How China Persecutes Uyghurs Across the Globe: Rushan Abbas

When this mass detention started, we started to hear that crematoriums are being built next to the concentration camps, as well as the airports in the major Uyghur cities like Kashgar. There's a fast lane, special lane dedicated for people who are transporting human organs. Rushan Abbas is the founder and executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs and chairperson of the World Uyghur Congress's Executive Committee. He just openly said, oh, by re-educating them, we are trying to make them normal persons in front of this barbaric regime. We are not even normal human beings. She's the author of the powerful memoir, Unbroken, One Uyghur's Fight for Freedom. They went after my sister. The government detained my sister to silence me, to punish me. The people living within China's borders, your thoughts are being owned, your speech, your expression, even your movement. You are being monitored 24-7. Tyranny survives because of the silence. Silence is the oxygen of tyranny. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Rushan Abbas, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Thank you for having me again. So your book is Unbroken. How did they try to break you, and who did the attempted breaking? Chinese Communist government occupied our homeland since 1949. Every sinister occupation, they have been trying to target our people every so often, like seven to ten years or so. During the 50s, the Uyghurs were targeted in the name of nationalists. During the 60s Cultural Revolution, Uyghurs were being targeted under the pretext of counter-revolutionaries. And then, again later, Uyghurs became separatists immediately after the Soviet collapse and the establishment of the independent stance, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan. And then right after the 9-11 tragedy in the United States, Uyghurs were targeted as terrorists because of our religion. So constantly, our spirit, our ethnic identity, our religion, and the entire Uyghur community are being targeted. And the Chinese government tried to break our whole identity, spirit, and hope. That's why I wanted to name the book Unbroken, because with broken hearts, with our family members being in detention, with my sister being in the jail as part of China's transnational repression, we still continue to fight with unbroken will and strength. Let's talk about that. We hear this term transnational repression. It's almost a government term. What does that actually mean? What does it mean for you exactly? How does that connect with your sister? Transnational repression means a government targets other countries' citizens because of our connection in back home. For example, in my case, September 2018, almost seven years ago, after the mass detention of the Uyghurs in East Turkestan, I spoke at the Hudson Institute about this mass detention while I was outlining the fate of my in-laws. Twenty-four members of my husband's family went missing. When I talked about that, they went after my sister. The government detained my sister to silence me. So basically, me living in the United States since 1989, being a U.S. citizen since 1995, it did not matter. Because of my family tie, they took my sister to punish me. This is actually a part of China's transnational repression. It should be recognized as international crime because the Chinese government is not only targeting people like the Uyghurs and the Falun Gong practitioners or Tibetans or Hong Kongers, but they're coming after all these people living in the Western free world. There are 102 Chinese police stations in all over the world, in the United States. So the Chinese government uses those police stations to monitor and manipulate and make threats to the citizens of the Uyghurs and Hong Kongers, Tibetans, or Falun Gong practitioners. I'm really going to dig into this transnational repression part because it's been something that's very much on my mind the last year or two. Before we go there, let's talk about East Turkestan. What does that actually mean? We hear about Xinjiang province in China. It's the same thing, but why are you choosing to use East Turkestan? Before the Chinese occupiers like in the Manchurian dynasty first occupied our homeland in the late 1700s, 1800s, in 1886, the name Xinjiang was given to us. Xinjiang means new territory. We are not new territory for anybody. That's our land. The Uyghurs have been living there for thousands of years. Also, East Turkestan, this name, is not only geographical and the historical name. We use that to resist the name that's given to us by the Chinese occupiers. Some people call it the Uyghur region. Officially, the Chinese government calls it Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which is not autonomy. It's just a name, not real autonomy. But we would like to call it East Turkestan. What is the reality for Uyghurs in the region right now? The Uyghur identity, the Uyghur ethnicity, Uyghur language, and our religion, all are being criminalized. Everything about us, what makes us as people, are being targeted. When this recent mass detention started and the Chinese government was arresting millions of people, Cui Tiankai, one of the Chinese ambassadors to the United States, former Chinese ambassador to the United