American Thought Leaders - The Harrowing Realities of Uyghur Life in China: Rushan Abbas

Episode Date: July 20, 2025

In this episode, Rushan Abbas reveals how the Chinese communist regime has escalated its campaign against the Uyghurs.Uyghurs are being mass surveilled, forcibly sterilized, and exploited as slave labor both in Xinjiang and in other provinces across China. There are growing signs of large-scale forced organ harvesting in the region—including an apparent special lane in the city of Kashgar’s airport dedicated to the transport of human organs.In 2018, the Chinese regime imprisoned Rushan Abbas’s sister Gulshan in an apparent attempt to silence Rushan. Her sister was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and she has since spent almost seven years detained—with no end in sight.Rushan Abbas is the author of the powerful memoir “Unbroken: One Uyghur’s Fight for Freedom.” She is the founder and executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs and chairperson of the World Uyghur Congress’s executive committee.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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. Ruxa Nabas is the founder and executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs and chairperson of the World U Uyghurs and chairperson of the World Uyghur Congress' 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, When Uyghurs 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. Roshana Bass, 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 sinceia occupation, they have been trying to target our people like 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 counterrevolutionarists. under the pretext of counterrevolutionaries. And then again later, we were speaking separatists immediately after the Soviet collapse and the establishment of the independent stands, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan.

And then right after the 9-11 tragedy in the United States, we 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. 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 are 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 the strings. Let's talk about that. We hear this term transnational repression. It's almost kind of a government term. It's almost become a…

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 country's 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. And 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. So this is actually a part of China's transnational repression, and it should be recognized as international crime because the Chinese government is not only targeting people like the oil wars 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 Chinese government uses those police stations to monitor and manipulate and make threats to the citizens of the Uyghurs and the 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 and 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. 1886, the name Xinjiang was given to us. And Xinjiang means new territory. And we are not new territory for anybody. That's our land.

The Uyghurs have been living there for thousands of years. And also, East Turkestan, this name, is not only geographical and the historical name. And it's also we use that to resist the name that's given to us by the Chinese occupiers. Some people call it the Uyghur region. And officially, the Chinese government calls it Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which is not autonomy. It's just the name, not real autonomy. But we would like to call 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 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, Sui Tienkai, one of the Chinese ambassadors to the United States, former Chinese ambassador to the United States, former Chinese ambassador to the United States, when he was being interviewed, why are you holding those millions of the Uyghurs in so-called re-education centers? Because that's what they were claiming, those are re-education centers.

And he just openly said, oh, 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 human, you know, like a normal commodity. So they feel that they need to re-educate us to become Han Chinese, forsake our language, forsake our religion, forsake our ethnic identity. So with that, that kind of policy toward the Uyghurs, the Uyghur women are forcing sterilizations, Uyghur children are taken from their families.

There are reports 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 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 being transferred as free laborers. Uyghur economy is completely destroyed. Uyghur business are being destroyed. So the land is taken. 20 years, the land transferred from the Uyghur farmers to the government, it went more than 50 times. It grew, increased in more than 50 times. So after taking their lands, after they're destroying their businesses,

and then they are shipping them off as slaves in the name of poverty alleviation. Those are all pretext. I mean, 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 leaving back home, we used to see that happening a lot. Even we, in our home, we hosted some like foreign visitors. The government brings some people like my father being one of the Uyghur scholars. We used to host some like delegations visiting some scholars and they bring in all kinds of fancy chefs and they bring all kinds of like lamb and food and all exotic fruit that we have never seen in our lives who knows where they shipped from and they put on the table and make

this really huge fancy fist and show them this is the ordinary life of the Uyghurs. So this is like 35, 40 years ago. So now whitewashing the genocide, the Chinese government is using the influencers, Westerners, or the people who have large followers on YouTube or Twitter, and taking them to Potemkin-style visits, and 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, and they talk to people who are coached to answer. If anybody says anything wrong or speak the reality, they will disappear the next day. So the world should not be fooled by those whitewashing efforts by the Chinese government, which currently spending millions and billions of dollars on that to whitewash the genocide, spreading disinformation, and to fill the world with false narratives about the reality. But the reality is that 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 times after time the Chinese government's own leaked data supporting

