major uprising but again it was crushed uh after a Soviet invasion of East Turkiststan.
And then in 1944 we declared independence again as the East Turkiststan Republic. But this time the Soviet Union initially supported us uh to get access to uranium and to pressure China to recognize outer Mongolia's independence. uh in 1949 um Mao uh Stalin decided to you know uh sell us out to Mao because he was afraid that if we continued to remain independent that we would end up becoming close with the British uh which were still um in India and Pakistan which still had a lot of influence there and that they would um use us to destabilize you know the Soviet Union uh or Soviet uh occupation in what was then known as West Turkiststan or the present day Central Asian republics. So in August of 1949, our top leaders were called to a meeting uh in um Almati uh to to discuss the future of our country and future relations with the Soviet Union. And they were essentially told to give up, you know, to dissolve our government.
And when they refused, they were killed. and later um the Soviet Union staged a plane crash and that's the official narrative is that they died in a plane crash. Um 2 months later on October 12th, 1949, uh 11 days after declaring the PRC, Chinese Communist forces invaded East Turkiststan. And about two months from that, they overthrow our independent state on December 22nd, 1949, leading to the present um occupation, which is entering its 76th year. And so originally um I mean, it almost isn't an original, right? because it just keeps going back and back. But what kind of society was it? Was it sort of um kind of nomadic, tribal?
Was it like um like back in like the 10th century? You know, was it like a settled population? They already had their own cities and stuff like that. Uh the um so East Turkiststan is home to uh Kazaks and other Turk peoples. The Urs uh we were the settled population. We um in fact the term in um Turk actually means civilized um so we like uh we were the more civilized population in that sense like modernized developed um because we were settled in cities uh you know we we weren't we were you know we were somewhat semi we were kind of semi-nomadic but it wasn't like you know we weren't permanently nomadic.
We were a little bit semi-nomatic but more so settled whereas um groups like the Kazaks, the Kirgus, uh they were more nomadic. And so on the western edge of China, what other countries were you bordering on? So we border um if you look at the map behind me, we border uh Kazakhstan to the west, Kystan, Tajikistan. Uh we have a small 76 kilometer border with Afghanistan through the walk-on corridor. Uh we border um Pakistan, India. To the south, to the southeast is Tibet. To the east directly is China and then to the uh northeast is uh um Mongolia including southern Mongolia. And then we have a small border to the north with the Ali Republic and Russia.
Okay. And um what's kind of like I mean I know you have your own language. What's sort of like are some distinct aspects of of uh you know we wiger culture and society kind of? Well, um I mean I don't know how to exactly describe it or our culture is very similar to um that of Central Asia, especially the uh USBs. Um we, you know, we're more Central Asian people. Um I don't know how to describe our culture in a very is the language close enough that uh you know your sort of neighbors in the region you can hear understand them. Yeah. Like actually and um we're we're the story is or the narrations are we're you know we're we're very close in terms of like language, culture, facial feature, food, dress.
Yeah. um were like 95% identical. The only difference is every you know there's slight accents different difference um and we're called versus they're called and this is also part of the reason of the Soviet Union's divide and conquer strategy. Um historically, uh we, you know, prior to 1921, we were referred to as um Turks, um or Turkeys, um in in in historical records. um our empire uh prior to the 13th 14th century, you know, we had the Ugger Kaganit and so that was the name of the uh Kaganit um that you know uh was established. But the term Ugur was revived by the Soviet Union in 1921 to describe the Turk peoples on the eastern side of the Tanak mountains and the Pomer Mountains which separated us uh geographically from historically West Turkiststan, right?
I guess a lot of, you know, divisions and ethnic groups kind of owe their origins to um, you know, kind of more powerful kingdoms and states that kind of like like I was I reading about the Hoous and the Totsis and how that was a definition kind of created by the Belgian colonialists. Um, but then they forced everybody to choose like yeah they you know they they were they didn't have like a different language or different religion or anything. uh one group was a little bit more sophisticated and the other group was a little more rural and they were then forced to choose it on their identity cards and it became this reified thing which then led to this kind of genocide. So, um, all right. There's like how many?
