lawyer pleads guilty to breaking election campaign law and says in court, under oath, that the candidate directed him to commit the crimes, with the principal purpose of influencing an election. michael cohen admits paying hush money to two women who claimed they'd had sex with mr trump. and in a separate court case in virginia a jury convicted one of mr trump's key strategists in the 2016 election, paul manafort, on 8 charges of tax and bank fraud. none of them relate to the time he was campaign managerfor mr trump. the leader of myanmar, aung san suu kyi, says her government wants the safe and dignified return of ethnic rohingyas who've fled to bangladesh. she defended the government's handling of the crisis. now on bbc news, hardtalk. hello, and welcome to hardtalk, i'm shaun ley.

sense the party's though, obey the party's words, follow the party's lead. the words printed in red on a building at an interment camp in china. there are lots of those in xinjiang, one of the most wealthy provinces in china and also one of its most restive. it's home to the uighur ethnic group and there are reports of over a million people in detention. the government says the camps need to re—educate people. they say they are fighting islamic terror in the region. nury turkel is chairman of the uyghur human rights project. so is he being duped or is china duping the rest of the world? nury turkel, welcome to hardtalk.

can you describe for me the experience of being a uighur in xinjiang province these days? imagine you go to church on sunday and you have to go through body scans and imagine that you get up and one morning, the government wants you to marry off your daughter to someone, part of the oppressed ethnic group. imagine that you don't have anyone to confide in, even in your private life and imagine you are forced to denounce your religion and walk away from your centuries old tradition, such as the uighurs. what is happening in the uighurs‘ homeland of east turkestan

is cultural revolution on steroids. the chinese government has been so brutal, particularly in the last 16, 18 months, locked up more than 10% of the population according to various reports. we are talking about a population of 10 million people so you are talking about 10%, 1 million uighurs in detention. the numbers could be higher. a human rights organisation published a report recently estimating 3.3 million people affected. the chinese government has been carrying out this internment camp, so—called re—education programme in three ways. one, they lock you up and impose a heavy sentence of 10—15 years. you basically go through jail time. the second group of people who have been subjected to this is daily re—education. you go there and come home at night. and the third one is the ones

who are kept in high walls and barbed wire. they go to a daily routine pronouncing their religious background, studying the thoughts of xi. that is the president, xijinping? exactly. and watching anti—separatist video. singing chinese communist songs, stuff like that. you haven't lived in china for more than 20 years now. how can you know this apart from through second and third—hand accounts? i follow the news and i talk to people who are able to leave the country in recent years. i have done some asylum were and have spoken to some new generation uighurs in the united states. this is what people tell you as they get out?

there is a description from a radiojournalist who talks about what it means for her. she works for the us funded radio free asia and says more than two dozen other relatives are missing, her brother was detained and her parents both elderly and suffering, went missing. her aunt, cousins, children and more than 20 people swept up by the authorities. i found out later they had all been detained on the same day. i happen to know this family from my childhood years. this particular reporter's father is my father's friend. i saw him in real time as a child. he trained as an anthropologist. very well revered and respected. what the chinese government has a problem with people like him is the fact that they are promoting in a way to intellectual methods to make the uighurs deal pride, proud of their ethnic cultural heritage. you were born yourself in a labour camp at the beginning of the 19705. you were in a labour camp

because your parents were persecuted during the cultural revolution. is xinjiang going through something similar again? it is inconceivable that we talk about this in 2018. history is taking a very strange turn and repeating itself. i was born at the height of the cultural revolution in a similar re—education camp. my mother was taken in when she was six months pregnant with me and we were released about 45 months after she gave birth to me. during that period, we both suffered a very difficult time, health issues, daily humiliation, physical and verbal abuses and it's just mind—boggling and hard to believe we are talking about similar situations taking place 47 years later. what does this mean

to you personally? you haven't lived in china since 1995 but have family there. like my fellow uighurs, i have been going through a very difficult time. simply because the chinese government effectively exported its oppression to uighurs who are living as a free person like myself, as a citizen of the civilised world. you try to have a normal life but you can't, thinking that your family members are suffering and you are physically and financially capable and yet you can't be at their bedside if they're suffering a health issue. what some of the uighurs are missing is funerals. my family situation, my mother has seven grandchildren. she was able to hold only two of them. you can't really talk about your current situation.

