will start later in wisconsin. delegates will confirm joe biden as the man to challenge donald trump in november's election. but coronavirus restrictions mean the four—day event will take place almost entirely online, with joe biden giving his acceptance speech from his home—state of delaware. in a major reversal, students across the united kingdom will now get the grade given them by their school or college. there was an uproar after 40% of a—level results were downgraded by the exams regulator, which used a formula based on schools‘ prior grades. opposition protesters in belarus have held a ninth night of protests against the president alexander lu kashenko, saying his re—election was fraudulent. now on bbc news,

it's time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. the chinese government goes to extraordinary lengths to control its own population. perhaps the most extreme example, xinjiang, where muslim uighur people have faced systematic repression. but the principal of authoritarian control runs much deeper. my guest today is wu'er kaixi, a political dissident in exile, part of the 1989 tiananmen generation. he is himself a uighur. has beijing effectively snuffed out the spirit of tiananmen?

wu'er kaixi in taiwan, welcome to hardtalk. thank you very much. thank you for having me back. it is a pleasure to have you on the show. i think we must begin with what is happening in xinjiang, particularly to the uighur muslim communities in xinjiang. there is a rising level of international condemnation at what the chinese government is doing. as you watch this situation very closely, do you see any sign china is modifying its policies? small signs here and there, but not in the general picture. for instance, there is one country, turkey, being a muslim country and also, we share very common cultural and ethnic routes. the president of turkey has expressed his condemnation to china, perhaps one of the very few islamic country leaders who have done it. because a large number

of uighur live in turkey, it creates a tension domestically in the turkish politics. therefore, the chinese government decided to calm turkey down by releasing some of the people in the camp who have relatives in turkey. altogether, a few thousand perhaps. in comparison, we believe more than1.5 million uighurs in the concentration camp, that little change, without qualifier, your definition of changing the policy. i know you are one of the chairmen of one of the uighur campaigning groups that do so much work internationally. of course, many people around the world know you because of your pro—democracy and freedom activities in china in 1989, which led

to your exile from the country after the tiananmen protests ended in bloodshed. do you now feel yourself, and identify more as uighur than chinese? well, i'm a born uighurand my parents are both uighurs. i spoke their language at home when i was born and raised in beijing. when you are a member of a minority group in a large, overwhelmingly marginalised group, you do actually have a stronger sense of your birth identity. discrimination against uighurs in china is everywhere. yes, i have a very strong sense of uighur, even back then when i was the leader of the chinese democracy movement. democratizing china has no conflict or fighting for

uighurs‘ self identity rights. the 50 days of the 1989 student movement perhaps is the only 50 days that i felt absolutely no discrimination from my peers, from my classmates. it also gives us an interesting perspective that when you fight forfreedom, freedom kind of brings equality. when you're concentrating on the concept of freedom, you forget to discriminate other people based on their ethnics. hang on. i have to interrupt you to point out that china isn't confronting activists fighting forfreedom. it is simply confronting what it calls the three evil forces of separatism, terrorism and extremism. china argues it conducts the policy across the country.

it happens that the threat of extremism and separatism is at its greatest right now in xinjiang. may be there many chilean needs outside of shin jane may be there many chilean needs outside of shinjane who sympathise with that —— chinese. if you keep trying to exploit weaker people from their self—identity, they want to get independent, yes, they see independence is one of the ways to preserve their identity, their culture, so the separatism, if there are any, and i do agree that there are separatism sentiments in the last 70 years, that's because of the chinese communist party's suppression. we would have, if chinese communist party had always treated us equally, we probably wouldn't have nearly this kind of sentiments, we were part of the empire, we were happy with that,

we were quite content with that only when chinese came to rule weaker people, they don't want to just rule, they want to exploit us and that is unacceptable and that has led to the separatism. how satisfied are you with the international response we have seen? the bbc has done a great deal of reporting based on leaked documentation and secretly filmed video on the truth of what has happened and xin chang. recently we saw testimony from one detainee, who described he was among a whole group of people who were forced to wear leg shackles, a headset, and others have talked about voluntary schools that are in fact detention centres.

we have seen the internment camps in terms of secret video. the international community doesn't really seem to have done very much in response. is that your view? as it is actually, i'd appreciate bbc‘s efforts and actually i appreciate british sentiment when it comes to this, that you do have a strong moral sense that you want to do something but at the same time, a media outfit like bbc also holding another stance that we need more evidence to report. let's not forget, during world war ii, the whole world only discovered the existence of holocaustjust weeks before liberating berlin, so that happened, that went on for years without the world knowing. isn't that a dangerous comparison? because as soon as you make that comparison with the death camps where more than 6 million people were exterminated, you are entering very

dangerous territory. you may well be accused of massive, massive over exaggeration. this is also another fine character of your british people, including you, stephen, you do not want to go exaggeration, but the very idea, we don't want to go exaggerate, kind of limits you from reporting the truth, how can you ask that the suppressed people provide the evidence? all these moral standards have somehow contradicted each other, but i'm glad at the end the sense of reporting from the bbc has overcome and we also have two thank many ngo workers, people who risk their lives to provide that little evidence the world are seeing today but the fact