There's like I I read 12 million, but then some some people say more like 20 million. Um, so um our that the officially the Chinese government claims our population is 12 million. Um but based on historical data and China's own you know um and records of our population you know growth rates along with you know their own statements um we estimate our population is somewhere around 30 to 45 million that that's not just the but including all the other Turk ethnic groups inside East Turkiststan so u in 1946 uh when we were an independent state known as the East Turkiststan Republic. And this this is a data that was given to the uh you know US im consulate in East Turkiststan. Um our population at that time in 1946 our government um stated was 7 million.
In December 1949 after Mao took over East Turkiststan he stated that East Turkiststan had 9 million Turk peoples. Um then um o over the years obviously China began to engage in acts of genocide, col col colonization, massacre. Um however even with the ongoing genocide uh after China launched it between 2016 and 2017 the Chinese government forcibly and this is according to their own state media they collected the DNA samples prints and retina scans of 36 million people between the ages of 12 and and 65 that are so-called ethnic minorities. So what does ethnic minorities mean? It means anyone who's not actually Chinese like you know the Hanchinese.
So anyone that's not HChinese they're they're described as ethnic minorities even though we reject that term because we are still the majority in our homeland. In fact if anything it's the Chinese that are the ethnic minorities colonists in in in our homeland. So from that data we estimate our population real realistic population is anywhere about 30 to about uh 45 million. Of course uh China's agenda is to reduce our population to you know that 12 to 15 million uh number and that's why they're engaging in forced sterilizations, forced organ harvesting and killing a lot of our youth through organ harvesting. um over four million of our babies have been forcibly uh aborted over the past two three decades by the Chinese state.
So um they're definitely worried about our population growing and they historically have especially um since the 60s have tried to downplay our population and often saying oh the previous data was you know a mistake. we mistakenly stated those things even though if you look at um foreign um like even the Russians they the Russian the Soviet Union their census that they did was much higher they estimated that we that we were about 10 to 15 million um back in the 1930s of course there were um wars there were periods of you know conflict um that you know caused a lot of deaths uh and whatnot, but it wouldn't have reduced our population, you know, by several million um or or by half in in China's according to China's, you know, narrative. And um do you have like figures and statistics over how many people are interned in camps or being tortured or how many people have been subjected to like forced sterilizations and so on? Yes. Yes.
Um, so there's been over 300,000 women have been forcibly subjected to force sterilization and that's uh according to the Chinese government's own data um that they that they uh published um their their health department of the so-called autonomous region. Um how are they how do they do that? They just they go to see a doctor and they're put under and and something. No, no, they they they force our people. Um so they go to your home. Um first they sent two the Chinese government sent 2.2 million Chinese officials to our homes under a paired so-called relative program to get to know one another to better assess our needs etc.
Of course, it's to, you know, to monitor us to figure out, you know, what they need to do. Like they grade us from a scale of zero to 100. If we fall under 90, if we fall under the 90 points, which is, you know, you you have to be nearly perfect and extremely loyal to not fall under that. Um, you're deemed at risk. uh and uh you're deemed a risk to the state uh with the potential to resist etc. or you have been infected by so-called extremist ideologies. Um you know so you have to be quote re-educated. So this is what they did initially is they sent 2.2 million offic Chinese officials to live in our home.
So these Chinese officials for uh what they did is they'll come to our house they'll start asking questions. So they'll ask us, "Oh, do you do you practice do you practice any religion here?" Oh, you do? Oh, okay. That's minus 10 points. You just lost 10 points because you practice some faith. Um here, um you're you're you're even if you say no, they'll be like, "Oh, here's some alcohol. We brought some pork for you. We're a majority Muslim people." So they'll be like, "Here's some pork dumplings. Please eat this." If you reject that, oh, you're an extremist. That's another 10 points. Um, they'll bring alcohol and be like, "Here, have some alcohol." Another 10 points, just because you refused it.
