this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour as newsday continues straight after hardtalk.

welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. china's treatment of the uyghur muslim minority living in xinjiang has stirred loud condemnation in the west. us government uses the word genocide to condemn systematic abuse and repression, china calls that the lie of the century. my guest nury turkel is at the centre of the uyghur experience personally and professionally, his family is from xinjiang, he now lives in exile and chairs the us commission on international religious freedoms. can international pressure save the uighurs?

nury turkel welcome to hardtalk. thank you very much for having me back. it is a great pleasure to have you on the show. now your home is in the united states, your homeland is xinjiang in china. are you able today to get information from xinjiang to get a clear picture of what today's china strategy in that region is? yes, i have been able to get information through publicly available chinese government official statements and also leaked documents. have recently been released including international media organisations such as yours.

also, i have been speaking with survivors and of the ongoing uyghur genocide. and personally, even my own story, it tells me a lot about what is happening in the region, what is happening to the people who live in the free societies. i was born in re—education camp at the height of the cultural revolution and i came to the united states in 1995 as a student. granted asylum and am now a us citizen serving in the us government. even with that kind of privilege that i have is a free person, i have not been able to escape china's repression. to this day i haven't been able to secure the release of my mother from china, the last time i saw her was in 2004 when she came to the united states for my law school graduation and my father passed away about two months ago and i could not be there to hold my mother and carry my dads casket. which speaks volumes of what people outside and in china have been going through. so you have not set foot

inside china since you left as what, a man and his young 20s in the nineteen nineties? that's correct. and right now are you able to communicate freely with your mother and any other members of your family that remain inside xinjiang? i have been fortunate in the last two and half years been able to maintain contact with my mother and my father before he passed away. but the vast majority of the uyghur�*s st have not been able to have this kind of basic freedom privilege simply because chinese government monitors in no phone calls, any type of digital communications, they serve bail and some family members made a conscious decision if you years ago to cut their ties of the foreign base love ones, children, wives, husbands so i know people in my community, in the united states, here in europe who have not been able to even figure out if their loved ones are still alive. in some instances, stephen,

i know individuals who found out the death of their mother or parents any concentration camp. what kind of emotion does it stir it you, the fact that for example you were not present when your father passed away? you had in fact seeing him for many years before his death. i'm just wondering whether that makes you angry and whether anger is a motivation for the way that you are speaking out and campaigning today. i have been doing human rights work during my law school years specifically since 2001, the reason i have become very vocal simply, this was way before my family started suffering is because china is using war and terrorism as an excuse to intensify its crackdown. as expected, to this day, 20 some odd years later, china is still using counterterrorism as an excuse to justify the ongoing genocide. my family suffering is much less compared to other people. am i disappointed?

yes. am i angry? yes. am i bitter? no. bitterness is not good, being angry in my situation, someone who has suffered personally, collectively, it's perfectly normal. i suppose in beijing they would say anger doesn't necessarily lead to truth telling. what you have in your first answers to me described as genocide, the chinese say is nothing more than a pacification policy designed to counter terror and ensure peace and stability in side xinjiang province. they say the province is more stable, more prosperous today than it has been for decades. so anyone who listens to the chinese statement or takes it at face value need to examine if that kind of approach is the right approach. i don't want to patronise people who follow the chinese narrative but why on earth would we take anything that comes from beijing is a true fact? even to this day we don't know the origin of covid. this is the reality.

so i cannot... here's something i do know. you've already alluded to the camps, the chinese call them education and vocational training centres. those camps were spotted on satellite imagery years ago, they have disappeared, they no longer exists, chinese say that a policy of internment camps is no longer being persued inside xinjiang. so there is change. are you acknowledging change? no, i don't acknowledge that because your network recently published the xinjiang police file that shows thousands of real faces children, elderly women who have been taken to the re—education camp. what kind of people would take small children, separating from theirfamilies, separating a grandmother from their children and end up being in concentration camps, stephen? this is just a cheap excuse.