is much more overwhelming than what the world is seeing. maybe the number is not happening, but this is 21st—century you are getting 1 million people in concentration camp, it is something the world should feel outrage when they discover the existence of the holocaust. injune of this year, donald trump was specifically asked why he hadn't enacted us treasury sanctions on us communist party based on evidence emerging from xin chang about the treatment of the uighurs and he said we are in the middle of a major trade deal. what do you make of that? the last 30 years, the world is in a trade deal with china. united states is in a trade

war, and great britain and europe and every other democratic country, free country, the whole world in the last 30 years, at the very least 30 years, decided to talk trade with china only, and then i called it, if i remember clearly, in your show last time when they appeared five years ago, isaid, this is appeasement. donald trump is a businessman who became a world leader, but at least from his perspective, and he is seeing this business deal, this trade deal is not benefiting america either. so the whole world maybe it is time to realise to get out of this trade deal and talk about some basic human rights. isn't the truth that the space for political dissent in china has become vanishingly small?

china now has a system of surveillance monitoring and control, far beyond xinjiang which makes it impossible that the so—called spirit of tiananmen that you were a part of could ever be revived. do you agree? the spirit is very much there, it has just been suppressed and even with the level of that suppression that you have just described, we still have people who are trying to stand up and challenge this regime, and we were hoping the world could stand on the right side but that trade deal has kind of made us, the spirit of tiananmen feeling awfully lonely and china and in the streets of hong kong. but maybe, and i will put it bluntly, maybe you are out of touch?

i'm looking at the words of a fellow tiananmen activist who said recently, overseas movements have tried to encourage the dissidents inside china, but the chinese authorities are forcing civil society groups to cease operations. the government there has been successful in breaking our connection to many chinese dissidents. is that your reality? yes. first of all, i have been living in exile for over 30 years, now. yes, i have been out of touch from china and out of touch of my parents, i haven't seen my parents for 30 some years, because chinese government decided that they put us in this position. morally, we should not be blamed for that. the information flow outside of china is much, much more

free than that is in china, so if we are out of touch, i can guarantee you, 1 billion chinese people, they are much more out of touch with the reality that we are. i just want to quote to you the words of a woman quoted in time magazine on this very question of whether chinese people are deeply unhappy from the element of authoritarian control in their society. she was a shopkeeper she described the tb surveillance cameras both inside and outside her own business and she said this. "chinese people don't care about privacy. above all, we want security. for me, it is still not enough cameras. we want more." again, they do not have an option of having more or less. that's the thing.

so whatever narrative you asked the chinese people, you should bear that in mind. they are being forced into possession without any say. so their opinion, a red and american forum to say 85% or even higher number feel satisfied with their regime, it was a study conducted by an independent institution in the united states and they were shocked and asked me what is my reading of that. i'm pretty sure it is not accurate, because they describe it as the highest number in the world. i said because you haven't had a chance to conduct a survey in north korea — if you do that, maybe north korea would be number one. so would that really give you a clear picture to interview chinese people, north korean people about their government? that is a naive mistake the western world, free world and bbc shouldn't make.

let me asking about hong kong, because you're watching the situation very closely there, with the new national security law, we've seen a number of arrests including a high—profile media figure since the imposition of the national security law, fears that there's any space left for dissent and pro—democracy activism. we spoke recently to the young leader of the pro—democracy movement who has 110w pro—democracy movement who has now gone into exile. do you believe that the pro—democracy activists in hong kong will now face as much repression as in the rest of china? yes, yes. very much so. let's not forget that 20 something years ago, this city belonged to the free world. then you lost one of

your cities to the other side. and then the people in that city are fighting to survive. and i think the united kingdom, we have learned several measurements that your government has taken, it is somehow encouraging but a little late. we should not have trusted china from the very beginning. that's the key. the world somehow decided from the trade deal, i'm sure that's where it's come from, that china is a benign country. and we keep saying it is not, we are dissident because we were cut out. let me repeat what we have been telling the world and keep saying these days that we told you so. the true character

of the chinese communist party, the chinese regime is like they are greedy, they're not necessary sophisticated or smart, but they're exceedingly greedy and only understand the one way to deal — the only way to deal with them is to submit to deal with them is to submit to them. the world has found that engagement can initiate desk change china, but it has change the world, not china. so it is time to learn. the danger is you speak from taiwan about the evils as you see them of the evils as you see them of the chinese communist party and you encourage the international community to get real and impose tougher sanctions on china. the danger you face is that people inside your own home country of china, somebody betraying the nation, nationalism is a potent force inside china and all

of the words that you give to me run counter to much of the popular nationalist sentiment inside the country. it's a completely blocked, controlled environment. and in that environment, people can think with few options and that can change rapidly when it's liberated. when the flow of information is liberated. and i have seen it in many liberated countries from totalitarian regime to democracy and that shouldn't be the main concern of the world. it's not the main concern of mine and my government. i'd like you to address my specific point about nationalist sentiment. i am thinking of ambassador lu xiaoming, who said, on hardtalk, people in china live better, happier, longer lives, we have achieved so much and people around the world should now understand china is not a country you can

kick around and many ordinary chinese people feel that way as well, do they not? you can take that sentence out of the mouths of hitler in 1930. shouldn't that give the british people especially a more sense of alertness? yes. but the economic development in china happened because of the technology development, the direct investment, and they have been setting what they looted from the revolution, that's not because of the communist party, the communist party gives a free society to chinese people from where? from their own even more brutal ruling and the cultural revolution, so should the communist party be given credit for their lesser control, electing the money flow into it?