Um, they'll look around your house if you if you if they see any working out like equipment, like gym equipment, you know, which which is insane. Just, you know, if they see some dumbbells laying around, oh, why are you working out? It doesn't matter if you're working out to, you know, improve your fitness or if you're a young man especially and you're working out to, you know, you know, look good for the for the ladies. Oh, no. That's not the reason you're working out. You're working out because you're you're you want to rebel against the Chinese state. Another 10 points lost. So, for all these ridiculous leing, if you somehow own a tent, even if they find a tent in your house, you lose 10 points if you if they find anything.
Okay? You know, I get but so so let's say that you fall under this category. Then they'll take like a teenager or young woman and they'll take her to a Yeah. They'll they'll they they'll take you they'll put hoods over your head, you know, um and they'll take you to a concentration camp which they describe as a initially they're like, "Oh, these are re-education centers. These people have been, you know, infected by pro-independence thinking and extremist thought that needs to be corrected. um their backwards were, you know, re re-educating them and they're like, "Oh, this is voluntary." Yeah. Like voluntarily you want to go into a concentration camp.
Of course, this is the the the the Chinese government's narrative. Then as international community began getting aware of it and you know, you can see satellite imagery of these camps. If you go on Google Earth, you can see that these camps were starting to be built in 2011, 2012. Um and they have high walls, watchtowers. They're like prisons, right? Um and the reason the reason they started to bear down on this was because of the resources in the region. So historically, um yeah, East Turkiststan is roughly about 1 million. It's 1,828,418 square kilometers. Um in the US perspective, that's about almost three times the size of the US state of Texas.
So it's it's it's huge. It makes up a uh about 1/5ifth of the current territories under the control of the PRC. So it's huge real estate um from that perspective. But at the same time, it's where over 30% of China's oil and natural gas comes from. Over 40% 40 to 60% of their uh coal reserves come from East Turkiststan. The electricity from East Turkystan powers uh dozens of major Chinese cities in 22 provinces. The oil and natural gas from East Turkiststan fuels China's economy even rare metals and so on. Yeah. And we have gold vast gold reserves, lithium, nickel, mountainous region or is it a Yeah.
Yeah. much of East Turkystan actually were surrounded on mountains virtually almost on all sides. Um in the north we have the Alai mountains. Yeah. The uh the west we have the Tarabatai mountains. Through the middle uh and the west we have um the Tang Mountains. Um to the south west the Palmer Mountains. To the south we have the uh Karokurum or the Kurum Mountains. To the east we have the Alton Mountains. um to the northeast we again it goes through the Alai mountains and there's that little sliver of area what that connects us to China where there isn't any mountains unfortunately right then there's also the uh the road and belt initiative or the belt and road yeah so the belt and road initiative is so this is why China what's the Chinese name of the region Xi Jang or yeah they renamed it Shinj Jang which means the new territory um in fact in 1955 5 after occupying East Turkiststan um our our our our people you know rejected the Chinese and resisted the Chinese occupation.
So Ma was like oh how about I give you guys autonomy in order to appease you know to try to uh you know um prevent us from declaring independence. So, East Turkystan officially the Chinese call designated as the Shing Jang oil autonomous region back in 1955. But of course, that autonomy um is just on paper. Everything is controlled by the Chinese. You have a couple of puppet Weaguer um and other Turk leaders in, you know, figurative uh positions, but everything is controlled by the Chinese. The Chinese government set up the XPCC a year before in 1954 specifically which is a now a three and a half million strong paramilitary force specifically to facilitate Chinese colonization and to suppress any uh descent against Chinese occupation and colonization.
So at the time that China invaded East Turkystan back in 1949, it was estimated that the Chinese population or out of the total demographics was 2 to 3%. That's like the 200,000 Chinese soldiers, their families and civil servants that came to uh occupy and colonize East Turkiststan. Whereas the made up over 90% of the population combined with the other Turk people, we were over like 96% of the the population. Because of 70 uh six years of colonization, occupation, massacres, and the ongoing genocide over the past decade, the U population has fallen to less than uh according to China's own records. Again, we dispute this, but China claims that they fell to 46%, whereas the Chinese grew from again 2 to 3% to over 40% um as of 2022 was their late 22 or 23 was their latest um official census.
