U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom chief speaks out on China’s fear of religion

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]

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By Susan Crabtree
Real Clear Wire

RealClearPolitics’ Susan Crabtree interviewed Nury Turkel on his new book, “No Escape: The True Story of China’s Genocide of the Uyghurs” at the Hudson Institute last week. Here are excerpts from that interview.

Crabtree: For those of you who aren’t familiar with his background, Nury Turkel is a U.S.-educated, Uyghur-American lawyer, foreign policy expert, and human-rights advocate. He was born in a reeducation camp at the height of China’s tumultuous cultural revolution. And he spent the first several months of his life in detention with his mother. Her crime? She opened the door to too many of her father’s friends. They were friends from the short days of the East Turkestan independence – contacts he still kept in touch with.

So, when Nury and his mother emerged from the reeducation camp many months later, they were both malnourished and a little shell-shocked. But Nury persevered and became a very dedicated student. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, he thought it might prompt an autonomous climate where Xinjiang province, home to the Uyghur population, could once again gain independence from China. But after the crackdown on Tiananmen Square, Nury became discouraged, and he looked for a way to the United States.

He studied English every day and came to the United States in 1995, where he was later granted asylum by the U.S. government. He earned his master’s degree and J.D. from the American University here in Washington, D.C.

More recently, Nury became chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He was appointed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2022 for a two-year term. And in September 2020, he was named one of Time Magazine’s “Most Influential People” in the world.

Turkel has founded his own nonprofit, the Uyghur Human Rights Project, and has helped many Uyghurs get out of China and into safety. Nury, why did you name the book “No Escape”? What is the point you were trying to make there?

Turkel: I chose this name for a very specific reason. As you noted, I came here as an immigrant student, initially. I’m a U.S. citizen and serving the U.S. government and I should not have felt or experienced persecution from Communist China. I don’t feel that I have fully escaped China’s persecution. As we speak, my mother is still in China. I haven’t seen her since 2004, and I’ve been retaliated against by the Chinese government and sanctioned last December. So, I have not been fully free even though I’m physically free and working and living in our nation’s capital.

And the other reason is more to the general public. When you talk about human rights in China, often times specifically in the policy circles or with ordinary people, they feel like, “Oh, this is another human rights atrocity. We’re too busy. [It’s] too remote, too distant. We just might as well mind our business.”

But the Uyghur genocide, Uyghur crisis, is none of those typical human rights abuses. It relates to every aspect of American life, I think it’s fair to say, whether it be economic interest, values, global leadership, and now the technological competition. So, the general public can no longer say that either they did not know, or they can’t care … because there’s so much at stake economically.

Crabtree: I thought of Anne Frank’s Diary when I was reading the stories of the persecution of these women. You mentioned several Uyghur women and their fear, but also their experiences inside the camps themselves, which are just unthinkable. And those include Zumrat Dawuit and Mihrigal Turson. These women managed to get out, but they too have not completely escaped persecution … tell me a little about those experiences.

Turkel: The Chinese government’s targeted attack on the Uyghur women, Uyghur children has been something ongoing. The Uyghur Human Rights Project published a report on the Chinese one-language policy several years ago. That was the government’s initial targeted attack on the Uyghur children through this [forced assimilation] process to create a new generation of Uyghurs who may not look exactly like a Han Chinese, but their thinking, their behaviors, their preferences in life, even marriage, such as sending their Uyghur kids to inland schools.

The Uyghur woman [has] always been perceived as some sort of sexual object in the Chinese society, but the brutal methods [the government has used on them in recent years] – forced abortion, late-term abortion and sterilization – has reached a new level. Even based on the Chinese government’s own publicly available information, the natural birth growth of Uyghur population [has] plummeted significantly. We’re talking about more than 60% in just one year. It’s staggering.

And this is one of the reasons that United States government was compelled to call it genocide. It was an uphill battle, even for the officials within the State Department, in the previous administration. So even to this day, it’s mindboggling that some governments, including [many] liberal democracies still don’t feel comfortable calling it genocide. It is China’s intention, and the ongoing persecution meets several key definitions – legal definitions – of genocide.