i'm not asking the world to take a tougher step, i'm asking the world to be more honest, that's it. people will form their own judgements about your comparisons of the government of china with hitler, and fascists. they will make their own judgements on that but i wonder if you are running a risk here. you sit in taiwan, there are many older and younger, particularly dissidents who have moved to taiwan. we have seen massive chinese military exercises in the taiwan strait and we know the chinese government's position, to quote xijinping, is ultimately unification of the chinese mainland and taiwan is inevitable. is there not a very real prospect in the medium to long—term that china may well move against taiwan

because increasingly it will see taiwan as a nest of opponents of the communist party? absolutely. the danger is always there. if you consider china as one of the biggest threats to the world civilisation we are living in, taiwan is in the blast zone. let me use taiwanese people sentiment to answer this question. these people live in this island. when they breeze in and out, they know the air they are breathing in and out is called freedom and they earned it and they determined to defend it. this is what i am saying. taiwan deserves to be recognised as one of the greatest, most vivid democracies yet the world, the dishonest world decides to exclude taiwan from the club of democracy. why? because china said so. they said they are going to reunify. taiwan was always part of china.

taiwan was never really always part of china. taiwan has its own government, its own society. it's a free society as well. and then you may lose this partner as a free country. and you are losing hong kong. i hope it's not too late to salvage. let me end with this question for you. you've been a pro—democracy activist and critic of beijing for a long time. if you are honest with yourself today, look at the relative strength, resolve and strategic vision of the united states, the so—called leader of the free world and then look at china, with its ambitions and strategic vision, which actually seems stronger right now. very same sentiment can be used to describe again in 1930s. just answer my question about today. being a dissident in china,

for many years, we just urge the world, pushing china to a democracy, it's our responsibility, not yours, but please don't take the wrong side but now i am telling through your programme, and thank you very much for giving me this platform, to tell the world that the chinese government is a threat to the whole world, it's a threat to the very civilisation we are living in, and let's make that comparison. china and the world, and if the world cannot reunify against china, like you want to say, what was the word that lord chamberlain said, use peace, or appeasement, that's again. it's time for the world to really think from this perspective. and i've been saying, i've told you so, please don't dismiss our voice because we are dissidents. we may have a good point because we are dissidents.

wu'er kaixi, we have to end there, but i thank you very much indeed forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you very much. hello there. monday was another day of impressive cloudscapes across the uk but big lumpy clouds like these tend to produce intense downpours and thunderstorms, and that is exactly what we saw. this is the radar picture. it shows that those showers and storms look quite extensive across england and wales. some of them were heavy enough to give some localised flooding but equally a few spots fell

between the showers and stayed completely dry. and tuesday is going to be a similar sort of day. some slightly more persistent rain though across north wales and northern england for a time and generally quite a cloudy start across the north of the uk. for scotland, the skies should brighten. we'll see some sunshine but a scattering of heavy showers into the afternoon, these could give some localised flooding. not quite as many showers further south at this stage through the midlands, wales, east anglia, towards the south of england. but again where they do show up, they are likely to be heavy and thundery. top temperatures between 18—23 celsius. now, most of the showers will fade during tuesday evening but into the early hours of wednesday, rain will swing its way in from the south west and this signals the start of a very unsettled spell of weather. in fact, this is more of an autumnal weather chart than one you'd expect to see during the summer. low pressure firmly in charge. that's going to bring some outbreaks of rain at times through the middle part of the week. but also, some very, very strong winds —

unusually strong winds for this time of year and that could cause some disruption. now on wednesday, it's likely we'll see outbreaks of rain drifting northwards across much of england and wales, into northern ireland and perhaps southern scotland by the end of the afternoon but the winds will be picking up all the while from the south west. gusts of a0 mph or more for exposed coasts here. temperatures on wednesday, well, no great shakes for the time of year. 18—22 celsius. now, it stays unsettled and very windy as you move out of wednesday into thursday. low pressure still firmly in charge, various frontal systems swinging around the low and quite a few white lines, isobars, on the chart. that shows that it will be windy. these are the wind gusts we can expect. it will be windy for all parts of the uk but particularly for western coasts where wind gusts are likely to get to 40—50 mph. pretty unusual for this time of year.

this is bbc news. i'm mike embley with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. the us presidential campaign steps up a gear with the start of a very unconventional convention for the us democratic party. 0pposition protesters in belarus have held a ninth night of protests against president alexander lukashenko, whose re—election has been widely condemned as fraudulent. brazil's vice president has defended its handling of the coronavirus pandemic despite being the worst hit country outside of the united states. and the makers of fortnite are seeking a temporary restraining order against apple to stop the tech giant from deleting the video game from its app store.