Yeah. Um what's um kind of like um kind of curious to compare the treatment of the the weaguers with the treatment of Tibetan the Tibetan people? Um is it kind of um similar playbook or there are a lot of differences in how they treat the Tibetans? Um it's similar in many ways but um Tibetans they have more international support uh in the sense that you know there's more international awareness. Tibetans are not um you know they're they're Buddhist. They're not you know there's not the the terrorist stigmatistism or label attached to them because of their religion. Whereas China um like for example China is not um locking up millions of Tibetans in camps and you know doing all the things that they're doing to us or sterilizing their population um or taking millions of their childrens away from them.
um because that would you know create a lot of outrage from a lot of countries that are you know silent to our case because again um we're a majority Muslim population um China's economically you know very uh dominant to compared to other countries not many people in the world are familiar with us and China is officially carrying out all of this under the guise of we're fighting against terrorism we're fighting against uh uh uh uh Islamic extremism. This is what we are doing. We are re-educating them. We are uplifting these people. We are dradicalizing them or um you know removing their extremist thoughts etc etc. This is the narrative China is doing.
Of course now coming back to this this was actually part of China's war planning strategy. So in November 2009 at China's National Defense University uh a Chinese uh strategist he highlighted that East Turkiststan was the biggest risk strategic vulnerability of China in relation to a Taiwan contingency and he stated that if we do not resolve the East Turkiststan problem before trying to take Taiwan um the US could easily arm India in that event the US could easily armed 300,000 to half a million and they would cut off our west to east pipelines and energy grids. Furthermore, um because 80% of China's oil and natural gas and you know trade uh imports went through the straight of Malaa uh he said that the US and others could blockade this and we would not be able to sustain that war. So he said we need to find an alternative. We need to deal with this issue immediately.
and he says,"I suggest that we do it under the frame of counterterrorism. It's going to be more believable. This is what we'll tell the international community, but of course we know that that's not the truth." And he said, "And this lecture is still it's available on You Tube." Um, so they implemented his plan in 2013. China la under Xi Jinping launched the belt and road initiative and the belt and road initiative is a multi-t trillion dollar quote infrastructure project which is China trying to help develop and connect to the world um but it has much more political and military implications. The belt and road initiative runs through East Turkiststan.
Um in fact without East Turkiststan there is no belt and road and again all of that is China is preparing that in the event that if it does go to war with the US or others over Taiwan. Um if there is a blockade it can evade that blockade it can still continue to import oil, natural gas and other you know and continue to conduct business through the belt and road initiative. And so that's why they launched, you know, under the framework of, oh, we're fighting against terrorism. They felt that we had a potential to, you know, we could be, you know, uh, we could rise up. And so this is why they've been putting us into this and trying to essentially uh undertake what many experts have described as China's final solution to the East Turkiststan problem to ensure that you know when China decides to go to war with uh go to war with whatever power um that we are not even you know considered a remote possibility to uh resist uh against China or be a flink against China.
Right. And there there have been some acts of resistance or terrorism here and there. Um in so in the '9s um we up until really uh the last main acts of resistance um was like 98.99. Up until then uh our people had primarily targeted China and even prior to that even in the like this smallcale protest or small scale individual um attacks against Chinese military personnel it was always against the Chinese government. However, China of course needs to show that you know that it has a terrorist problem. Um and that the world to the longest time had not bought into China's lie because they're like they're not attacking you know civilians.
they're not, you know, conducting indiscriminate bombings. So, we don't, you know, the US and other countries are like, we we can't label these people as terrorists, you know, um because just because they're they're resisting against you. Um then, so to prove that point, China conduct Chinese intelligence conducted a series of uh false flag bombings after Xi Jinping went to Eastan. Um and in April of 2014, this is where he gives the u he visits a u military base in East Turkiststan and he gives a um this the notorious speech where he says that you need to show absolutely no mercy to these people to uproot them from their roots to lock up those that needs to be locked up those that needs to be disappeared disappear. This is where he pretty much gave the foundation and told them to launch the the genocide.
