Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the 291st episode of objectively speaking. I'm Jag, CEO of the Atlas Society. I am honored to have Salih Hudayar, Foreign Minister of the East Turkestan Government in Exile, join us today to discuss the organization's efforts to spotlight the Chinese Communist Party's campaign of repression, mass detention, and cultural eradication against the Uyghur people. Salih, thank you so much for joining us.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Thank you for having me.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: So can you share a bit about your personal background? I understand you came to America as a refugee. You were born in our tush, but I'm guessing you don't see yourself as born in China.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Yes, we. I don't see myself as born in China because our country is not a part of China. It's currently occupied by China.
I was born in East Turkestan in the city of Arche, and I came to The United States 26 years ago this coming June as a political refugee. And I grew up.
Most of my life I spent in Oklahoma.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: All right, well, could you give us maybe just a brief history of how the East Turkestan government in exile was established and what it represents today?
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Yes.
So in late 1949, the People's Republic of China invaded East Turkestan and occupied it after overthrowing the independent East Turkistan Republic on December 22, 1949.
And some of our leaders, initially China promised us, you know, autonomy, saying that, you know, we're going to give you autonomy, we're going to give you cultural rights.
And many of our leaders of the East Turkistan Republic in 1955 is when they made us an autonomous region. They rejected the autonomy.
And then China began to purge our officials as so called local nationalists.
And they ended up fleeing to the Soviet Union. And there they tried to establish a government in exile, but the Soviet Union didn't allow that, so it became the East Turkestan National Committee. And that persisted until the fall of the Soviet Union, where we again tried to establish a government in exile in Kazakhstan, where we have a large diaspora community. But the government there again would refuse to allow us to establish a government in exile.
Then after the Central Asian governments began to crack down on our independence movement as well, many of our leaders ended up fleeing to North America, Europe. And in 2004, they were able to persuade, you know, taking advantage of the fact that, you know, America is a democracy and there's freedom of expression, including political expression, we were able to establish the East Turkestan government in exile in 2004, in September to advocate one to serve as a continuation of the East Turkestan Republic, but to advocate for the restoration of East Turkestan's national independence and sovereignty on the international stage.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Now, you've described facilities in East Turkestan as concentration camps, while China portrays them as vocational training centers. Can you explain what is actually happening inside them, including how detainees are compelled to appear content during visits by outsiders or media?
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Yes.
So In May of 2014, almost 12 years ago, the Chinese government launched its official campaign of genocide, which it calls the People's War against Terrorism.
Since then, they've mass interned millions of people in concentration camps which the Chinese government describes as vocational training centers or re education camps to instill political loyalty, to indoctrinate us to be loyal to the Chinese state and to teach our people, you know, the Chinese language, etc, when in fact based on what leaked Chinese internal documents state, as well as, you know, some of the victims, survivors who were able to survive and flee into neighboring countries, as well as, you know, Chinese security officials who were in these camps. This is essentially a concentration camp where people are subject to torture, forced sterilization, forced medication.
There are many have been subjected to organ harvesting.
There have been, you know, brutal acts of sexual violence, including gang rapes and anyone who refuses to, you know, pretty much let go of their Uyghur or Turkic identity and embrace, you know, the Chinese identity or the identity that the Chinese state wants you to, to take on.
They are then subsequently officially sentenced to various, you know, prison sentences for various, you know, crimes such as so called extremism, separatism, terrorism, etc.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So are you familiar with Jeffrey Kane's book called the Perfect Police State?
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: So I interviewed him recently and he described since how since 2017, an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities have been accused of harboring ideological viruses and terrorist thoughts and taken to hundreds of internment facilities, the largest detention of ethnic minorities since the Holocaust. How difficult is it to know what those living inside East Turkestan are actually experiencing day to day?
[00:06:30] Speaker B: I mean, it's very difficult given the fact that the Chinese state does not allow any, you know, free press, any actual communication.
They won't allow journalists into East Turkistan. If you do go into East Turkestan, they'll only allow you to enter two areas. One is the Urumqi, which is essentially the, the colonial administrative base in East Turkestan, mostly Chinese, where Uyghurs are a very small minority, and then to Kashkar and even in These places, you only view the tourist spots where they have people staged, as you know, Uyghurs. You have even Chinese people who are not ethnically Uyghur dressed up as Uyghurs. And for the Western audience, because of the misconception that we have been long labeled as so called Chinese Muslims, they think that these Chinese are Uyghurs. And so they will, you know, pretend to be Uyur and they'll say, oh, everything's fine, but if you try to go anywhere beyond that limited zone, you need a special pass and you won't be able to travel. So this is something that, you know, it's very difficult for information to get in and information to get out.