States, when he was being interviewed, why are you holding those millions of Uyghurs in so-called re-education centers? Because that's what they were claiming, those are re-education centers. He just openly said, by re-educating them, we are trying to make them normal persons. Can you imagine? Because of the beautiful culture we have, the language we speak, the religion we believe in front of this barbaric regime, we are not even normal human beings. They don't even look at us as normal commodity. They feel that they need to re-educate us to become Han Chinese, forsake our language, forsake our religion, forsake our ethnic identity. With that kind of policy toward the Uyghurs, the Uyghur women are forcing sterilizations, Uyghur children are taken from their families. There are reports that show that about a million Uyghur children are taken from their families. The Uyghur women are facing forced sterilization and forced marriages, and the Uyghur babies are no longer being born. The Chinese embassy in the United States publicly celebrated those genocidal efforts by tweeting on the X-Now saying that Uyghur women are no longer baby-making machines. That's exactly what they used. The Uyghurs are subject to forced labor. Just last year, 3.4 million Uyghurs were being transferred as free laborers. The Uyghur economy is completely destroyed. Uyghur business is being destroyed. So the land is taken. In 20 years, the land transfer from the Uyghur farmers to the government went more than 50 times. It grew increased more than 50 times. After taking their lands, after destroying their businesses, then they are shipping them off as slaves in the name of poverty alleviation. Those are all pretexts. This is an astonishing society-wide effort. What do you make of some American and other influencers going to China and seemingly having great experiences with people who appear to be Uyghurs on camera? Even when I was living back home, we used to see that happening a lot. Even we, in our home, we hosted some foreign visitors. The government brings some people, like my father being one of the Uyghur scholars, we used to host some delegations visiting some scholars. They bring in all kinds of fancy chefs and they bring all kinds of lamb and food and all exotic food that we have never seen in our lives. Who knows where they shipped from? They put on the table and make this really huge, fancy fist and show them this is the ordinary life of the Uyghurs. This is like 35, 40 years ago. Now, whitewashing the genocide, the Chinese government is using the influencers, westerners, or the people who have large followers on the YouTube or Twitter, and taking them to Potemkin style visits. The visit is paid by the Chinese government and it's being controlled by the Chinese government. They will only get to see certain people who are pre-arranged and visit certain areas that are set up like a stage. They talk to people who are coached to answer. If anybody says anything wrong or speaks the reality, they will disappear the next day. The world should not be fooled by those whitewashing efforts by the Chinese government, which is currently spending millions and billions of dollars on that, to whitewash the genocide, spreading disinformation, and fill the world with false narratives about the reality. But the reality is the Uyghurs are facing full-fledged active genocide. There are reports from the UN Human Rights Council documenting all this horrible situation. Not just that, we've got, time after time, the Chinese government's own leaked data supporting everything that we are saying. It's not like I am saying as a sister of a victim, or Uyghur activist, or someone else is talking about this because she or he was a former camp victim and they have actually experienced those and speak the truth. But we've got tons of Chinese government's own documents, pictures, and data. The US and Canada all agree that genocide is happening to the Uyghur people. Basically, the elimination in whole or in part of an entire group of people. That's what that word means. I see that word used, actually, this is one of my pet peeves. I see that word used very casually for other horrible things that happen, but not that. That is the top level. That's why there was a genocide convention signed at one point. Out of curiosity, do you notice that the word genocide seems to be used very flippantly these days? Genocide is being used very casually. Sometimes it frustrates me when I try to explain to people that the intent of completely erasing the Uyghur population, Uyghur babies are no longer being born, Uyghur babies are no longer being born. Dr. Adrian Zenz's recent report shows that some of the mostly Uyghur populated areas, Uyghur birth rates dropped down to zero percent. So these, what we call it, align with genocide convention's description of crimes of genocide. But it seems like right now, it's being used for any atrocity. I'm not trying to demonize any cause or any atrocity, but if there's some killings or some atrocity here and there, people use the word genocide. I'm not sure what's going on because it demonizes actual genocide, the intent of governments trying to eliminate the entire population. Even when we started to speak about what's happening to Uyghur people, just to show respect to Holocaust and the Jewish people, we