everything what we are saying. So it's not like I am saying as a sister of a victim or we were activists or someone else is talking about this because she or he was a former camp victims and they have actually experienced those and speaking the truth. But we've got tons of Chinese government's own documents and the pictures and the truth. But we've got tons of Chinese government's own documents and the pictures and the data. The US, Canada all agree that genocide is happening to the Uyghur people that are being, you know, 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 kind of 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? Yes, genocide is being used very casually. And sometimes it frustrates me when I try to explain people that the intent of completely erasing the Uyghur population, Uyghur babies are no longer being born. Dr. Adrian Zanz's recent report shows that some of the mostly Uyghur populated areas, Uyghur births drop down to 0%. 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 like, like 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 diminishes the 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. 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 to word genocide atrocity 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 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 Uighurs is genocide and crimes against humanity. Then again on the March 14th, Secretary Rubio sanctioned some of the Thailand officials who are responsible

for this deportation, he confirmed again. There was an independent Uyghur tribunal set forward by the World Uyghur Congress, and the independent Uyghur tribunal in London also declared its genocide. 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, they kind of struggle with this question, is it genocide, because of the profit motive? Right. It's interesting also that, you know, what always seems to go with these genocidal situations is a lot of slave labor, a lot of, you know, basically working people to death, which is that this is another piece of the story, I think. I'm not thinking 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. Again, when I was living back home from a very young age, it was very natural for Uyghur people to take it out of their homes, take it out of their schools, and ship to the farm, and they pick cotton, cotton harvesting. That was part of Uyghur people's lives back in like 50, 60 years ago. It called hashar in Uyghur languages like free labor. And 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. Certain tons of human here came from our region, the Uyghurs here, made it over to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. Searching tons of humans here, how many lives does that represent?

But 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 cadres, 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, take into 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 in the Falun Gong practitioners. We used to hear a lot that they are being the victim. And then it was moved and expended to the Tibetans and the Uyghurs. Starting from 2016, before this mass detention, the Uyghurs were subject to mandatory hulks, 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 crematory yards 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 chromatorias and the force organ harvesting should be a warning sign to the world. But people are not paying attention. It's happening on our watch, but people are not paying attention. It's happening on our watch, but we are not getting enough attention to this. But currently now there

is a bill actually being introduced by Congressman Chris Smith. And it passed in the House. We really need to see that swiftly put forward and passed in the Senate. Yeah, the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act with Chris Smith. There's actually a second bill, the Felongong Protection Act, we're just going through. And there's a third bill in committee that would basically prevent the US entities,

like insurance companies, for 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, I mean, you have a whole testimony of your father, which I thought was very powerful. I mean, you have a whole testimony of your father,

right? But it kind of 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 basically the world turning a blind eye to atrocities, whether or not they hit the genocide mark, so to speak. Because this is what happened. 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 it builds on an expense because of the silence. Basically, I say silence is the oxygen of tyranny. I say silence is the oxygen of tyranny. 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 oil rig 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 complete dark and 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 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, you know, 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 Gongs, we are, our family members are calling with police sitting next to them and telling them to stay quiet or report about the other community members or stop speaking out for the human rights abuses or else, you know, threatening by holding family members as hostages. Not only that, they are also affecting the Canadian MPs and the 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. The 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,

and they are succeeding it. Not only that, actually, the transnational repression is being a national security threat for all the West countries like the U.S. and the U.K. 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 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 essentially any of the people that are under its, what it believes 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, like for example, the Han Chinese, the Uyghurs, and other groups that it sees as part of its, under its control. It doesn't matter where those people are in the world, it views them in some ways. Yeah. The government only has an authoritarian system and control over people. Also, at the same time, it breathes on 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 like 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, oh, 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. So 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 kind of feels like they believe they kind of 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 Communist Party, period. That's it. If you have anything else, your faith or your any other beliefs, then they feel threatened. And so they feel like all the groups or the ordinary people are servers of the Chinese government, Chinese Communist Party, and they owe them and give them absolutely

no privilege or no any kind of rights. So the people living within China's borders even, even their own ordinary people, they basically live with absolutely no basic rights. There's no such thing 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 software, emotion detectives, iris scanning systems. So basically you are being monitored 24-7 to the point that everything that the Chinese government is doing in East Turkestan, on Uyghurs, 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

the consulates. I have witnessed a few times actually, the first one, the major one was 2008, when Beijing Olympics torch was going around the cities. I was in San Francisco protesting, and all of a sudden all these Chinese students showed up because Chinese consulate in San Francisco mobilized them. So see, the government can sit in Beijing and then just with one phone call to 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. Like we were peacefully protesting with Tibetans and 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 like elbowed to our chest, to our head. When we report to the police, this is back in 2008, so they were more protecting because of the Chinese government made the request from the police to protect them against those, you know, like the groups who are protesting against the government. So the police wouldn't listen to us.