In fact, there are checkpoints for Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples, the native population. We have to go through, you know, checkpoints to enter, you know, one district of our city to another. We have to get special passes to go out from that city to go into another city. We have to get, you know, the Chinese Intelligence and Security Bureau, they have to approve you to be allowed to go in to, to, to go travel out of your own town to another town, even to get gas, the same thing. You have to, you know, use your ID cards. You can't buy any amount of gas as much as you want.
There's restrictions on everything from our movement to what we do inside our home. Over 1.2 million Chinese officials were sent to our home to initially monitor us and to grade us and based on the score that we received.
If you received lower than a score of 90, then you were deemed unreliable and you had to be, quote, re educated.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: How prevalent is forced labor in East Turkestan and what evidence supports claims of its widespread use?
[00:09:07] Speaker B: Well, forced labor is very prevalent. In fact, China, it's even more prevalent today.
In fact, the UN just last month warned that the Chinese government forced labor transfer programs, that's what the Chinese government calls it, labor transfer programs amounted to not only enslavement but also crimes against humanity. And that between 2021 to 2025, this is the Chinese government's own data, showed that there were 13,700,000 labor transfers happening within East Turkestan.
Furthermore, the Chinese government officially, since 2020, after they released their white paper defending the concentration camps as vocational training centers, and in their own white paper, they stated that they sent 1.29 million people per year, or roughly 7.8 million people between 2014 to the end of 2019 to vocational training the concentration camps, and that they graduated and founded found jobs and that three and a half million of them had graduated and found jobs. But in recent years China itself is stating that they engaged in 13.7 million labor transfers. And many of the camps that they claim that are closed because if you look at the satellite imagery, the camps still are still there.
The only difference is the, the watchtowers have been removed in the concentration camps. That's the only difference. They removed the watchtowers and, and around it is just massive industrial facilities, factories and businesses that they built around it in recent years.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: Post 2020 we've got a question here from Jackson Sinclair wondering how large is the Uyghur diaspora?
[00:11:00] Speaker B: So our diaspora is about, you know, in total across the world is estimated to be anywhere from 1 to 2 million.
And majority of them are in neighboring countries like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan with large populations in Turkey as well and as well as Saudi Arabia in Europe combined we might have about 50,000. In the United States there's probably about 15,000.
Similarly there's about 5 to 10,000 in Canada.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: And what's the population of the the East Turkestan?
[00:11:42] Speaker B: So this is something that's also heavily contested because the Chinese government itself officially claims that their the total population of East Turkestan is about 25 million with 13 and a half million Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples as of 2020. Yet in 2018, Chinese state media reported that they collected the DNA samples, voice prints and Retina scans of 36 million so called ethnic minorities, meaning non Chinese peoples in East Turkestan between the ages of 12 and 65.
Furthermore, our population according to the data that the US State Department has because the United States had a consulate in East Turkestan before the Chinese communist occupation of East Turkistan.
Our government at that time, when we were an independent country in 1946, we assessed our population at that time was 7 million. In December 1949, Mao stated that there were 9 million Turkic peoples in East Turkestan. So there's no way that, you know, we went from 9 million in 1949 to only 13 and a half million in the course of seven decades.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: All right, we got another question here from LinkedIn saying I apologize for my ignorance, but is China committing the genocide and oppression only because of religious beliefs or do they view Uyghurs as a political threat as well?
[00:13:18] Speaker B: It's actually they view the people of East Turkestan as a political threat more so than a religious threat. In fact, if it was a religious issue, then you would see there's about 10 or so more millions Chinese Muslims, actual Chinese Muslims who are, who speak Chinese, who physically look Chinese, who are Chinese but practice Islam. None of them are targeted because again, the issue is not about religion. It's about China's determination to complete its colonization and occupation of East Turkestan.
And that is the root of the problem.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Now Western governments have rightly condemned Russia's actions in Ukraine, including the forced displacement of children.
You Salih, have highlighted how Uyghur children are sometimes placed in state facilities and treated as orphans, even when members are family members are available and able to care for them. Have international child rights advocates engaged with this issue in a meaningful way?
[00:14:31] Speaker B: Unfortunately, no. In fact, I don't recall seeing any really international child rights advocates or activists or organizations specifically focusing on, on, on children's rights, highlighting the plight of East Turkistani children.
The Chinese government's own data shows that over a million of our children, as of 2019 it was 890,000.