didn't use the word genocide very casually. And even when I give presentations to some of the Jewish communities or some other places that connected to Holocaust museums, other places, I switched my presentation, the word genocide, the atrocity, from concentration camps to internment camps. But after I finished giving the presentation, they stood up and said that this is genocide. This is what happened to our grandparents, our ancestors. So what's happening to Uyghur people is confirmed with the U.S., with the first Trump administration, then the last Biden administration, Secretary Blinken confirmed, and now Secretary Rubio confirmed twice recently, once in February 27th with the deportation of 40 innocent Uyghurs from Thailand back to China. Secretary Rubio released his statement saying that what PRC is doing to Uyghurs is genocide and crimes against humanity. Then again on March 14th, Secretary Rubio sanctioned some of the Thailand officials who are responsible for this deportation. He confirmed again. There were independent Uyghur tribunal set forward by the World Uyghur Congress, and the independent Uyghur tribunal in London also declared it's genocide. And more than a dozen countries and the parliaments around the world confirmed what's happening to Uyghurs is genocide. And we use that term because it's basically the worst thing that human beings can do to one another that we can think of. I'm talking about this, I remember during the China tribunal, which looked at the forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience, we kind of struggle with this question, is it genocide because of the profit motive? It's interesting also that what always seems to go with these genocidal situations is a lot of labor, a lot of basically working people to death. This is another piece of the story, I think. You maybe touched on it earlier, but there's a heck of a lot of slave labor happening. Cotton, for example, is a big one. You want to speak to that a tiny bit? Absolutely. When I was living back home from a very young age, it was very natural for Uyghur people to be taken out of their homes, taken out of their schools and shipped to the farm and pick cotton, cotton harvesting. That was part of Uyghur people's lives back in 50, 60 years ago. It's called hashar in Uyghur languages, free labor. Now, 84% of China's cotton output to the world comes from our region, which is handpicked by Uyghur slaves. Everything you use, actually, everything that we have like connection daily, like the car we drive, the tomato in our pastas or seafood that we like or the purse you carry or the shirt on your back are tainted with Uyghur slaves' blood, sweat and tears. The Chinese government is very effectively making this genocide a profitable venture for them. 13 tons of human hair came from our region, the Uyghurs here, made it over to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. 13 tons of human hair, how many lives does that represent? We didn't see that being covered in mainstream media. If you Google it, you will find that in some 10 or 15th page of the CNN report somewhere. The Chinese state media reported 1.1 million Han Chinese, address mostly male, deployed into Uyghur homes, live inside of their homes, supervise and monitor Uyghur's daily lives. When most of the husbands, most of the male in the home, taken to forced labor facilities or prison or those detention centers, Uyghur women are subject to sexual abuse inside of their own homes. Government-sponsored mass rape of the Uyghur women. Organ harvesting was first implemented on the Falun Gong practitioners. We used to hear a lot that they are being the victim. And then it was moved and expanded to the Tibetans and the Uyghurs. Starting from 2016, before this mass detention, the Uyghurs were subject to mandatory house checkups and DNA collections. We were not sure at the time, what is this for? And then when this mass detention started, we started to hear that crematoria are being built next to the concentration camps, as well as the airports in the major Uyghur cities like Kashgar. There's a fast lane, special lane dedicated for people who are transporting human organs. The crematoria and the organ harvesting, forced organ harvesting should be a warning sign to the world. But people are not paying attention. It's happening on our watch, but we are not getting enough attention to this. Currently, there is a bill being introduced by Congressman Christmas. It passed in the House. We really need to see that swiftly put forward and passed in the Senate. The Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act. There's actually a second bill, the Falun Gong Protection Act, that is going through. And there's a third bill in committee that would basically prevent the U.S. entities like insurance companies from paying for transplants. And I believe that's one in this committee. So it's an interesting development, because this issue, we've been following at Epoch Times for almost 20 years. But we're finally seeing some sort of traction around at least legislation at the federal level. Something that comes through in your book, which I thought was very powerful. You have a whole testimony of your father. It highlights to me how Uyghurs have been persecuted for quite some time. You talked about this at the very beginning. But