But of course, China needs a justification. So two days later, right after Xi Jinping's plane takes off um from East Takistan back to China. Uh couple hours after that, a bombing happens at a train train station. And again, China is like, "Oh, this was conducted by weager terrorists." Of course, the only evidence that they showed is a individual wearing a hood, walking with a suitcase, planting the suitcase, and walking back. You don't ever see the individual's face. Yeah. Then, um, China's like, "Oh, this is done by Weaguer terrorists. We have a terrorist problem." Um, and then there was another, uh, that wasn't enough. So, couple weeks later, they staged another bombing.
And again, again, Yeah. And then they're like, "Oh, we have a terrorist problem. We're fighting against terrorism and this is why we have to lock up these people." Even though if you look at the satellite imagery of the camps, like if you look at because on Google Earth, you can see when they started excavating, you know, to build these concentration camps and prisons. Yeah. 2010, 2011, 2012, way before, you know, they began um those actual uh planting those actual, you know, false flags to justify it. They had everything prepared and then they're like, "All right." Yeah. Um so I another question about the depends. I mean uh so you're saying that the Benz are spared some of this this because of the international attention on them and kind of the fact that there's like a sort of the west sort of like celebrities and so on and care about them more that makes they have they're they're in a little bit better situation than usama um but I know I know I know they have situations where like um I saw um I think it was a Um, Tibetans speak about how, you know, they used to be able to get over the Himalayas, like some a few, you know, a few hundred or few thousand would escape every year, but now because of high-tech surveillance and drones, they can't do that anymore.
Anybody who tries to get across the mountains to escape just gets gets killed. Uh, is it a similar situation there where they're using like high-tech surveillance? Oh, yeah. I mean, for forget about trying to escape over mountains. you can't escape your own district within your own city. So, if you're if you're in a city, you're divided into several districts. There's checkpoints. There's, you know, uh uh they have so-called convenient police stations uh which is ar which are uh manned by fourman teams of armed people's police. So, the these are like um you could say the US doesn't have an equivalent. the the Europeans, like the French, they have something called the John Dharma or John Durmary.
Um I guess in the US you could compare them to like a national guard like we could say. Yeah. Um every 500 meters you you're everything is surveiled. There's cameras on on one light. There's like 20 different cameras for 20 different Even if you're not actually in a camp, it's almost like you're living in in a camp in that sense. You're very restricted. Yeah. How how many people are actually in the camps now you say or what's the what's the Oh Chinese the Chinese government so our our analysis uh based on you know the fact that there are over 1,400 camps um and you know looking at the size of those camps uh we estimated that you know there was at least three three million or more people that were interned in these camps.
uh the Chinese government itself and the the US uh Department of Defense actually in 20 uh May of 2019 stated that you know they believe that there was at least three uh that there were three million or more people um weaguers and other Turkish people locked up in concentration camps. Um and China in its own white paper after you know th this became known to the world China began saying oh no these aren't concentration camps you know these are vocational training and re-education centers we voluntarily these people voluntarily went there to engage in vocational training we every year that in their September 2020 white paper you can find it it's on available they stated that every year between um 2014 till the end of 2019 they sent uh uh 1.29 million people 1 1,290,000 people every year to vocational training or that's roughly over that period that's 7.8 8 million people, almost 8 million people. And then they said that uh three and a half million people graduated that they uplifted from poverty. They graduated from these camps and they were provided jobs in because they were surplus labor. Um so they were being used as forced labor after word.
Yeah. Seems like that's starting to happen all over the world including in the US. It feels like that's happening um with uh potentially with you know people are being put in camps here. Um and um so what's kind of uh you know um what's your hope? I mean you reached out you want to do this podcast. I mean here we're talk we're talking. I'll give you a little bit of you know what what what what what what's a path? Our hope Yeah. Our hope is one to you know create more awareness because there we had some awareness between you know 2019 2020 and then with COVID and then uh Russia's invasion of Ukraine um our issue has gotten out of the spotlight.