that must even in itself be quite difficult. it is difficult in two ways. one, the chinese government has created a fear of appraisal in uighur citizens of the western world's mind because of the fear, not many uighurs would be willing to come and tell theirfamily stories because you never know, oppressed people and very repressive governments, you never know what they will do to your family and doing the things like i have been doing is a conscionable thing to do. i'm feeling proud to be a voice for the voiceless, millions of voiceless uighur people back home. you told us as one of the examples is what you see as the kind of repression of uighurs in china, that they are being told to study the thought of xi jinping, and one uighur, a former inmate

of a detention camp, in august was quoted by the wall streetjournal saying, we should give thanks not to allah but xi jinping. that's not unusual. all around china, people are told to study the thoughts of the president. the president is almost deified in china now. that's not special to the uighurs. how does that count as oppression? let's talk about what the chinese government's motives and intentions are. can you answer that question? the chinese government is using east turkestan, uighur lives as a laboratory for total surveillance, brutal repression and if we are not careful, and i'm saying this to the chinese citizens in other parts of china. similar methods in tibet. and the new sheriff in town who is running the show used to be the head of hte communist party. that's your explanation that in the last 18

months, things have become that much harder. he has brought the techniques he developed in tibet to his newjob in your province. the chinese government has pilot programmes. they apply and implement in one region. if it works, they start enforcing it in other. tibet and east turkestan has been a kind of playground for the pilot programme. you use the phrase east turkestan and i'm talking about xinjiang. there is a basic difference here for you and some other uighurs, you don't really accept that this chinese province is part of china. you want it to be part of a separate uighur state in east turkestan. east turkestan is an historic

name for the uighurs, it has a tremendous significance. the uighurs have had two republics, the first in 1933 and the second in 19114. but they didn't last very long, did they? about a year for the first and at the most five years for the second. a very short period in a very long history. but because of that proud history that uighurs cherish, they like call their homeland as east turkestan but xinjiang can be translated as "new dominion", and "new frontier", and that is a name that has been imposed by communist china and the uighurs resent that name. that is what china says, a lot of this is about problems that have been caused on the ground by uighurs and they give examples. they say there is nothing arbitrary about the detention camps. there are vocational training centres. there is no such thing as re—education centres in xinjiang and they say the relocation, [161,000 people at the beginning of the first three months of this year, to quote the global times newspaper, is to improve social stability and alleviate poverty. those are good ambitions.

that is a bogus best and here is why. the chinese government has stated goal. xijinping is the1—man show in the country. he does not want to be blamed for anything but results and political disaster because it will have a domino effect in his leadership role. and there is some racism in this. the chinese government believes that uighurs at no national identity, they will present a political threat in the future so they want to take a preventive measure to forcibly assimilate the uighurs. that's not what the chinese say. china's foreign ministry says that anyone of all ethnicities in xinjiang live and work in peace and contentment. but they have to say that because they have to find a way to justify the brutality when they implement it. how would they be able to justify locking up more than 10% of the population? we know that the re—education of what? the re—education of someone transferring

from one ethnic group to atheist or non— religious believer? what are they trying to do? this term itself is problematic. it is propaganda. the chinese government can say anything but making that kind of statement three times does not make it true. let's talk about another reason that the chinese give for the actions they take. they warn about those being deceived by religious extremism. they'll be assisted by resettlement and be education, that is how the chinese delegation to the un in geneva puts it and when you say again this incredible figure, and nobody would argue with this, the incredible figure of 21% of all arrests on china being in xinjiang which is only 1.5% of the whole population, but they then point to the violence and the violence there that has been considerable, hasn't it? i will give you some examples. it will be interesting to hear your response. a bomb and knife attack at urumqi south railway station. 2 dead, 79 injured. 31 killed and 90 more injured when two cars crashed through an urumqi market and explosives were tossed into the crowd. a knife—wielding gang attacks a police station and government office in yarkand, 96 dead. 50 die in blasts in luntai county, outside police stations, a market and a shop.

all those attacks in one year alone. there is violence in that province and it's not coming from the government. that does not give the chinese government justification to lock up poets, university professors, scholars, musicians, athletes in concentration camps. the british government did it in northern ireland in the 19705. "we are worried some of these people might turn to violence so we'll put them in prison." we should learn the lesson from history. the united states have done it but it does not make it right. the chinese government has done three things very skilfully. they have been effectively playing into people's emotions in the west. the uk, european countries, the united states. . ..