They were protecting them, the attackers. And 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, all our former camp victims, the Chinese dissidents and the Tibetan activists and all our activists, they face same sort of violence by those Chinese students. Those are the Chinese students who are educating in 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 own standstill, and they can mobilize them against any kind of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Well, and 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 problem?

Maybe you have some issue? Are you against the regime, maybe? Yeah. There's just this whole kind of climate, right? And then, of course, let's say you are, you don't really want to do it. I'm sure there's plenty of people that don't want to cooperate.

Well, your family is back home. And so it- Yeah, I was just about to say that. Basically, every single Chinese students studying or living in the United States, or anywhere in the world, their family members are hostage on the Chinese government's hands. So they can use the family members to make them do whatever they want. And so, you know, you had to make a really difficult decision once, right?

When you decided to step up, you knew what might happen. And so I'm sure some people have criticized you. They said, hey, 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 are absolutely right. I get those kind of questions, especially some of the trolls on the internet attack me. And I have stopped in the streets of US cities,

even in Harvard, right after I gave a presentation to Asia Society Association that requested, I mean, they put together a session. When I get those questions and the criticism, my response to them is, unless if we defend the freedom and democracy you have in this country, just to look at what I said today or look at my life today and imagine the future of yourself or 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 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, forced him to retire. And I continued. And when I saw my father later, I said, I'm sorry, because of me. Fifty-eight 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. And when I apologized to my dad, I 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 Roshan 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 Rushyant 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 sixty-three 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. And 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 know many people who have made it and that 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 is I found something. 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. Like, at the moment you say, yes, this is real, there's no real justification. There's no way to explain it away. A lot of things, you know, you can kind of come up with an excuse, but this one you can't. It seems to have some value this way. And maybe this is part of the reason why, like value in terms of helping people understand this is the nature of this regime. They do stuff like this, you know,

murder for organs at scale. And, you know, something I just keep thinking about, like, if people understood this, they would, it would be, it's very difficult to, you know, 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, right? 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 or 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 more and 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 know what's happening with the countries like US, UK, Canada, and the Western countries, Australia, even global South. Every country they knew with their own intel what is happening with organ harvesting, with mass detention, with oil ore genocide, with Hong Kong and Taiwan and Tibet. Everybody knew what China's 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. So you just made me remember something we didn't talk about yet, and 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. I know like ourselves, we've been, you know, attacked

quite viciously for 25 years since we've been around and their attempts to kind of 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 CCP, and they use that very effectively, and that they are also manipulating the Western media to feed with the 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 kind of 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 as while the government is sponsoring. The men with the money, housing, and 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 Muslim who didn't want to marry non-Muslim 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 get 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

to not to cover the Uyghur atrocity. There are, you know, one of the, I want to cover this actually before we finish up. One of the reasons the Chinese regime gives for all of this that it's doing, right, is they say, well, actually the, you mentioned it before, right? After 9-11 they would say, well the Uyghurs have terrorist predilections and this is us, you know, 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 violences in other parts of China, the whole Chinese male population should be in jail. When the Chinese government claims that this is national security issue for them and that Uighurs are a threat to their national security or Uighurs are terrorists, well, we have last leaked Xinjiang police files,

which leaked by the victims of the 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 are 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, his internet doesn't work, it ran 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, why don't you tell me what your message is to your people? The Chinese government is really good. There are 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 voices louder. So I want the Uyghurs and diaspora to have a hope because hope is the only thing we have left which will lead us fight onwards and accept each other and understand each other because we are the keepers of this beautiful culture and our resilience is built with our community. So I want people to understand that. And actually, I translated that in Munich last week and read that in Uygur, and it seems

like it touched a lot of hearts because so many Uygur 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, Rushana Bas, 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 Roshana, Bas and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.