as we know, those of us who are students of history, even the nazi regime did not let in cameras or independents investigators to come in and investigate what was happening in auschwitz. so it's innconceivable to even think that china has been allowing free access to the camps. but even if... satellite images are misleading. if they said as they claim that these individuals are being graduated, there have been based on credible reports transferred into slave labour camps and prison camps. i know for a fact that several of my fellow american citizens have been telling me, asking for my help to find out where their loved ones, ask those radio free agent report is come american citizens and most of them don't

have their family members at home and they disappeared from re—education camps to prison camps, that is the reality that we deal with. ijust wonder, when you make those comparisons as you just did with auschwitz, do you really believe those comparisons are legitimate or helpful to your cause? you know what genocide is being committed? mass death casualties is not required when you want to call it genocide. the intent, the acts of the chinese government clearly points to the direction that this is a genocide. meets the legal requirements provided in 1948 genocide convention and other point, the concentration camp, i spent a lot of time in the process of writing my book recently published, no escape. stating what are the similarities and dissimilarities between the nazi camps and xinjiang camp. i find through historical facts, analysis and data that there is so much similarities. 0ne, like hitler's camps, and xinjiang camps the individuals were rounded up based on ethnic and religious background. and they had no access

to judicial process, no access to lawyers, no access to court. and then they don't know when they will be released. once they are released, if they manage to get release, no compensation is offered, noble apologies offer, no way of returning to society has been assisted. so these are whole products of the historical concentration camps that we have seen here in europe. do you think that what the chinese are doing in xinjiang to the uyghur muslim minority is primarily about religion and if you like, eliminating the strength of the muslim community in xinjiang or is it primarily about in ethnic national identity? two reasons. there is a standard reason and a nonstandard reason. chinese stated reason, ethnic harmony, maintain stability, that is paramount concern for the communist party. but the un—stated, if you listen carefully to the statements they make such as we are helping the uighurs to transfer into normal women being.

this is the statement made by china's ambassador to washington. also if you listen to the statements released through the leaked documents, those including xinjiang, they are in the business of engaging in human engineering. so in essence this is against the uyghur as no religious identity. to the ccp government, the communist party. as long as you maintain your ethnic identity, as long as you maintain your way of life, that is not inconsistent or not in line with that ultimate majority in chinese, bats perceived as a potential political threat. to, any type of religious practice, this is been a public statement, it's part of the communist parties constant battle against western influence. western influence comes with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of press. so the religion, uyghur religion, that of the catholic

of the tibetan and others who have been oppressed, and charters governments mind or official policy makers mine shows a sign of disloyalty. so the chinese can say whatever they want to say three times, 15 times, it doesn't take true. but in essence this is about chinese governments intentional and purposeful attempt to debase and destroy uyghur bethel nationality. are you de—denying that there has been over decades a strand of thought among some in the uyghur community which is highly nationalistic which believes in a turkestan homeland, in east turkestan which is separate and should be separate. it was a country... and there are individuals who over years going back to the 1970s and 80s were determined to fight both politically and sometimes with violence to achieve those ends. those are the accurate yes uighurs have been struggling to have their own independent state. but they're not has been organised movement within china, that's the key point. two and given today,

if you go around and tell the uyghurs to impress the love of this genocidal regime, it almost sounds like you're forcing the dues to love hitler. it's the same mentality. you cannot impose that kind of chinese narrative oriented thinking to suggest that uighurs must�*ve done something, therefore china has justified to committed genocide. actually the protagonist is china. if china left these people alone, as they should come at their own people, if china spent less money on domestic security as opposed to national defence, build some level of competence, none of these two could been happening. this boils down to these acute sense of insecurity that the chinese officials hold. simple question though, do you in the future have a vision of an east turkestan? uyghur people should decide their own future. the uyghur people are entitled to live with the year

freedom and dignity. i can't speak for them, they need to decide their own future. let's just talking a little detail, as you say, you've written a book no escape which is subtitled, the true story of china's genocide. a course of we discussed, that is absolutely not accepted in beijing, its isthmus, it is the biggest lie of the century according to the chinese government. but you go into some detail and is very bleak and is very difficult detailed in which some of the ways in which china is trying to take demographic control of xinjiang. it involves in particular policies directed towards women and women of child—bearing age. what do you believe beijing's strategy is? i have interviewed during the process of writing this book eight number of survivors and indirect victims of the ongoing genocide. and i have an chapters specifically discussed how china systematically,

purposely attacking uyghur women through forced sterilisation, even those who are in their mid—50s. and sexual violence that they force them to go through. also birth control policies was a as reported recently there is dramatic drop in the natural growth of the uyghur population. that gives you an idea that why those of us who advocated for official recognition of the tragedies of genocide and those of us calling the international community to hold those entities, individuals to account, it's based on this notion. close toi million uyghur children, 800,000 to a million uyghur children as reported in the new york times, as recognised by the us government and eight other parliaments around the world in liberal democracies. also a targeted attack on uyghur women through forced sterilisation, population control meets the definition of the genocide.