i do want to deal with that because it is important, but let me just deal with the emotions of people who live in that region and fear that kind violence. when the government says to them, we hold onto the belief that keeping to all away from xinjiang is the greatest human right, you wouldn't dispute that, would you ? you are a human rights advocate yourself, keeping people safe, letting them feel that they are not in danger when they walk out their front door is actually a fundamental responsibility. that is a theory, that is what they say that they are doing. you don't believe them? i don't believe it because they are trying to create a total surveillance state, they are trying to forcibly assimilate the uighurs. if anyone stands in the way, they will end up in concentration camps. last april, they introduced

the draconian ‘deextremification‘ measure, that sanctions some of the most acceptable and normal behaviours in society — the growing of a beard and adhering to a halal diet, and naming children with religious names. that sort of stuff has been — so the chinese government has been paving the way for today's nightmare for some time. let me repeat that point, and that is that the chinese government believes that there are groups who claim to be uighur campaigners who are prepared to use violence. there was an attack in beijing in october 2013 in which half a dozen people were killed, several dozen people were injured. it was claimed by the east turkestan islamic party. that was formed by uighurs who had fled china for afghanistan and pakistan,

and it said it was responsible for the attacks. an american analytical company said claims may be exaggerated but the threat the turkestan islamic party poses cannot be ignored. the chinese government can say the same thing 15 times. that's not the chinese government. that's american analysts. the source of this information is the chinese government because tip or etim, all of it was enlisted in a terrorist designation list at the behest of the chinese government. well, the us government said that the east turkestan islamic movement, which uses the name tip, as you know, these groups are all quite overlapping, is the most militant of the uighur separatist groups. that is 12 years ago. so they have reformed, have they? no, they didn't reform. china is showing its true colours. china is...one of the countries that effectively utilised 9/11

to their benefit is the chinese government, perhaps the most effectively utilised government is the chinese government. yeah, but you told me i was out of date. i'll tell you, though, 15 years later, the british government listed both organisations, or if it is one organisation, as a terrorist organisation. islamic terrorist and separatist organisation. this is july 2016, quoted by reuters, trying to create an independent caliphate. that kind of rhetoric has been floating around without hard evidence. so you think the west is being duped? duped, yes. it's a political decision. when you talk to western government officials, this is one of the problems i'd like to highlight here. because of the chinese government's strategic approach to creating hysteria, some of the good people in the national security intelligence communities in the uk and the united states and elsewhere have tapped into the chinese rhetoric, believing that china and the west are fighting

a similar type of fight against terrorism, which defeats the logic. trouble is, i mean, whether or not you accept that some uighurs in exile are keeping some very unpleasant company, a study said they are forging strategic alliances with leading jihadist organisations affiliated with al qaeda and the taliban. there was a report only this week, mid—august 2018, that the chinese special envoy to syria is worried about uighurs having gone to fight there. even if you say that all that is propaganda, for people living in china, they will believe, won't they, what the global times, the state—owned tabloid says, that the crackdown in your province, your home province, has salvaged it and it has avoided the fate of becoming china's syria or china's libya ? as you know, there are sizeable western individuals whojoined the forces in syria. but none of the western governments have been setting up

internment camps for anyone who might be having tendencies to take up arms against the western interests. do you know what china means by an abnormally long beard? that is...i have seen religious figures in christian and jewish communities, especially in new york, when you walk around some parts of new york, you will see a jewish individual with a long beard. that sort of beard is considered a sign of extremism in china. so these are among the measures that have been, particularly in the last year and a half or so, introduced? that includes growing a beard for style. but it is aimed, in your view, at visible identification of somebody as a uighur? yeah, because that would make you look different than the chinese. another reference has been to dissuade people who cover their bodies and veil their faces from entering railway stations

and airports. that is happening too, is it? uighurs are easy to identify. most uighurs look eurasian. they have a high ridged nose, are fair skinned, and can easily be identified by anyone in china. that actually makes them more vulnerable in society for racial discrimination. last 0ctober, president xi told the party conference that it must uphold the principle that religions in china must be chinese in orientation and provide active guidance to religion so they can adapt themselves to the socialist society. the truth is it's notjust muslims who experience that is it? it's christians, its other religious denominations. they are not singling out the uighurs. that is the exact point that i want the audience to know, there is a clear and present danger that this brutal policy will be extended. they're testing the ground.