to me, it highlights the cost of the world turning a blind eye to atrocities, whether or not they hit the genocide mark, so to speak. It seems like this is what happened to the Uyghurs. It's basically not much action internationally. And eventually, we ended up with a situation with millions of people in these concentration camps. Similarly, with the world completely turning a blind eye to this forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners expanded into other groups, into Uyghurs. Right now, the evidence is being gathered to basically show that as well. Have you reflected on this, the cost of no response? Absolutely. Tyranny survives and builds on and expands because of the silence. Basically, I say silence is the oxygen of tyranny. The more we stay silent for whatever reasons, naivety, or thinking that this is far, far away to some people that I have nothing to do with, everything will be fine for me. No, it's not staying within China's borders. Because of the silence and inactivity of the world community and international leaders and the Western democratic countries in the name of economic engagement or continuously doing business with China, the Chinese government is expanding. Transnational repression is part of it. Yes, as my father's memoir states, what happened to the Uyghur intellectuals, what happened to my grandpa? My book is written for three generations. My grandpa's age, the times of my grandparents and my father, and now it's us. But it's not just staying in East Turkestan or in Tibet, or when China, the democracy in Hong Kong took a complete darken overnight and holding scholars like Jimmy Lai and the others, but it's expanding everywhere. Falun Gong practitioners are being targeted all over the world in the United States, Canada, in Europe, Hong Kongers. We have Hong Kong activists, the Chinese government put a bounty on their head when they are living in a country like the United States. So what does that mean? Well, is it staying far, far away on the other side of the ocean? No. Because of our ignorance or naivety, or what do you call it, acceptance or being normalized in the United States, now it's here. We've got police stations right there in the heart of Manhattan. The Uyghur activists and the Tibetans and Hong Kongers and the Falun Gongers, our family members are calling with police sitting next to them and telling them to stay quiet or report about other community members or stop speaking out for the human rights abuses or else, threatening by holding family members as hostage. Not only that, they are also affecting the Canadian MPs and silencing the Western scholars. So to me, eventually, little by little, China's invasion through the West, through the world, coming in with trade deals, suitcases of money and smiling faces, this is the silent invasion. China's invasion is unlike Putin's invasion to Ukraine, happened in bright daylight with tanks and the soldiers and just the open invasion. The Chinese government's goal to replace the free world with its authoritarian system, they are succeeding it. Not only that, actually, the transnational repression is being a national security threat for all the West, countries like the US and UK and Canada and all the entire Europe. If we don't wake up and stop China now and hold the CCP accountable, it will be our next generations who will pay for the consequences of a dark world with no human rights, no respect. Who knows what the world is going to face? I always say, just remember what's happening to us today and imagine the future of the world tomorrow if we don't stop China. Something that I think isn't very well known is the way that the Chinese regime treats any of the people that are under its jurisdiction. It treats them differently, even if they're US or Canadian citizens or something like that. I want to get you to speak to that because I don't think a lot of people understand that. How does it treat those people that it views? For example, the Han Chinese, the Uyghurs, and other groups that it sees as under its control. It doesn't matter where those people are in the world. It views them in some ways. The government only has an authoritarian system and control over people. Also, at the same time, it breathes on the racism. The Han nationalism, they try to prey on that and they try to use that against any other nationalities, like Tibetans and Uyghurs. We are being treated as uncivilized people. The brainwashing of the general Han Chinese people about the Tibetans and Uyghurs is amazing. When we used to travel to China proper, even just ordinary Chinese people used to come to us and say, do you have roads? Do you live in houses? Do you eat raw meat? They used to ask us questions like we are some barbaric people. This is the government's brainwash against the ethnic groups. There's this other element, right? I think it applies as much to the ethnic groups as it does to the Han Chinese themselves, where it feels like they believe they own those people. Yes. You know what I'm talking about? That's what I wanted to get you to speak to. Again, the ideology they have is they want everyone to pledge themselves to the Communist Party, period. That's it. If you have anything else, your faith or any other beliefs, then they feel threatened. They feel like all the groups or the ordinary