Conversation with Prime Minister Salih Hudayar on Economic Concerns and Human Rights: Prime Minister, East Turkistan – Government-in-Exile (6)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2021/08/08
Abstract
PM Salih Hudayar is the Prime Minister of East Turkistan (Government-in-Exile) and the Founder of the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement. He discusses: concentration camps and labor camps; the U.N. Human Rights Council; and economic concerns trumping human rights concerns.
Keywords: China, Chinese, concentration camps, East Turkistan, East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, human rights, government-in-exile, labor camps, Prime Minister, Salih Hudayar, Uyghurs.
Conversation with Prime Minister Salih Hudayar on Economic Concerns and Human Rights: Prime Minister, East Turkistan – Government-in-Exile (6)
*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citation style listing after the interview.*
*Interview conducted October 20, 2020.*
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There’s also violations in terms of labor right, alongside these concentration camps and prisons or labor camps. So, two questions follow from that observation. One, how are these prisons, concentration camps and labor camps being documented? And two, what is the extent of the forced labor in the labor camps?
Salih Hudayar[1],[2]: So as far as the first question, in terms of documentation, as far as like the concentration camps and the prisons and the labor camps, the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, we were the first organization to really put out actual coordinates of these facilities. Back in 2018, and then again once more in 2019, it’s only recently this past, about last month actually, that BuzzFeed and ASPI reproduced the maps that we created with the coordinates. They said that they discovered four hundred something facilities, such facilities. It’s like the same thing. We put it out in open source. We put it out on our Web site to wherever people can push.
And we tried to get the media to cover it. But most of the media, because we insist that they use the term East Turkistan, at least; we weren’t opposed to them saying some other terms, but we insisted that they, at least, get this right with the Uyghurs calling it East Turkistan. So, there are organizations like the ASPI, other organizations; that are doing the research to look at it as well. As far as like the labor camps and the slave labor, the Chinese government’s own propaganda. Their own ads that they put up online.
We located 600 people work in this industrial facility. So, they’re going to get “job training.” That’s what they call it, “Job training.” But it’s like, “Okay, nice way of saying, ‘We’re going to send them to the forced labor camp.’” Many of these people are not getting any salaries. Many of these people don’t even want to leave their hometowns to work in other places. While, at the same time, they’re being replaced by Chinese settlers. Chinese settlers are being given homes, cash, and even a Uyghur or Turkic wife for the man and 6 to 12 acres of land, while we are being dispossessed and being used as slave labor.
ASPI, there is a lot of research and documented real companies. For example, these facilities, they discovered which company was actually running it and how those companies sold their good to Western companies. For example, they documented over 80 different popular global brands complicit in the use of forced to slave labor. In addition to that, we have videos of thousands of young men and women, hundreds of videos of being boarded up, trains being boarded up. People being bussed out to work. Then you have videos of elderly people and women that are left working in labor, building roads, building ditches, irrigation canals, stuff like that.
You have like a very elderly woman, a grandmother, trying to push a wheelbarrow. The worst, the best is you see the Chinese security forces right next to you, right back in that video.
Jacobsen: Recently, there was a press release put out in response to the appointment or election of China to the U.N. Human Rights Council. What has been the reaction of some of the international community to this? What has been a particular response from you?
Hudayar: So other than the U.S. State Secretary, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, you haven’t really had the international community or governments issuing statements or anything of that sort. You have human rights organizations all expressing their disapproval or condemnation or fear. But that’s just been about it. Few media outlets have reported on it. But other than that, there hasn’t been much opposition.
Jacobsen: Why?
Hudayar: Well, China seems to have used this economic and political influence to get those countries in the U.N. to vote for it. It is corruption and a lot of countries, most of these newspapers, the media, they’re owned by wealthy people at the top level. People who have business interests in China. They don’t want to disrupt those business interests in China by writing, by having published an article about some disapproval of government checks of disapproval of China’s membership to the U.N. But a government, they don’t want to upset China. They still want to continue working with China.
Even though, most of the world knows that China is engaging in a genocide. They feel that, “Oh, what can we do. If we express comments on it, we will lose disrupt our relations with them. We won’t be able to get loans. We won’t be able to get support from China, which is the way that most countries behave because they’re economically intertwined with China.”
Jacobsen: So in this case, is an economic concern trumping human rights concerns for most countries?
Hudayar: Yes. For most countries, it’s about economics. At the end of the day, everything, unfortunately, is about economics. The whole reason why China is engaging in the genocide is about economics. Because if they circle down with just that nothing valuable there, China is not going to waste the time and effort to occupy East Turkistan. hey colonize East Turkistan. We don’t have anything there. They would have left us alone. But we have gold; we have natural gas; we have uranium, even the wind power. We have the wind power from East Turkistan, which is what brings energy to Chinese cities inside China. Also, we’re very strategically located roughly about one fifth of China’s total territory, or what is now known as China.
And they bring nine other different countries where, the cornerstone of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is again, has to do with economics. It is achieve China’s global dream of becoming the most powerful economic, military, and political power in the world. We are a hindrance to their dream. That’s why China from its security perspective; it’s carrying out this final solution to prevent us from getting our independence.
Appendix I: Footnotes
[1] Prime Minister, East Turkistan (Government-in-Exile); Founder, East Turkistan National Awakening Movement (ETNAM).
[2] Individual Publication Date: August 8, 2021: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/hudayar-6; Full Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2021: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.
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