Thank you so much for coming this
afternoon for this pre-brief of the
side event that we're doing at 4:30. We really first of all want to encourage you all
to come to the side event and hear
the presentations of all of the
panelists. We have a really remarkable
panel joining us today. In addition to
Adrian who is one of the foremost
researchers on this topic working on
these issues and whose landmark research
has really helped to give us a much
clearer picture frankly of what's going
on in a region of China that has been
very well hidden and intentionally so.
And Adrian's research which primarily
has looked at Chinese documents to
understand what is going on in Xinjiang
and at and comparing those documents, I
will let him talk about it, but I just am so
in awe of the work that he's done
because it is so remarkable and it has
helped us to really understand better
what is going on in Xinjiang. And and so
we're really grateful to have him on
this panel today. And Omar Bekali
who is a survivor of these internment
camps and who will talk about his own
direct experience of being interned in
in one of these facilities. And then we
have our wonderful Special Rapporteur on
the right to freedom of religion and who
has requested access to Xinjiang
publicly and we very strongly support
his call and the call of other special
procedures as well as the request by the
High Commissioner herself to visit Xinjiang.  We really want to see as many
people who know what they're looking for
going in and
looking at the situation there, because
despite what we have been able to learn
through important research such as
Adrian's and other researchers who are
trying to help us draw a picture, our own
our own efforts, and those of others
looking at it, there's still a
lot that we don't know about what is
happening, and a lot still remains hidden,
like I said, intentionally so, from view
on the situation there.  So we definitely
want to, the purpose of today's event is
to talk about what we do know what we
feel we can honestly verify and and what
we feel comfortable asserting is the
situation there and to shine a light on
those aspects and bring the discussion
to this audience here in in Geneva.
It's a very important place for the
discussion of human rights and it is
obviously a center where you have a lot
of expertise around these issues.
You have a lot of those special procedures
working on issues connected to the
situation in Xinjiang whether it's the
right of ethnic minorities freedom of
association, freedom of assembly, freedom of
speech, and then of course freedom of
religious belief. This is a
critical audience to talk about these
issues so we're very grateful to have
the opportunity to be able to to do this
this week. I also want to note that
literally in about 45 minutes the
Secretary of State will be rolling out
our human rights report this for
2018. And in the in the Human Rights
report the section on China is a hundred
and twenty-six pages and goes into some
detail about again what we have been
able to document not just in Xinjiang,
but across across China in terms of the
the crackdown on human rights that is ongoing
there,  but it does have a particularly
strong section on Xijiang this year. And
so the Secretary will be rolling that
out this week. And with that I'm going to
turn it over to Adrian and let him talk
a little bit to preview his presentation
for you.
Thank you very much it's a
pleasure and privilege to be here I have
some special remarks for this press
conference. I have also prepared a paper
specifically for today which also will
be available at a panel later, on but I
have a bunch of copies also here for the
press.  However the remarks are making now
are largely not contained in the paper.
So let me begin by saying that at
yesterday's press conference in Beijing, Xinjiang's governor Shohrat Zakir denied
accusations that the region is detaining
vast numbers of ethnic minorities in
reeducation or concentration camps. He
also denied estimates according to which
up to 1 million people could be interned
in such facilities. Instead he emphasized
that Xinjiang has embarked on a
successful vocational skills training
initiative that helps minorities secure
gainful employment and keeps them from
extremist ideology. I am not entirely
sure who Mr. Zakir believes he's
speaking to, but from the viewpoint of
academic research his semantic
acrobatics are incorrect at best and
deceptive at worst. Anyone capable of
reading Chinese can see that the
Xinjiang's
own legal stipulations and the de-extremification ordinances directly refer to
vocational skills training centers as
quote unquote
re-education institutions in Chinese
[chinese term].  The term for
re-education found in official documents
[Chinese term], literally transformations
for education, was first applied to the
brutal brainwashing methods used against
a Falun Gong.  [Chinese term] has its
roots in the former education through
labor system, as well as the heavy-handed
involuntary treatments administered to
drug addicts under the coercive isolated
detoxification scheme Mr. Zakir denies.
The existence of quote unquote 
re-education camps -  in chinese the term
used is [Chinese term] - which is easily done
because the terms [Chinese term] is in fact
never used in China or in Xinjiang to
describe political re-education
facilities. However between 2013 and 2018
official documents and state media
reports have mentioned at least 8
different terms for centralized closed
teaching re-education or skills training
facilities in the context of the de-extremification
work. The vocational skills
education training centers mentioned by
Mr. Zakir and recent Chinese
state media reports of the camps are
only one of these 8. In addition many
camp survivors and eyewitnesses have
been detained and re educated in
criminal detention centers -  in Chinese
[Chinese term] Satellite images and
official spending figures confirm that
these detention centers have expanded
massively in 2017 and 2018 now apparently
playing an increasing role in Xinjiang's large-scale internment campaign.
It is therefore safe to assume that those
who are interned in the specific
facilities labeled vocational skills
education training centers, number less
than a million making it easy for Mr.
Zakir to argue against the 1 million
estimate. But by doing so he's equating
apples with oranges. The bigger question
is how many ethnic minorities in total
might be detained in all of these
above-mentioned internment facilities
combined, excluding former prisons.
Given that virtually every Uighur family has
at least one, and in numerous instances
several, family members in detention, and
evidenced also by the fact that visiting
reporters and academics in 2017 and 2018 have observed empty streets deserted
bazaars boarded up homes and shops and
many less men and women on public
streets.  Given that the tensions among
Kazakhs and Kyrgyz have also
drastically increased especially in two
thousand 2018, that large numbers
of all of these groups are
detained in heavily overcrowded
detention centers whose total capacity
has drastically risen in the past two
years, given at spending on Xinjiang's
justice system facilities and detention
center management and related domestic
security budgets multiplied in 2018 -
apparently as we recently find out
maintain the same level in 2018 - and
given ongoing eyewitness accounts of the
severe overcrowded nests of just about
all of these facilities.  Given all of
these facts it is necessary to increase
our estimate of those who are and have
been directly affected by Xinjiang's
internment drive. In my view, although
speculative, it seems appropriate to
estimate that up to 1.5 million ethnic
minorities equivalent, to just under one
in six adult members, of a predominantly
Muslim minority group in Xinjiang are, or
have been, interned in any of these
detention internment and re-education
facilities excluding former prisons. It
is in my view unlikely that the total
number of detained persons is
substantially below 1 million, although a
lack of official data makes these
estimates difficult to substantiate.
An unknown subset of these large numbers of
detainees will have been interned in a
so-called vocational skills education
training centers.
Mr. Zakir refused to give us exact
numbers. All in all, the Chinese state's
present attempt to eradicate independent
and free expressions of distinct ethnic
and religious identities in Xinjiang is
nothing less than a systematic campaign
of cultural genocide, and should be
treated as such. Thank you.