The US government recognized it as a genocide. The parliaments of a dozen uh me EU states recognized it as genocide and crimes against humanity. The UN stated that it's crimes against humanity yet nothing is being done. Um people are not talking about it. Um our governments are completely uh silent. Um and this is why it's important to one raise awareness but also to call for action because right now just the other day for example um the at the UN uh the UN voted um with majority voting to condemn Russia and demand Russia return you know uh the thousands of Ukrainian children that they had kidnapped from their parents.
um uh uh uh you know and Ukraine and Russia has been taken to the international criminal court. Putin has an arrest warrant by the international criminal court. In our case, the Chinese government's own data and they they admit to this. They don't even try to hide it. They took over a million of our children, forcibly took them away from their parents because they discovered that even though they forced them to teach, learn Chinese and strictly Chinese in schools uh all the way until college um the fact that these ch children are returning home to their families, they still are able to retain their identity, their language, their culture.
So to erode that, the Chinese government's like, "Oh, we need to take them all away." And so we have a million of our children who have been forcibly abducted, taken into these so-called boarding schools. And if if you look at the satellite imagery of those boarding schools, again, it's like miniature concentration camps, high, you know, a guard tower, high walls, barbed wire fences around it. Um there were journalists, western journalists who tried to go near and there the the the armed police were not not letting them go anywhere near saying this area is off restricted to you. Parents can't even ever see their children again. So over a million of them and many of them in the videos that the Chinese government is propagating stating that you know they're you know uplifting these people.
They're turning transforming them into these children into loyal Chinese citizens. You have our children that are being instructed by Chinese military officers, soldiers in PLA uniforms. They're being put into little miniature PLA uniforms and being, you know, forced to chant things like, "Oh, we are the future soldiers of China." All these types of things. It's horrible. It's horrible. I'm sorry. I mean I guess what you know a number a few reasons why I thought to talk to you is I kind of feel like um you know the US is becoming more authoritarian and um sometimes these days when you look at the trajectory of the US uh in some ways there are things about China which are starting to look a little bit better uh you know they have lifted you know almost everybody out of extreme poverty apparently uh and um they have um you know they're building a renewable energy infrastructure whereas the US is dismantling the renewable energy infrastructure that it had um you know under the under the inflation reduction act that Biden was building and so on like we're going backwards in time in in certain respects whereas the Chinese you know at least technologically seem to go you know to be going forwards in time there's also leftists like Yanuz Marfakus who's a former Greek uh economics minister who's kind of been saying that there are more positives about China than you know that we in the west or tend to give them credit for.
So for instance like no I'm just saying these are some of the you know this but I mean you know so for instance like apparently there's like sort of you know local governance I mean you can't like challenge you know the the communist party but there's more participatory local governance he was like pointing to that out so I wanted to kind of like come back to this to just you know kind of reveal um how you know horrible the Chinese can be and are you know in in their repression of human rights and so on you Sure. There's there's no local governance at all. Everything is from Beijing all the way down to the village level. Everything is directly from Beijing. They make it appear that oh, you know, there's local level um but everything is Beijing decides who becomes your local little secretary.
There's no elections, you know, in that sense. It's not like they are elected in any way. It's selected from top down. Um even in East Turkiststan outside of the camps um it's a total surveillance state. Um and every uh week they force our people if you're in a village and you can see do videos even right now even in this cold they forced them in the mornings to attend flag raising ceremonies to swear loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party to swear loyalty to the Chinese state and the freezing cold and they just you know give all these two-hour lectures in Chinese about you know how good the party is, how the party is doing this, the party is doing that, uh, and and waste people's time, but also keep them, you know, you know, controlled.