Since then it's increased. And so we believe it's over a million Uyghur and other Turkic children have been forcibly taken from their families and put into what the Chinese government claims are orphanages and boarding schools. And again, if you look at the satellite imagery of these facilities and the few instances where journalists were able to get a couple hundred meters in front of these facilities before being turned away by Chinese security forces, it's essentially internment camps for children, barbed wire fences, watchtowers and Chinese police or military preventing people from going in or out. And again, in, in the videos that the Chinese government itself puts out, the propaganda videos, they claim that they are, you know, turning our children into loyal Chinese citizens and that they are, you know, modernizing them, developing them, etc, there were forcedly stripped of our identity, our language, our culture, and we are talking about children as young as 3, 4 years old.
And this is crucially important because from a sociological standpoint, a psychological standpoint, children after like four or five years old, if you, you won't be able to remember anything before that. So if you are a five year old, you know, you're not going to remember your, you know, if you're older than, you know, five, you might be able to, but if you're younger than that, you're not going to remember anything about your original family. Nothing of that remains, you know, your original identities. And this is part of the program, you know, to essentially indoctrinate and assimilate our next generation, but also in adding with the forced sterilizations and abortions, to essentially wipe out our people's. Future.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: So in let's get some historical context. In your Foreign Policy article, you trace Chinese control of East Turkestan all the way back to the Qing Dynasty's invasion. How does that deeper historical context of colonialization inform your view of what you describe as an ongoing genocide?
[00:17:24] Speaker B: Yes.
So the Manchu Ching Empire is actually a. They're. They're led by the Manchus. They initially conquered China in 1644, and it was only a hundred years later that they began to encroach further west into East Turkestan. And in 1759, they invaded East Turkestan. And in 1762, they occupied it as a military colony.
But they didn't, you know, really colonize it in. In that sense.
They didn't. Like, there was no settler colonialism in that sense at the time. We resisted against the Manchu Ching domination, and we were able to secure our independence in 1865 as the state of Yetishar, or is East Turkestan.
Until again in 1878, the Manchu Empire invaded us again. And then in 1884, they formally tried to annex East Turkestan into their empire. And as Xinjiang, or the new territory or the colony in the Chinese language. Of course, the Qing empire fell in 1911 with the Chinese Revolution itself, and then in 19. After 1911, we had our own independence movement brewing in East Turkistan.
And East Turkistan was pretty much divided into various spheres of influences, you know, by various warlords. And it was in 1931 that we were able to stage a. A national, you know, independence movement, and in 1933, declared our independence, but because we were, you know, close to the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union, or so the Soviet Union occupied. If you ask, where is West Turkistan?
It was the countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and other Turkic countries that were historically part of Turkestan or were historically known as West Turkestan. So when we declared our independence, the Soviet Union intervened, overthrew our first state, independent Republic. Then a decade later, we declared independence again as the East Turkestan Republic, and maintained it until the Chinese Communist invasion, which was again backed by the Soviet Union. So this is a relationship between China and the Chinese is a one between an occupied nation versus an occupier, or a colonized nation versus a colonizer.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: So if I understand correctly, East Turkestan sits atop significant natural resources, rare earth, minerals, oil, and. And a critical position along China's belt and road corridor. How central is economic exploitation to Beijing's determination to maintain control over the region?
[00:20:28] Speaker B: I mean, it's one of the Core reasons why Beijing is engaging in its colonization and genocidal campaign.
In fact, East Turkestan makes up 1,828,418 square kilometers, or in US perspective, about 760,000 square miles, or roughly almost three times the size of the US state of Texas. So it's huge in terms of territory, but it also makes up over 40% of the coal reserves that the PRC claims, over 30% of the oil and natural gas that the PRC claims is theirs.
And it's home to over 160 different types of critical and other minerals that are, you know, used, including uranium, gold, tungsten, copper, to rare earths like beryllium and other minerals.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: So now let's turn to kind of the international response and I think, frankly, double standards. In 2021, an independent tribunal in London chaired by Sir Joffrey Nice, the same prosecutor who tried Milosova that there was sufficient evidence to find China guilty of genocide against the Uyghur people. Has that finding had any meaningful impact in, in this, in your struggle?
[00:22:06] Speaker B: Well, the finding came about, I'd say nine, over nine months after the US Government officially designated it as genocide. It came over a year and a half after we had formally submitted a complaint before the International Criminal Court before for genocide and crimes against humanity.
And it comes, you know, after numerous governments had already recognized it as numerous governments and parliaments had already recognized it as genocide. Yet unfortunately, despite that, even with the, the independent findings, other than symbolic statements of concern and condemnations, because even at the un, the UN itself, the UN Human Rights Commission also stated that it may amount to crimes against humanity.
