... a trade unionist and a socialist and he stole most of
what I would have said so I won't repeat
him but I just want to say I think we
should think about why this is happening.
Why is China doing this? And
to me I think it's clear there are
three reasons. The first is that - look,
China claims to be socialist - we know
it's not. We know that what the Chinese
state is interested in is profit, is
money, is its wealth and power. Dissent -
people who don't want to be ruled by
Beijing - are a threat to
that. And the second
reason and the third reason are that the Uyghur people and East Turkestan are a
particular threat to that. China's Belt & Road
plan is an imperial plan to try and
build a globe-spanning economic empire
with China and its profits at its heart.
the territory that the Uyghurs call home,
East Turkestan, is crucial to the plans
that they have. Their trade routes that
they want to build run through it. The
oil and the fossil fuels that they want
to dig out are there. They want that
territory under control and that is why
they're clamping down on the Uyghur
people and their desire for independence
their desire for democracy their desire
to set their own course. And third, we've
seen the reports recently that some of
these camps they're not just locking
people up. They're drilling them. They're
drilling them to be obedient workers and
this is the disgusting irony of a
"socialist" - so-called "socialist" - state
arresting people putting them in camps
and drilling them to be loyal employees
to be more productive. And we need to
we need to do work to investigate the
businesses that are using that labour
because China - the Chinese government - is
farming the workers that it has
brainwashed and abused out to businesses
to exploit them for pennies to make
things that they sell around the world
to build their profits and build their
empire. So one thing we can do is we can
investigate, we can find those businesses
we can place pressure on them, we can
talk to the people that work in those
businesses and say "do you like what your
employer is doing, using slavery to build"
"its profits? I don't think you do - come
and organize with us." So I'd urge people
not just to think about the boycotts
that people have talked about
on these protests before and not just on
awareness-raising but let's follow
the money. Because we know that most
people here, most of us, we're ordinary
workers. We go to work every day for
somebody else to make our living and
that's true for most of us but we hold
the power because none of their profits,
whether they're the Chinese state or
businesses here, make anything,
no wheels turn, without us. We have to find
that power. We have to find where their
vulnerabilities are and we have to take
action to strike at those
vulnerabilities and end the abuses that
these people are conducting because at
the end of the day we have all of the
power
and that's why at the end
of the day we will win.