people are servers of the Chinese government, Chinese Communist Party, and that they owe them and give them absolutely no privilege or any kind of rights. The people living within China's borders, even their own ordinary people, they basically live with absolutely no basic rights. There's no such thing as rights. Your thoughts are being owned. Your speech, your expression, even your movement are being owned. Basically, when I say owned, you cannot move around with this modern technology now, with spywares on your phone and the surveillance systems everywhere, checkpoints, facial recognition softwares, emotion detectives, iris scanning systems. Basically, you are being monitored 24-7, to the point that everything that the Chinese government is doing in East Turkestan makes George Orwell's imagination to a shame, actually. We thought that was something described with unbelievable control of mind, control of people. But what's happening in reality is 100 times worse than what George Orwell described in 1984. Let's use this example. We're hearing a lot about the 300,000 Chinese students in the U.S. What does the Chinese regime expect of them? They expect them, again, 100% loyalty. They basically control them by the embassies and consulates. I have witnessed a few times, actually. The first major one was 2008, when Beijing Olympics torch was going around the cities. I was in San Francisco protesting. All of a sudden, all these Chinese students showed up because Chinese consulate in San Francisco mobilized them. See, the government can sit in Beijing and then just with one phone call to the embassy and consulates, they can mobilize the Chinese students in the United States to carry Chinese flags in the support of the Chinese government, and doing all kinds of violence against the people who are peacefully protesting. We were peacefully protesting with Tibetans and the Falun Gong practitioners and the other people at the pier in San Francisco. We were brutally hit with the flagpoles, the red Chinese flag, and we were pushed around. We were elbowed to our chest, to our head. When we reported to the police, this is back in 2008, so they were more protecting because the Chinese government made the request from the police to protect them against the groups who are protesting against the government. The police wouldn't listen to us. They were protecting them, the attackers. When I complained to a couple of the police officers saying that I just got hit on my head and I got hit with elbow on my chest and they are threatening us, they are doing this, they are doing that. He shouted at me and said, if you don't want to end up in downtown, shut up and be quiet. So, that was the reality. Now, I hope that the law enforcement understands what's going on. But still, when Xi Jinping came over to San Francisco, our camp victims, we were former camp victims, the Chinese dissidents and Tibetan activists and other activists, they faced the same sort of violence by those Chinese students. Those are the Chinese students who are educating in the United States and we hope that they will accept the democracy and the freedom and be understanding, right? But no, the Chinese embassy, Chinese consulates and the Chinese government owns them still and they can mobilize them against any kind of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. They have pretty powerful tools to do so because they're only here because the Chinese regime allows them to and there's even written and unwritten expectations. If you're not delivering enough intelligence, why aren't you delivering enough intelligence? Is there some issue? Are you against the regime, maybe? There's just this whole kind of climate, right? And then, of course, let's say you don't really want to do it. I'm sure there's plenty of people that don't want to cooperate while your family is back home. I was just about to say that. Basically, every single Chinese student studying or living in the United States or anywhere in the world, their family members are hostage under the Chinese government's hands, so they can use the family members to make them do whatever they want. You had to make a really difficult decision once, right? When you decided to step up, you knew what might happen, right? I'm sure some people have criticized you and said, look, you did this and look what happened to your family. How do you respond to that kind of criticism? I tell them, yes, you're absolutely right. I get those kinds of questions, especially some of the trolls on the internet attack me. I have stopped in the streets in U.S. cities, even in Harvard, right after I gave a presentation to the Asia Society Association. They put together a session. When I get those questions and the criticism, my response to them is, unless we defend the freedom and democracy you have in this country, just look at what I said today or look at my life today and imagine the future of yourself or the future of this world. If we only think about our own selfish reasons or our own security, what's going to happen to the future? The Chinese government tried to silence me by taking my father's position when he was only 58 years old. I've described that in the book as well. When I first spoke out in the United States, when I first did my activism back in the early 90s, he was only 58 years