Over 51 UN member states side a joint statement highlighting that China was committing, at the very least, crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples.
But no meaningful action has followed. For example, there is no calls or support from, you know, both UN member states and ICC member states urging an investigation into, you know, genocide and crimes against humanity like the case that they did before Russia in terms of Russia's mass, mass deportation or kidnapping of some 20, 000 Ukrainian children. In our case, over a hundred, over a million children have been forcibly taken from their parents and families. Yet no outrage by the, those UN member states and by the ICC member states, unfortunately.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: Okay, I'm a little behind on taking some questions from our audience, so I'm going to turn to that now on Instagram. My modern Galt asks what are the biggest misconceptions Western audiences have about the independence movement?
[00:24:20] Speaker B: So the biggest misconceptions is it's actually because of Chinese government's political propaganda and disinformation. So many people think that our independence movement is about Islamic fundamentalism or is connected to, you know, global terrorism or global jihad, when in fact our independence movement is solely about national liberation and independence. We have no problems with any other countries. We're not trying to create a theocratic state.
You know, we're not trying to be part of any caliphate or anything like that. But these are the propaganda that the Chinese government puts out there to deter international support for our independence movement.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: All right, kingfisher, I think we answered your question in terms of the Chinese party's long term strategy. But if not, reframe and, and let us know if we haven't covered it. Clara Zahl on Instagram says or asks, do you have any memories of your childhood in East Turkestan?
[00:25:31] Speaker B: Yes, I do.
Much of my childhood, I, I would have to say was pleasant.
I grew up in a Uyghur, a business family in Natush, so I had a fairly good childhood up until 1997. This is when they began to crack down on our independence movement and they began to essentially lay out the blueprint for its genocidal policies.
So my first encounter with the Chinese state was when I was, you know, barely four years old.
They raided our home in the middle of the night because one of my relatives had been seen reading a book, a political book that was about our history that was banned. And so because of that they raided our home and they threatened to, you know, they, to shoot, shoot us all, including me, pointing their rifles at our heads if he didn't confess to, you know, whatever crimes that they accused him of committing. So that was that. Other than that, prior to that I had a, I, I'd say I had a decent childhood. Um, in, even when I was in, I, I was in the first grade in East Turkestan and even then we could initially learn our language like elementary school. Still, at least in my part of East Turkestan was still in, in our language. But that changed officially after 2003 when they rolled out the so called bilingual program, which is on paper bilingual but officially it's still monolingual where from elementary to high school you learn Chinese.
And then after high school if you want to learn Uyghur, that's, that's up to you.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: All right, well, we, it looks like possibly YouTube is silencing our chat. So if you have a Instagram Account, you or LinkedIn account and you're following the Atlas Society, you might Want to go there and answer ask your questions because we are getting quite a few from Instagram, including this one from Candace. Ms. Amazing.
Do younger Uyghurs born in the Diaspora struggle with identity and with connecting with relatives back home?
[00:28:09] Speaker B: Absolutely. I mean I was born in East Turkistan, but I came to the United States when I was 7 years old.
So I'm, I'll be 33 this coming maybe even myself despite the fact that, you know, I lived in East Turkestan for seven years, but because I was separated for so long, my, you know, my conscience, when I think I think in English, I don't think in Uyghur. I lost my ability to comprehend, you know, my conscience in Uyghur. So when I do speak Uyghur, it's I end up thinking in English then translating that in my head to Uyghur. So, so imagining how others are and looking at others that were actually born here in the diaspora, they're in a much more difficult state because one, they don't have that connection to East Turkestan like myself. I have that direct connection or even some memories, whereas they don't.
Majority of us, in fact all of us have lost contact with our relatives, especially post 2016, 2017, when they ruled out, when they rolled out the mass internment of pretty much our entire people. Anyone who has relatives overseas, anyone who has ever traveled overseas. There's about 56 official, official reasons why you can be, why you have to be re educated in the concentration camps. So we lost contact and that's one of the main reasons that I began speaking out is because I lost complete contact with my relatives back home in East Circus on and we still don't know, you know, what, what the situation is. We don't know if they're alive, if they're dead. With some of them. We were able to get some limited information through, you know, others in neighboring countries.
But the overall situation, there's still a large information and communication blockade or block out.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: All right, brilliant, Richard, again on Instagram. What role does AI technology and surveillance play in modern repression?
[00:30:27] Speaker B: It plays a very notorious role, especially in our case.