un human rights chief when to china just a couple of months ago, having not yet published what it has long been touted as a hugely important un report on human rights abuse in china and she came away with what i can only call as luke warm commentary on what she saw. she said simply, "i encourage the government to undertake a review of all counterterrorism and radicalisation policies to ensure they comply with international human rights standards and in particular that they are not applied in arbitrary way. " what did you make of the un human rights chief statements? her visit and post visit statements disturbingly echoes china's propaganda. un human rights chief should not be doing or saying those things. she miserably failed to fulfil her professional obligation. herjob is not to explore diplomatic options

through engagement or talk with the chinese, herjob is to fact finding, she miserably failed. what she has done and what she has said after the visit or during the visit is an insult to those victims of the ongoing genocide. if you go around here in the uk, europe and the united states, you'll be surprised how seriously this has affected the lives of the uyghur people both inside and outside of china. and her being in the composition, even failing to fulfil un mandate, you and is supposed to be taking the lead they should not be the matter left for the us government, uk government to deal with. the un secretary—general himself is supposed to be taken, to this day... you as a campaigner and an activist have to be a realist. china sets with its veto as one of the five permanent members... that's where the problem is.

well, that's reality. you have to work with reality not what your wishes to the world the might be organised but the way the world does work. stephen, we have told the world in 1945, neveragain. never again this happened in china is happening today. if that does not shock the conscience, it does not surprise you, it does not compel you to act that we need to revisit our international system, it's not working. but being realistic in the sense that you know as well as i do, and use it in washington and i don't, you know the united states need to find ways to work with china on a whole host of issues. i think primarily of climate change corporation, i could also think of the current crisis in ukraine where the united states is desperate for china not to give more assistance, more support to the so—called eternal friend, vladimir putin in moscow. also in terms of the global and economy, whatever their differences, united states and china have many interests in common. these are realities. these are reality. at the same time there's a way to deal with it.

kowtowing to china is not the strategy. acknowledging the problem, coming up with a strategy is a way to go forward. in the climate change, i'm glad you raised this, yes, the climate is in peril, so is the uyghur people. we are capable of fighting genocide and ego side at the same time. it is misleading and misconstrued view that if you tone down criticism of china's treatments of his of his own population or committing genocide, they will come around. that's a false narrative. china does what is best for the communist party and what is best for the leadership. china will not do certain things a certain way is a request of western leaders, specifically climate change. as you may recall, they could not even get xi jinping to attend the cop 26, that's reality.

also those climate activists that have been making the case to tone down on human rights should know china makes solar panel using dirty coal and also insulate uighurs. it's interesting you mentioned solar panels because the biden administration has of course passed the uyghur forced labour prevention act which is supposed to be a much tougher set of sanctions on any product, any economic product which has any linkage at all to xinjiang province. the clothing industry, because of the fast cotton industry, it's all directed at things like solar panels because part of the production is in xinjiang. but what we'd seen from the us if they've issued a waiver for certain solar panel production because it's too important in their view to get caught up in any sanction regime. do you worry for all of biden strong words economic interests will override his concern for your population, the uyghurs? as someone who advocated for that particular bill,

i testified in congress and shared some policy recognitions, iam pleased that this bill received such bipartisan support with overwhelming positive vote. at same time, i'm very concerned that those who are advocating for one particular industry, very important industry, it's good for the climate, good for the environment, good for us, makes our lives much easier, sensible. but at the same time, those who are advocating a favour such as you mentioned missing the point that we cannot compete with a country that uses slave labour for the production of solar panel. without a full implementation of the uyghur forced labour prevention act, which i think in my mind, the most significant legislative mandate that congress put in place since china joined the wt and addressed some of the lingering issues we will not be able to force labour produce products out of a global supply chains without adequately addressing. so that law is important but it not can address the problem,