old. They took his position and forced him to retire. I continued. When I saw my father later, I said, I'm sorry, because of me, 58 years old, intellectual. It's time for him to do more for humanity and for his profession. But he was forced to lose everything and just sit at home. When I apologized to my dad, he said, I'm so sorry. This is what happened to you. And he said, I am so proud of you. You did what you're supposed to do. I named you Roshan, which means light in my language. During the Cultural Revolution, I was born in 1967, when everything was dark. My dad describes this Cultural Revolution, everything was dark and no truth can be seen. So I named you Roshan, the shadow light. And he said, you are doing what I wanted you to do. So continue what you are doing. And I am very proud of you. So I did, actually. When my sister was taken, and still she's in jail, last seven years almost. She's turning 63 next month. And September will mark seven years anniversary of her detention. I did my part for humanity. Yes, the cost is horrible. It hurts me. It breaks my heart. But there are millions of sisters, millions of mothers, grandmothers, fathers, brothers, innocent people who are suffering because of the Chinese Communist regime's brutality and that must stop. We have the opportunity in the free world to exercise our voice, speak out for these people, be the voice for those millions of voiceless people. If we don't do that, then we should be ashamed of ourselves. This is the nature of totalitarian and especially communist regimes as they force you, as I've come to learn and explore in a number of episodes of this show, they put you into impossible situations and you have to choose. It's a very difficult choice. And I've known many people who have made it, and their families have suffered, and they've suffered. And in some cases, they pay the ultimate price. This is the fight between good and evil. And we have to make our decision. There's no neutrality when it comes down to something like this. We need to be on the right side of the history. This is the thing about the organ harvesting issue. I'm very happy it's finally breaking through the collective consciousness, because it's one of those things that there really is no way to explain it. The moment you say, yes, this is real, there's no way to explain it away. A lot of things you can come up with an excuse, but this one you can't. It seems to have some value in terms of helping people understand this is the nature of this regime. They do stuff like this, murder for organs at scale. Something I just keep thinking about, if people understood this, it's very difficult. If you know someone is a psychopath, would you make a business contract with that person and expect them to make good on that? You probably wouldn't, because you would have certain expectations of their personality. Avoiding it doesn't make it go away. Just look at the history. It seems like history is repeating itself right now. During the early part of Nazi Germany's Holocaust, when they start to put millions of Jewish people to the Holocaust concentration camps or use them as slave laborers, the world continuously treated Nazi Germany as a business partner or continued economic relationship in the name of trade and the economy and the advancement, but enabled Nazi Germany's economy to murder more people. Then later, when the whole thing happened, the whole world knew what happened after World War II. Those countries, those leaders who made those decisions, tried to claim the ignorance. Also, they knew what was happening. They tried to claim the ignorance by saying information flow was slow, and they did not know. They didn't know what Nazi Germany was doing. What a lie. But this is 21st century, information era with nanotechnologies. Everybody knows what's happening. The countries like the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and the Western countries, Australia, even the Global South, every country, they knew with their own intel what was happening with organ harvesting, with mass detention, with Uyghur genocide, with Hong Kong and Taiwan and Tibet. Everybody knew what China was doing. No one can claim the ignorance. History will record those who enabled the Chinese Communist regime to continue those atrocities and destroy humanity, or who actually stood and take the leadership to stop this. You just made me remember something we didn't talk about yet. That's the way the Chinese Communist Party has been able to influence the world's media. It's very hard to have an excuse today not to know. But I'd say there's been a lot of information that has been suppressed with some kind of complicity of the media outside of China. We've been attacked quite viciously for 25 years since we've been around, and there are attempts to stop us. But maybe could you speak to that a little bit about how the CCP has influenced the sort of big media that should have been reporting on these things better? Unfortunately, many of the media and the celebrities, even Disney, Discovery Channel, CBS, they have been repeating China's false narratives about what's happening to Uyghurs, especially recently when Chinese governments are bombarding the internet with those fake happy Uyghurs who are singing and dancing. Even Discovery Channel did an episode and CBS