In our case, in fact we East Turkistan became the, the laboratory for these technologies.
In fact, many of these technologies unfortunately was sold by Western companies and we're talking about Western companies ranging from Google to Microsoft to Oracle who sold these supposedly security technology, including AI technology to monitor all of our data, to even facially recognize and distinguish us between, you know, the other ethnic groups, specifically between the Chinese.
Every Uyghur home. Like we every. If you have, if you're in Uyghur and you have a cell phone, you have to have a mandatory government app installed into your phone. And that government app monitors everything in your phone, from text to speeches to audio to whatever is in that phone. And if there's anything remotely political, remotely religious, remotely, you know, critical of the government or the Communist Party, it notifies the nearest police station next, you know, within your area and they come and get you for questioning.
There are, you know, millions of AI security cameras across East Turkistan to where they constantly monitor everything to where, you know, if, if you, if they put out a warrant for you and you, they'll be able to find you within minutes. Like not even minutes, like literally within seconds, they'll would through the security system they'll be able to find where you are.
It is like the perfected police state. If Orwell's 1984 was to be in reality, East Turkistan is the place. And the sad reality is that much of this technology, you know, again, it was given by the Western companies, but it's being also exported after being perfected in East Turkestan to other authoritarian regimes. What we don't know for sure if it's happening inside the United States itself. If, you know, some of these systems are being deployed in the United States. We don't know that, but we do know for a fact that it's being deployed in other, in other authorities.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: Yeah, like Iran.
Okay. Rohan Inglis on Instagram asks what would an independent East Turkestan look like politically? Any particular form of government? Is there a consensus on that? And how does it get determined?
[00:33:29] Speaker B: Yes. So our goal is to re establish our republic, the East Turkestan Republic, which was a pluralistic republic, which guaranteed political rights, human rights, which guaranteed religious freedom for all of our people.
It's not, you know, it's not ethnic centric in, in that sense. Because East Turkestan is home to more than just Uyghurs, including Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Tatars and other Turkic peoples.
If we were to look at it in terms of other countries, you know, to compare it, you know, our vision is to become, you know, a developing, you know, developed in a modern country like, you know, Korea, Japan.
At the worst case scenario, you know, we're going to probably end up, at the worst case scenario, end up like neighboring Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan or for that matter, or Turkey.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: All right, well, hopefully not Turkey.
Okay.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: Place right now.
[00:34:42] Speaker A: So this, this is a question again from Instagram. Which which kind of touches on what, what we were talking about earlier in terms of double standards. Zik on Instagram is asking, are Muslim majority countries doing anything to defend the Uyghurs?
[00:35:00] Speaker B: No, unfortunately not.
Not only are they not doing anything, they are actually actively complicit in many ways.
Neighboring countries, many of our Western neighbors are not only Muslim majority countries, but also Turkic majority countries like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, for, for that matter, we're ethnically related to them. Yet they have deported scores of our people, thousands of our people to China to handing them over to China knowing that they're going to end up being interned in these camps.
Similarly, the same thing with Pakistan, Afghanistan. All of these nations claim that, you know, they protect and defend the rights of Muslims, but when it comes to China's attack against our people, it's genocide against our people. They're completely silent. And they also have intense security and intelligence cooperation to silence anyone in those countries who there even criticizes their own administrations or even calls for attention on our issue. The same thing in many parts of the Muslim world, whether it's, you know, Saudi Arabia, we have a very large diaspora community of over 50,000 there. But none of them can even talk about our issue due to the fear of their, of arrest and being potentially deported.
Similar situation in Turkey.
You know, Turkey claims that it defends the rights of Muslims, that it, you know, or is our brother nation. But it has deep intelligence and security cooperation with China to undermine and to influence and control our diaspora and to sabotage our independence movement. Essentially even, you know, countries like Palestine, like the Palestinian Authority, despite, you know, what they claim that they're facing, they supported China's actions against our people and defended it as so called counterterrorism and you know, de radicalization.
This is the sad reality that we are facing from the Muslim majority, you know, from the Muslim world, whether it's
[00:37:18] Speaker A: government or organizations, a lot of hypocrisy all around.
How difficult is it to leave, to flee, to escape from, from East Turkestan
[00:37:31] Speaker B: at this prior, I mean, in the 90s it was, you know, it was difficult, but there were still ways to do it. If you had money, you know, it was, you could get a passport by, you know, bribing Chinese officials.
Even in the early 2000s, it was still a little bit easier than it is today. Today it's virtually impossible. Especially after 2016 when they rolled out a, a criteria stating that these 18 types, 36 types of people cannot leave, you know, cannot enter or leave the country out East Turkistan, let alone you know, go like we're talking about going from East Turkestan to another part of, you know, to an actual part of China.