that has to be a global effort. right. hang on, you are raising interesting points, not least when you're talking about not just the united states but a global effort. let's get real about what is actually happening and the rest of the world. in particular, in the most important muslim nations and muslim economies in the world. most of them appear to have no interest in putting pressure on china on this issue. if one looks at all of the countries from pakistan to saudi arabia, to turkey, egypt, the gulf states, they all in their different ways appeared to be prepared to look the other way. it is unconscionable, it should be condemned was up at the same time it should compel us, those of us in the policy circle who are living in the real societies to do a betterjob, china has two a betterjob. using a diplomatic portion

to buy out either silence or pressure those countries not to speak out. these are muslim nations and muslim leaders who listen to your message about a muslim community being systematically abused, you use the word genocide. these muslim leaders do not appear to hear. i can only say that they are not in a position to promote liberal ideas. they all have problems domestically. in a way, they have a domestic problem as well as china's diplomatic portion. so what do we do about that? we need to focus on the areas we can make a difference. and liberal democracies that should be the focus. given that you've been at this for years and your message directed at the us government, the governments around the world has been out there for years, you do not appear to be getting the traction necessary to change anybody�*s mind

and the chinese government. how depressed, how bleak is your outlook right now? i am an optimist by nature. just looking at the last time i showed up at this programme and now there have been sea change. there has been global combination. and liberal democracies to condemn the chinese ask, even though there are more than 150 state parties of the genocide convention, we are making progress and we need to stay hopeful. also, the united states congress passed two pieces of legislation, uyghurfreedom policy, in addition to a significant number of sanctions under the global act, the visa band and the entire police department and the uyghur homeland had been added to the entity list. at the united states should be the only country doing this alone. this has to be global. if never again means anything to us, if our future is anything to us, if our conscious lead us to do the right thing that will get

us to the right side side of the history then we should take action. nury turkel, we have to end there. i do thank you very much forjoining me on hardtalk. thank you very much for having me on, stephen. hello there. so far, the weather story this week has been dominated by a lot of low, grey cloud for many. yes, at times, it's felt warm, but just take a look at suffolk yesterday afternoon. it was a fairly typical story right across the country. the cloud was widespread. this was the satellite picture from wednesday. in fact, there was some early

morning rain in scotland. that cleared away and a brisk northwesterly wind dominated here. some brightness further south, some warmth, but over the next few days, it looks likely that we are going to see more sunshine and more heat developing. perhaps into next week, it's going to get a bit too hot for some of you. the jet stream is to the north of the uk at the moment. 0nce we're on the southern flank of the jet, we're in the warmerairsource, and this area of high pressure, well, that is keeping things quieter and allowing for more sunshine to come through. so we will start the day on thursday, for many, on another cloudy, grey note. early morning sunshine in eastern scotland, and then eventually the cloud will tend to melt away and the sunshine really starts to build. the only exception is a little more cloud just running in off the northwest of scotland. perhaps here, temperatures only mid—teens, but highest temperatures through thursday afternoon of 25 degrees — 77 fahrenheit. that cloud into the far north thick enough for a spot or two of light, drizzly rain into the northern and western isles, but elsewhere, we keep some clear skies.

it will be a relatively mild start to friday morning, temperatures widely into the mid—teens once again. so, on friday, another dry, settled, sunny day in prospect. again, just the far north and west may welljust keep a little more cloud that's being pushed in by this westerly wind, but with more sunshine coming through, temperatures are going to start to respond. into the high 20s not out of the question by friday afternoon, and that's 82 in terms of fahrenheit. as we move into saturday, the high pressure is still with us. we've still got, however, the wind direction swinging around that high pressure, driving in more cloud and some showery outbreaks of rain just clipping the northern and western isles. but again, those temperatures for england and wales, where we see the highest values, into 27, 28 degrees. and that trend continues through the weekend and into next week. in fact, the heatwave could be here to stay. with temperatures widely into the low 30s for many, it could be too hot for some.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm karishma vaswani. the headlines: borisjohnson refuses to resign, despite his government collapsing and some of his closest allies deserting him. so far there have been 44 resignations, it's a record number in one day, but the prime minister responded with defiance to critics on his own side. does the prime minister think there are any circumstances in which he should resign? laughter frankly, mr speaker, the job of a prime minister in difficult circumstances, when he has been handed a colossal mandate, is to keep going, and that's what i'm going to do.