repeated those. It's really sad because the propaganda is a huge tool for the CCP, and they use that very effectively. They are also manipulating the Western media to feed with wrong information, disinformation, and whitewash this genocide. Not only the media, what upsets me is all these famous celebrities, talk show hosts, or Hollywood superstars, or NBA athletes. People are so vocal against any social injustice, rightfully they should. But where are they when millions of Uyghur women are facing forced sterilizations, forced abortions, forcing to marry Han Chinese men, and they have absolutely no way to reject such a forced marriage while the government is sponsoring the men with money, housing, and jobs to come and marry Uyghur women. If she refuses such a forced marriage, for whatever reasons, herself, her family, her siblings will be targeted in the name of radicalized Muslims who didn't want to marry non-Muslim Han Chinese. When something like this is happening, I call it government-sponsored mass rape of the Uyghur women in the name of sham marriages. Uyghur women's bodies are being the battleground of this genocide. Where are the media, major media? I don't hear them reporting it. Where are those superstars? Where are the talk show hosts? They don't cover this. Why? Well, is it China's money or influence over them, or are they blackmailing them for whatever reasons? I have not got to the bottom of it yet, but it really disappoints me that they are swaying into the Chinese government's hands. The long black arm of the Chinese government is not only holding the diaspora communities under control by holding their family members neck as a hostage back home and silencing them, but they are also very effectively manipulating and influencing the Western media not to cover the Uyghur atrocity. I want to cover this before we finish up. One of the reasons the Chinese regime gives for all of this that it's doing is they say, you mentioned it before, after 9-11, the Uyghurs have terrorist predilections and this is us deradicalizing them. This is what this whole program is really all about. And there have been some examples of some kind of violent action and so forth. How do you respond to these? Actions of a few handful of people or a couple dozen people's actions should not be the reason to collectively punish millions of people. If we do that for the amount of criminal activities or violence in other parts of China, the whole Chinese male population should be in jail. When the Chinese government claims that this is a national security issue for them and that the Uyghurs are a threat to their national security or Uyghurs are terrorists, well, we have last leaked Xinjiang police files, which leaked by the victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and Dr. Adrian Zenz. We have pictures of 70, 80 years old grandmas and grandpas with pictures and age. What kind of national security threat 70, 80 years old grandma brings to a country like China? Two, three months ago in March, we had the Ramadan fasting from sunrise to sunset. The Chinese government made the Uyghurs to video record them during the day, lunchtime, while they're eating and drinking, making a short video clip sent to the local police or local neighborhood control. If one person forgets or gets sick or something happens, internet doesn't work, run out of data, cannot get those videos out, the police knocks the door next day and take them out for fasting. So what kind of national security threat a person who's praying or fasting or not drinking alcohol are going to make? I mean, this is just a normal practice of religion. This is not being terrorist. The whole religion is being criminalized. Speaking Uyghur language, what kind of threat or what kind of terrorist act is that if I speak Uyghur language back home? So it's all China's false narratives and justifying what they are doing to Uyghur people. The last chapter of your book is titled A Letter to the Uyghur Diaspora. So maybe as we finish up, tell me what your message is to your people. The Chinese government is really good. Is there years of, you know, like over 70 years of policy against the Uyghurs back home and now recently to diaspora. Divide and conquer. Create problems among the communities. We should respect our differences. We should respect each other's voice. Only unity will bring us the success. When we shout together, our voice is louder. So I want the Uyghur diaspora to have a hope because hope is the only thing we have left which will lead us to fight onwards and accept each other and understand each other because we are the keepers of this beautiful culture. And our resilience builds with our community. So I want people to understand that. And actually I translated that in Munich last week and read that in Uyghur and it seems like touched a lot of hearts because so many of the Uyghur diaspora communities were in this East Turkestan Summit, Third East Turkestan Summit in Munich. They came to me afterward and said that on that letter to diaspora, I described their feelings or what's in their hearts and minds. Well, Roushan Abbas, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you so much, Jan. It's always a pleasure to be on your show. Thank you all for joining Roushan Abbas and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.