Forget about going overseas.
And these include anyone who has relatives overseas, anyone who's not, you know, politically loyal, essentially anyone who the Chinese intelligence deems is not, you know, their, you know, doesn't give permission to, you're not, you're not going to have any chance of leaving after 2016. There's no way, if you have been able to leave after that, it's because they gave you permission.
And that in itself is another topic. In itself.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: Well, what, what about that?
Is there some concern that the Chinese Communist Party may be allowing certain people to leave and conduct espionage or other?
[00:39:05] Speaker B: Absolutely. I mean, this is not nothing new.
In fact, if I, if I mentioned earlier that in 1997, this is when the initial, when they laid it out, it actually started in March 6, March of 1996 when the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee, Politburo, Standing Committee, so the top seven members, the top seven leaders of China, they held a secret meeting in Beijing on so called stability maintenance in East Turkestan in which they highlighted that so called national separatism, meaning our independence movement was the greatest threat to China's stability, not only in East Turkestan, but the whole of China.
And that they also accused the United States at the time of, you know, saying that international counter revolutionary forces led by the United States were supporting our independence movement when in fact, to be honest, we haven't seen any, any support to, or any tangible support.
And they rolled out a 10 point directive and specifically directive 8 is what pertains to this in which they stated that they need to engage in a dialogue study, you know, to monitor our diaspora, engage in dialogue, went over majority of our diaspora community and the organizations in our diaspora to China's side and then to alienate and fight against the remaining small number. And the remaining small number here is those who refuse to give up on independence, who refuse to, you know, stop advocating for independence. And it calls for using deep, deep influence and propaganda networks to prevent the internationalization of the East Turkistan problem. So if we look at what's happened over the years since that time, especially in our diaspora, there's been a lot of changes. So our independence movement in the 90s was very strong.
Countries used to refer to us as East Turkistan. If you looked at newspaper headlines from that era, it would talk about how ancient warriors who defeated Alexander the Great were, you know, demanding independence from China or how Uyghurs were fighting for their independence to post 9, 11.
This is the propaganda part. China's like, we're fighting against Islamic extremism, We're fighting against terrorism. To where our own diaspora groups as well. We went from using the term East Turkestan. In fact, we were all East Turkestan or organizations.
And then it went to advocating for political. Advocating for cultural and human rights under Chinese rule.
This is the shift that has happened in recent years. Western countries have arrested numerous Uyghurs in their countries that were leaders of our diaspora of many prominent human rights organizations as Chinese operatives and agents.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: Wow, that is pretty shocking. All right, this is a little lighter coming from X. Ibrahim asks, how does the diaspora work to try and keep Uyghur culture alive?
[00:42:40] Speaker B: So most of the. The actions that our diaspora is doing is, you know, there are a lot of.
There are. In some countries we have where we have large diaspora communities, such as Turkey, Kazakhstan and elsewhere. There's Uyghur language schools. This is one way to keep our culture alive. Even in the United States, there's, you know, programs, even if it's like on the weekends that gather our community and try to, you know, at least the younger generation to try to teach them, you know, there's gatherings that they hold, you know, community gets together to, you know, kind of keep our culture alive.
And it's really, you know, at home, that's where most of it is when we speak with one another, even in our families, we. Even to our kids that are born here. In fact, even I have three kids who are born in the United States.
I speak to them in Uyghur as much as I can with my wife, you know, to at least retain our identity, our culture. You know, I. I talk, I tell them about our history.
I occasionally there's old Uyghur films that we'll watch, you know, just for, you know, kind of like keeping our culture alive. So these are some of the actions that we. We do in the diaspora is focusing on, you know, teaching our. Our language.
You know, their.
A lot of books and other materials that are being internally written to focus on our culture, our identity, our history.
[00:44:22] Speaker A: Right.
All right, this is a question from X, from Santiago Alamos, and I had kind of a similar one. He's asking if you have ever felt pressure to moderate your speech for political or diplomatic reasons. And I'm wondering along similar lines as we're talking about not only the extreme repression that's happening from the communist regime to the people of East Turkestan, but Also, as we mentioned, the infiltration and the espionage.
Have you experienced threats or pressure?
[00:45:02] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely. In fact, I wouldn't have known about document number seven if I hadn't became the victim of Chinese political and legal warfare.