the uighurs' homeland, and their lives have been a testing ground for future policies, oppressive policies will not only stay in china, but will be exported to china—related countries around the world. president trump sees president xi jinping as an ally. he has gone so far as to call him a friend. angela merkel, the german chancellor, has been to china i think 11 times in 12 years. on no occasion has she raised the plight of the uighur. do you have any hope at all that the trump administration is going to act on your concerns? the trump administration have already acted. vice president mike pence raised the deteriorating uighur right situation in a speech, and the us ambassador un ambassador kelley currie has regularly been raising it. she testified a couple of weeks ago at the united states congress, highlighting the worsening uighur human rights situation. we know that president trump

doesn't always do the same as his colleagues. he told fox news last year, "some people might call xijinping the king of china, he is a very powerful man, i happen to think he is a very good person." we have to separate what president trump says or views about the leader of china. the united states has a panel of experts in the united states government who work on china. so i don't know where president trump's mind is heading to when it comes to china and xijinping, but i do believe he has a good team of experts in the government who understand the issue. one last question. murat uyghur, who now lives in finland, says of the internment camps, "they're like a black hole, people go in, they do not come out. i am afraid of the worst now." what are you afraid of? i am afraid of mass murder because we do not know — other than a few key

individuals who managed to leave the camps, people are not leaving. where have those 1 million people gone? what are they being charged of? it's basically a no rights zone, as the un official perfectly pointed out. you have no access to lawyer, you have no access to judicial process, and there is no access to family members, there is no access to proper medical care, that's why we've seen people leaving as a dead person from the camps. so i am worried, and also there's an important part of my worry is that the chinese government has been building a crematoria... crematoria. crematoria, and they're hiring people to work on those facilities. why are they building, all of a sudden, in such places? in — traditionally american academics, if i may finish, have been very careful in their criticism of the chinese government. recently, one of the well—respected american academics said publicly, twice,

that he worried there will be a mass murder in those camps. and you worry too. nury turkel of the uyghur human rights project in washington, dc, thank you for being with us on hardtalk. thank you very much. thank you. hello. well, in the last few days it's been pretty warm across the uk, with temperatures in the high 20s across the south. we've got another fine day on the way on wednesday across central and southern areas of the uk. we'll probably see scenes like this from tuesday, lovely weather there around the docklands in london. but there is change on the way. this weather front will cool things off over the next few days,

but initially, the cooler air will be reaching scotland and northern ireland. but ahead of it, we still have warm air coming in all the way from the azores, from the almost subtropics here, so that's why it's so warm outside. in fact, temperatures overnight around the mid—teens across much of the country. now, the weather front will be moving across the uk through the early hours of wednesday morning. it's already been wet across scotland, parts of northern ireland too have seen quite a bit of rain, and that's just about moving into south—western scotland now. but, to the south of that, it's dry. where the skies clear, there might be a little bit of a chill in the air, 13 degrees for norwich. but generally, where we have the cloud, it's around 15, 16,17 degrees. so this is very warm, very humid air over us first thing this morning. here is the weather front. this is a cold front, or a cool front, you could call it in the summer. behind it, coolerair comes in, much fresher air, so scotland

and northern ireland in the afternoon will be quite a bit cooler. you can see those yellow colours here indicating those lower temperatures from the north atlantic, mostly around the teens — 17 in belfast, only 1a in stornoway, but to the south, we've got temperatures in the high teens. and then this central bit here, around northern england, wales, that's where the weather front is moving through, so the chance of catching, i think, some rain during the course of wednesday. now, wednesday into thursday, these weather fronts, in fact a succession of them, start moving through the uk. and then, behind it, and the forecast has been the same for the last few days, we have this much fresher air coming in off the north atlantic, almost from iceland, so that cooler air starts invading the uk on thursday. but one weather front moves through the south—east earlier in the day, so possibly some rain. again, more weatherfronts or showers moving into scotland and northern ireland, and also a bit of a breeze. these are winds in miles per hour. you can double these for gusts of wind, so gusting perhaps to 30 mph there off western scotland. but cool already on thursday. you can see temperatures in the low 20s in the south, in the mid—teens for belfast, glasgow and for edinburgh. how about the next few days? well, it looks like the temperatures might pick up a little bit, but not an awful lot,

and cardiff may be up to 19 by monday, possibly 21 in london by monday, but it will be quite changeable. bye— bye. this is the briefing. i'm sally bundock. our top story: it's a double blow for president trump as his former campaign manager is convicted on multiple counts of fraud and in a separate case his ex—lawyer pleads guilty to breaking campaign finance rules. thousands of venezula ns flee their country as its economic crisis intensifies, inflation could reach one million percent by the end of the year. ravaged by tourism, montenegros's medieval city of kotor could lose its unesco world heritage status as visitor numbers continue to rise. us sanctions against russia come in to force today following the poisoning of the skripal‘s in the uk. what impact will this have on the russian economy?