Um, on top of that, if you have a cell phone, for example, if you use a cell phone in East Turkistan, everyone has a mandatory government app that you have to install your phone. You cannot have a cell phone without that. and they're at police checkpoints like as I told you there's um these uh convenient police those police can come up to you and they have a device they can come up to you and be like I want to check your phone and they'll just plug it into their thing on top of the app and if there's anything remotely political remotely religious remotely you know things that are quote banned so anything like if you if it's if if you were if you had a VPN if you had you know if if If you had anything that was critical of the Chinese government, if you had some um you know, anything about even a symbol like even a symbol of you know the crescent and the star or a flag or anything like that, immediately you're picked up as a terrorist. Um, even if they're you're not they're not doing this in the street, even if you're at home and you're doing this, you know, on your phone, it'll send a notification to the nearest police station and they will come and get you. um the surveillance technology that China perfected and is perfecting in East Turkystan actually much of it has been supplied uh and so that China can test it by none other than American and western companies we're talking about Oracle we're talking about you know all of these other companies that are engaging in AI databases and all these types of thing and surveillance tech all of them they marketed it they let the Chinese test it on us to see how it works and now they're trying to you know quietly implement it here in the US and other western parts of the world.
This is why speaking and learning about that part especially speaking out against that part and learning about it is relevant to your own freedom to your own you know absolutely I couldn't agree more. I'm wondering if uh you know, have you found like common cause with like you know other peoples in similar straits right now? And I'm thinking obviously of the of the Gazin, you know, the Palestinians in Gaza. Um um or because you're really dealing with the China situation, is it is it just very specific to um kind of like raising raising attention there? Well, um we, you know, we've tried I tried to work with, you know, try to cooperate with, um, almost every group out there trying to ensure that, you know, we can have a, uh, you know, raise our plight.
But um in many cases I'll be honest I've been kicked out of mosques for simply asking them to pray uh for what's happening to pray just just a prayer not not asking for a donation not anything just asking them to pray for an end to the suffering of our people because we're a majority Muslim people we can't even pray like in in in Gaza at least they can pray they can you know pray to Allah they can say Allah they can say assalamlay and have no fear. They can pray. They can, you know, talk about their plight. All of this. If they die, you know, their bodies will be returned to their families.
They can bury them. In our case, gone. If they execute you, they send a bill to your parents, to your family, and be like, you got to pay for this execution. This is this level of humiliation. We our there hasn't been a prayer in East Turkiststan since 2016. Since 2016, there has not even been a single prayer in East Turkiststan. People are afraid to even like foreign Muslims that went to East Turkiststan try to say assalam alaikum to people and they're like assalamikum. They're like no no no I don't don't I did not hear that. Um even like a Albanian journalist who was very you know skeptical because he thought this was you know this was just western propaganda against China.
And so the Chinese government actually took him there on a tour. And so when he went to these re-education camps, they took him in to one of the re-education camps that they staged. And when he tried to greet them, they were like, "Hell no." You know, you can't we can't say that. And they're like, "What the heck? This is strange. Like why would you even criminalize that?" Then they ask him, "Can you leave?" Because the Chinese government again says this is voluntary and the guy he's looking at his you know the Chinese handler saying what how do I answer this? He literally asks how do I answer this and the guy was like what the hell he's like so they're not free to leave and literally they're singing if you're happy and you know it clap your hands in English.
This is the level. And many of them you could see were tortured, had bruises all over their face. And they're like, "What happened?" Oh, I I fell. I slipped while while, you know, we were running here and I slipped. Oh, yeah. This is this is the the the level of reality. And he said, "This was very sketchy." And when he tried to go to other places, they they refused. And they're like, "Dude, like you're you're you're supposed to stick to our our script. You're not supposed to go beyond that." And this is the level, you know, the Muslim world has practically sold us out. Our own Turk brother nations like the Central Asian Republic, Turkey, they're selling us out unfortunately because of China's economic and political clout.
Um, even you know, Palestinians, the Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority, when they went to Beijing, they called us terrorists. They said, "Oh, we support China's counterterrorism against, you know, uh, operations in in in in what China calls Shinjang in East Turkiststan." And that they supported China's territorial integrity, etc., etc. Um, you don't, this is why you don't see, you know, you see millions of people or tens of thousands of people across the world, you know, waving free Palestine, um, and a lot of Muslims waving free Palestine, you know, going out there in support of Palestine. But when it comes to us, you don't you don't see any student protests. You don't see any of that happening.
