My mother disappeared
into one of China's prison camps,
along with more than
a million Uighurs. 
Ferkat hoped to get his mother,
Minaiwaier, out quickly.
He held meetings with
the U.S. government 
and started speaking out
on social media.
But then, he started getting threats
from Chinese officials.
Since I started speaking out,
I kept receiving different threats
from the Chinese government 
The person also said
I have to shut up.
If not,
I'll lose my mom forever. 
Ferkat and his mother are
part of the Uighur minority.
She was held in what the United Nations
calls an internment camp. 
Where did these mass detention
camps come from?
What issues do the Uighurs face?
And how is the world responding?
Let's lay out the basics.
Around 11 million Uighurs live in
China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region.
They are Muslim, speak a Turkic language
and descend from Central Asia.
By blood, I am an Uzbek.
But, by identity,
by culture, I am a Uighur.
For centuries, the Uighur community
has lived in the region
often influenced by China.
But the People's Republic of China
annexed the province in 1949
after the Communist Party
came into power.
The Uighurs are Chinese citizens,
but are different from
the Han Chinese majority 
in pretty much every other way.
China recognized Xinjiang
as an autonomous region.
That should have given the Uighurs
some freedom to govern themselves.
But, that was never really the case.
And soon, the Communist Party
began to relocate
ethnic Han Chinese into Xinjiang.
One is to see it as
straightforward colonialism, 
trying to establish
Han population in the region
in order to better integrate it
to the rest of China.
From the Chinese Communist
Party's point of view,
this isn't a colonialist activity.
It's rather one of development.
Tensions between the Han
and Uighurs grew
as the new arrivals
prospered economically.
The economic benefits from
that development 
went to Han Chinese.
In the 1990s, authorities began
limiting the freedom 
of Uighurs to practice Islam.
They banned Muslims from fasting
during the holy month of Ramadan
and restricted access to mosques.
At the same time, support for
Uighur separatist movements grew.
And in the late 1990s, some Uighurs fled
Chinese crackdowns
and set up training camps
in Afghanistan, 
which at the time was being
controlled by the Taliban. 
The ethnic and economic tensions
eventually escalated into riots in 2009
that left almost 200 people dead.
The riots began in factories 
where Uighurs and Han Chinese
worked side by side.
Then, in 2014, a series of attacks
by Uighur separatists in multiple cities
killed dozens of people. 
China blamed the riots on religious 
extremism and separatism.
It was a turning point.
China used the attack as
justification in launching what it called
China put the Uighurs under
intense surveillance
and began operating
the prison camps in 2017. 
That's the year Ferkat's mother was taken. 
She left us a message on WeChat,
the Chinese version of WhatsApp,
where she said that she
was going to school. 
The school is the code word that
they use for the camps.
Then she came back after 22 days,
but she changed totally.
The first thing she said is,
"Son, I cannot talk to
you guys anymore.
Stop calling me."
Since then, eight people
from Ferkat’s family
have been detained in these camps. 
And all except his mother
have cut off communication with Ferkat.
China initially denied
the existence of these camps.
- This is what we called vocational
education and training centers.
They are there for
the prevention of terrorists.
Critics maintain that in many cases
the camps are used for forced labor.
And they also say these camps exist to
wipe out the Uighur language and culture.
These images are from state TV,
and they show a more sanitized
version of life inside.
But detainees are forced to renounce
their religious beliefs
and embrace the ideology of
the Communist Party.
In March 2019, U.S. Secretary of State 
Mike Pompeo met with Ferkat.
He praised his bravery in speaking out.
Three months later, Ferkat’s mother 
was released to her home in Xinjiang,
but stripped of her freedom
and unable to reunite with her son.
My mom was released
on the end of May 2019. 
Even though she was released,
but she was given a phone
by the Chinese police to talk to us.
China has tried to suppress
information on the camps.
Journalists are not able to
access them without heavy restrictions.
In this video, a state news outlet shows
Ferkat’s mom and uncle.
It suggests even Uighurs living
outside the camps,
like Ferkat’s mother,
remain unable to speak freely.
Leaked government
documents confirm
the camps aren’t
really educational 
with language like,
“never allow escapes,”
and “increase discipline and punishment.”
The documents compare Islam
to an infectious disease
and say that freedom
is only possible
when the virus is eradicated.
With so much evidence of
human rights abuses out there, 
why has so little action been taken
by the international community?
Well, it's not really
in the interest of most countries
to criticize the second
largest economy in the world. 
It’s no longer just “Made in China”
toys, clothes and food. 
China is building ports, 
railroads and airports 
across Asia, Africa and Europe.
That may also explain
why Muslim-majority countries like
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are silent. 
Many of them rely on China’s
investments and loans.
Many states that are financially
dependent on China 
have been willing to
join Chinese efforts
to say everything
in Xinjiang is fine.
And then there’s China’s
“war on terror” rhetoric.
The leaked documents showed
President Xi Jinping 
saying his government was only doing 
what America had done.
In the period after 9/11, 2001
the United States rolled out
a new framework 
called the
But it was very useful
for authoritarian governments
all around the world, 
and in particular in China,
to latch onto that idea.
But another reason countries
are reluctant to speak up
is that they want the tools 
the Chinese government
is using against the Uighurs.
Surveillance technology in
smartphones and security cameras
allow the Chinese government to 
constantly monitor people’s behavior 
and location without their consent.
We have documented
facial recognition, 
the use of biometric data
and then we actually reverse-
engineered an app
that's used by police to aggregate 
enormous amounts of information
about people's behavior.
Since 2017, China’s invested
billions on security in Xinjiang.
And more than 60 countries 
have already purchased
Chinese surveillance tech,
and it’s now being put into
use around the world.
So can anything be done
to hold China accountable?
In June 2019, 22 countries
issued a joint statement
to the UN Human Rights Council
calling on China to
end its mass detention of Uighurs.
China responded
by getting 37 countries
to sign onto a statement
praising its policy in Xinjiang.
Meanwhile, the U.S. doesn't
seem to have a clear policy.
But Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo
has called China
out on the issue.
And in December 2019,
the U.S. House of Representatives
passed the Uyghur Human
Rights Policy Act 
by 407 votes to 1,
calling for sanctions against
senior Chinese officials.
But it still has to be approved
by the Republican-controlled Senate
before it's sent to
President Trump.
The White House hasn't
said yet whether Trump
will sign or veto the bill.
Unsurprisingly, China was
furious with the legislation.
Lobbying efforts by Uighurs like
Ferkat, who spoke out
despite the risk to
their families,
helped persuade Congress.
With 1 million Uighur
Muslims still imprisoned,
the most high-profile
opposition has recently
come from an
international football star 
and a girl on TikTok,
rather than from governments.
But Ferkat and others believe
more people
need to keep
the pressure up on China.
A Chinese agent told me that 
I'm just one individual
going against 
the second superpower
in the world.
And then compared to them,
I'm just nothing. 
But I believe I am strong 
because of the people around myself.
Take China’s increasing resistance
to diplomatic and economic pressure. 
Add in its growing technological
power and influence.
Combine that with a lack of
information on what’s really
going on in Xinjiang
and consequences for those who speak out.
With all those things in mind,
it’s very difficult to see
where the change
Ferkat needs will come from.
It is lonely. It is scary.
It's a really hard process.
But, 
I'm still here. 