So in 2018, when I started advocating, before I became involved in the government in exile, I began advocating for our political rights and recognition of the genocide in East Turkestan. We held my organization, the East Turkestan National Awakening Movement, now known as the National Movement.
We held grassroots events, advocacy events, as well as outreach to Congress, think tanks, urging them to, you know, introduce. Specifically Congress urging them to introduce a legislation called the Uyghur Policy act to address our crisis, to recognize, to condemn and recognize the genocide and to, you know, push the US Government to take meaningful action to end it. And so immediately, the first thing that happened is I had certain folks within my own diaspora, within our diaspora here in the D.C. area reach out to me, trying to convince me to stop saying East Turkestan, to stop calling it a genocide, to stop calling it concentration camps, to stop, you know, pushing for independence or recognition of our status as an occupied country, etc.
And some of them were, you know, individuals in certain organizations, even offering me positions in their organizations if I moderated my advocacy or if I joined with them and stopped, you know, advocating for Easter Kazan. So when that failed, then I begin, I received threats from my own people in our diaspora, some of them threatening to, you know, bash my brain in all these types of things.
You know, it was, it was a lot.
[00:47:22] Speaker A: That's pretty scary.
[00:47:23] Speaker B: When that failed, then they resorted to legal methods. They tried to. They resorted to, you know, honeypot methods where they try to send young girls to, you know, at that time I wasn't married to try to, you know, get close to me, to honey pot me.
When that failed, then they began creating accusations that, that I was an extremist, I was a terrorist, or that I was a separatist. All these terminologies that the Chinese government itself uses to demonize our people. And this is being used by certain human rights advocate actors within my own diaspora.
When that failed, then they tried to use legal methods, abused US legal system, to claim that I was, you know, engaging in anti Asian hate crime or I was engaging in hate crime against the Chinese or all these types of different things, or that I threatened people, baseless, you know, accusations, things that I never did to try to silence me. So there, there's, there's a lot.
[00:48:32] Speaker A: That's a lot. That's a lot of pressure. How do, how do you cope with it and how do you maintain your North Star?
[00:48:39] Speaker B: Well, originally, you know, I, I used to care what other people stated. Right Now I don't care, like if they attack me. I'm just like, all right, whatever. Clearly I'm making the Chinese mad. And clearly what I'm doing is right. If they're getting mad, then I'm doing something right.
[00:48:55] Speaker A: You're over the target.
[00:48:57] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's, that's the way I operate now. I don't take things as, you know.
[00:49:03] Speaker A: Right. You don't put as much stock in, in other, getting validation from other people. Which is why you need to go back and read some more Ayn Rand, because that is very central to her philosophy and it's a theme throughout her literature.
This is a good question.
Sorry I didn't get to even half of the questions that I had prepared for you, but we have such fantastic audience engagement for this episode, even without whatever shady stuff might be going on on one of our platforms.
But Ilya Kurashin on X asks this if independence is not immediately achievable, what it interim goals constitute meaningful progress?
[00:49:57] Speaker B: Well, interim goals would be actual real political economic pressure against China.
You know, interim goals like holding China accountable for the crime of genocide, stopping, you know, the actual physical act of these genocide and crimes against humanity that are taking place would be some interim goals.
But for us, the issue of independence is not just an aspiration, it is a necessity for our people's very survival. Because the reason because is China long term goal is to completely eradicate our people as a people. And they've been succeeding in that, in that sense because in 1949, when they occupied East Turkestan, Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic peoples made up over 96% of East Turkestan's population, with the Uyghurs making up anywhere between 85 to 90% the Chinese population, which was the 200,000 Chinese soldiers that they sent to occupy East Turkestan and about 100,000 of their relatives, you know, their families and you know, civil servants numbered about, you know, 300,000, less than 2, 3%.
Today they number, the Chinese number over 40% as of 2020, according if we take the Chinese government's official statistics as the truth.
Whereas Uyghurs and the Turkic peoples combined have been reduced to 57, 58%.
If this genocide continues within the next decade or two, or for the next two decades, there is a real possibility that we will end up being reduced to less than 20%, 20 to 30% of our own country's population, and within 50 years will cease to exist as a distinct people. And that is exactly what China is aiming for. So for us, independence is the only guarantee of survival. Because even under, you know, China, officially we are an autonomous region. That's what China calls us, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. And on paper, we have, you know, the right to govern ourselves. We have the right to practice our religion, our culture, our language, our history, and retain our identity.
But that's just on paper because in reality, it's just full. Everything is controlled by the Chinese and it's, you know, textbook colonization and genocide in the 21st century.