It's always a handful of our our people, you know, our small diaspora that are there and you never see any other groups um there to support us. Unfortunately, this is the the the sad reality and we we can't understand why that is. Is it because China is so powerful economically? Everybody really wants to buddy up to China. I mean, the Palestinians are hoping for support. You know, everyone has their agenda. Um, maybe a last question for you. And by the way, people watching this, I forgot to mention, obviously like, obviously subscribe. Uh, you know, I think it's, uh, valuable to get this type of information out to the channel.
But also, I wanted to ask you, Sy, what can people do? How can they support? Um, you know, if somebody gets inspired, wants to take some kind of helpful action, uh, what would be what would be what would be ways to to help this cause right now? Well, one is just to learn more about East Turkiststan, learn more about the plight of the um the ongoing genocide. Um follow us on social media at ETexile gov or at Salihay that was a little fast. What was that again? The social etexile gov. That's uh for the government exile. Okay. And then you can Google my name and find me on on social media.
Uh um I run I represent two uh entities. one the government in exile and the national awakening movement thestan national awakening movement which is like a a nonprofit NGO both of of us we have um you know uh you know programs where we accept volunteers or internships so um we engage you know in uh advocacy um not just um you know at at the uh US Congress but all across the world so any part of the world um you know we're looking for people to volunteer with us, to intern with us. Uh we're also how large is it uh you kind of diaspora? Like how many outside of the that region? Outside of East Turkstan there's about a million um million to two million about 60% of that is just right across the border.
Um and then the rest are spread out. So in the US there's probably about 15,000 or so. So we're a very uh small um uh diaspora in terms of the west. um in Europe combined all across Europe there's probably maybe 30 40,000 um but it's it's it's really the ones that are really in you know where we have large diaspora communities are like the central Asian republics Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstanistan Turkey Saudi Arabia but all those governments there they prevent um us from engaging in any in any form of advocacy we can't even talk about the atrocities is happening because those governments have security and intelligence cooperation with China and anyone that doesn't, you know, listen to them, they'll deport him, they'll arrest them, all these types of things. So, it's just left, we're just left with our western diaspora to do much of the uh the work on on on our for our plight.
So, um, again, you know, post about this, share about it, um, speak out against it, talk to your members who call and talk, tell your members of Congress to do something about it. um you know invite um uh victims and survivors and you know organizations to speak at your you know whe whether it's your local community center um if you're a university student at your university um you know if if if you you know have a church at your church your synagogue mosque etc um and and try to raise awareness I mean at the very least we need to be speaking out against it and pressuring our government to actually uphold you know the promise of never again to uphold the commitment to you know self-determination um but most importantly we need to recognize this most important fact why is China doing this it's not because we are Muslim many there's a misconception uh that oh China is targeting the weaguers because they're Muslim if that was the case you there's 10 to 15 million ethnically Chinese Muslims and they're not facing um you know persecution it's because of control over our country uh our land because of Chinese occupation and colonization and that is the root of the problem and we have we believe that the only way to ensure our people's survival to ensure the very human rights because the US is not going to protect our human rights for us the UN definitely is not going to do it China which is trying to wipe us out is not going to give us that human rights the only way for us to have our human rights and to secure our very existence is through our own by resto restoring our independent state. And so we need to you know push for you know decolonization and recognition of our national uh self-determination right to sovereignty like how other plightes you know other oppressed peoples have been supported. Um so we ask people to start you know the first step to decolonizing is start using the correct term East Turkiststan and not the Chinese colonial term uh shing jang which means the new territory or in the original Chinese English dictionary from 1897 literally the colony. All right.
Well, listen, thank you for uh sharing uh your time and your uh yeah, your your story and uh I wish I had uh you know, better ideas of how to help, but uh yeah, we'll share this and uh uh life moves on, you know, but good good luck to you and I hope that you achieve a breakthrough uh in this situation. Thank you again for h Thank you and thank you for having me. Yeah, my pleasure. Great to talk great to meet you and great to talk to you.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.