For us, the only way again to survive is independence. Because the United States, like no country is going to guarantee or our human rights. We've already seen it. We've already seen it. You're facing a 21st century holocaust like genocide, yet no country's talking about this or doing any meaningful action to stop it.
No country is going to guarantee our political rights, any of that. The Chinese government, which is refusing to even give certain aspects of political and human rights to its own people, is not going to do, give those rights to a people that is trying to, you know, eradicate.
[00:53:17] Speaker A: You know, we think back to the Chinese government's treatment of its own people during COVID with, you know, welding people in their apartments and, and telling them to silence their soul's desire for freedom. I wonder what, what the Chinese Communist Party lockdowns looked looked like inside East Turkestan or. Same question comes from my modern cult on Instagram, actually.
[00:53:48] Speaker B: So the reason the, the lockdowns were finally lifted in China is because of a fire that erupted in a Uyghur apartment in East Turkestan that killed dozens of Uyghurs.
Again, the reason it did that is because they had gated the entire community to where even the, the fire trucks weren't able to get anywhere near it to put out the fire. And because of that, the Chinese people themselves, not because they felt sympathy for the Uyghurs, because the reason they came out, it wasn't, oh, we're concerned about the Uyghur is being faced, is they said, we don't want to end up dying in our apartments like the Uyghurs. That was why they came out and they, you know, took to the streets. And finally because of that pressure, the Chinese government allowed them, you know, up, uplifted or lifted the, the lockdown, I believe, in 2022.
[00:54:47] Speaker A: Not. That was something I did not know that that rollback and which in turn contributed to a lot of other countries rethinking their blind following of China's policy or policy lead in was started in East Turkestan.
So you know, we're coming up on the end of, of the hour.
I've been shooting questions at you. Our audience has just had dozens of questions and apologies to those that we weren't able to get to and there are quite a few, including those that we weren't able to see on our YouTube chat.
But maybe what, what are anything that, that you didn't get to cover that you want to leave our audience with or some of the, the, the takeaways that you, you want them to take from this conversation?
[00:55:38] Speaker B: Yes.
What's happening in East Turkestan actually is something that could very well happen in other countries because China's objectives is not just East Turkestan. If you know anything about the Belt Road Initiative, China portrays it as oh, it's a multi trillion dollar economic development project, infrastructure project, when in reality it's a platform for China to expand its economic, political and even military footprint and control across pretty much the entire world.
And we're already seeing that this is another reason why governments across the world, why they are silent is because of the level of economic, political and military power that China has achieved.
You might have heard in recent, in recent days or read on the news that you know, China was conducting secret nuclear tests in Lopnor or in the deserts of Western China. That's, that's inside East Turkistan as well.
We are essentially they're both their economic, political and military platform to expand further west and south into Central Asia and to expand their influence globally.
The goods that, majority of the goods that you buy that are coming that have, you know, made in China, whether it's, you know, cotton shirts to, you know, electronic components in your cell phones, your tablets, etc, majority of that is coming from East Turkestan itself as well. At least the components the labor being used to produce those cheap Chinese products is coming from the slave labor of Ugorous. So everything impacts, everything that is happening in East Turkistan impacts the, the globe. And if China continues and succeeds in fully completing its colonization and genocide of, of the Uhura and other Turkic peoples, no doubt it's going to move further west into Central Asia and potentially in other parts of the world. Because the Chinese government, Xi Jinping, when he real, when he unveiled the Belt and road initiative in 2013, he stated this message, he said within by the end of this century, the world will speak Chinese.
And he was not saying that in just like a figurative, you know, speech. He was saying that as a literal sense, because this is the level of influence that they are, are pushing out. You probably, you know, are reading more and more about how China, the Chinese government, especially the ccp, is infiltrating and controlling and influencing, you know, you know, every industry from tech to politics to, you know, economics. Even here in the United States, we see this happening. China's influence growing day by day. So for the world, supporting East Turkestan and supporting East Turkistan's decolonization and the restoration of its independence is the easiest and most cost effective solution to resolving this preeminent existential threat that they will face from China in the coming decades.
[00:59:16] Speaker A: Well, that is a warning. And thank you, Sully, for delivering it for your courage, your clarity, and for shining a light on a cause that deserves more attention than it gets. So, really appreciate you.
Thank you for having me and thanks everybody who joined. Thanks for all of your great questions. Now, next week, we're going to be doing something a little differently. Some of you may not know that March 1st will be my 10 year anniversary leading the Atlas Society. So next week we're going to do a anniversary edition looking back on the past 10 years of my time running the Atlas Society and looking forward to what the next decade has in store. So we'll see you then.