Based on the New York Times’ reporting, at least 800,000 Uyghur children have been forcibly removed [from their homes]. So, it’s a wholesale, or systematic attack on the population to not only debase, but also to destroy the entire Uyghur nation.

Crabtree: Why is China so fearful of religion in general?

Turkel: It goes essentially to the idea or the perception that Western religion or foreign religion, including Islam and Christianity, are not compatible with Communist ideology. So, [religious faith] will create more resentment, it will pose a long-term threat, it could be a source for future unrest. Stability is a paramount concern to the CCP. So, at any cost, under any justification, if anything is not compatible with the CCP or Communist ideology or anything that could potentially pose political threat or create instability, that needs to be taken out.

They liken religious practices, a religious belief, to “thought viruses.” They even use terms as, “In order to take out weeds – one by one, it can be very ineffective – you have to spray a chemical.” So, they treat people who practice religious practices as people who are suffering mental illness. So, they have taken actions to preemptively lock up religious leaders, thought leaders, custodians of cultural heritage [before they become an actual threat] to force them to go through this human arrangement they call the reeducation process.

Crabtree: [You have] talked about how the reeducation camps and the labor camps are so similar to what happened during the Holocaust in Germany. Can you describe that, some of the similarities?

Turkel: Forced labor practice is not something new. I grew up seeing people being subjected to slave labor – and the same organization, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Court, the acronym is XBCC, which is essentially a paramilitary group with millions of troops that have been enslaving Uyghurs [to work in] cotton fields, irrigation system constructions.

From a historical perspective, as I noted in the book, [it’s] a very similar method to what the Nazi regime used. If you look at the history, the Dachau concentration camp was built by Jewish women. Just over the weekend, myself and my [Uyghur Human Rights Project] colleagues were in Los Angeles. We visited The Museum of Tolerance. As we walked through, we noticed striking similarities, including the way that Chinese Communist Party use the intellectuals, academics, to formulate [persecution] policies.

In 1942 Hitler brought in 16 high-level Nazi officials, eight of them [with] PhDs, [to discuss] the “Final Solution.” If you look back to the way that today’s nightmare [against Uyghurs] comes into existence – essentially it was promoted by Chinese academics. And one of these Chinese experts – some people have likened him to Adolf Eichmann – is a Uyghur expert. One of the Uyghurs that I interviewed [said he] used to be his translator. He was cruising around in Kashgar in a fancy SUV with his German Shepherd dog. It’s a very similar, scary scene, strikingly similar.

Crabtree: Another thing I found compelling about the book was all the research that was done on [the CCP] eradicating Uyghur mosques and what took their place. In the book, you mentioned there were Uyghur cemeteries bulldozed.

Turkel: The Uyghur cemeteries, Uyghur cultural centers, are located in the city and vicinity. Because of booming housing development, shopping malls and apartments are being built in traditional Uyghur areas, neighborhoods specifically in Kashgar. The local authorities have essentially forced the local Uyghur residents to move out of the city and vacate the city center. That also included some old cemeteries. A few years ago, Uyghur Human Rights Project published a report, and after it came out, the late Washington Post [editorial page editor] Fred Hiatt wrote a column likening what Uyghurs were experiencing as Kristallnacht.

In at least one case, they’re also allowing businesses to build a hotel where a mosque was bulldozed. For example, in the case of Hilton, this was reported. So, there is a business complicity.

Crabtree: How have they used Silicon Valley technology to make it all possible?

Turkel: When the [Trump] administration sounded the alarm and designated several Chinese high-tech companies [to the sanctioned entity list], the public response was, “Oh, this is part of the political and geopolitical strategy of the United States government.” But they’re missing the point that this is part of China’s attempt to build their influence around the world. So, the technological advancement, the surveillance is part of China’s influence operations.

If you look at today’s Europe, Africa, central Asia, the Chinese technological tools, equipment and means are very popular. Huawei, for example, brags about having cloud storage contracts with over 140 countries. And more than 80 countries, including Germany, have already adopted the Chinese surveillance system, based on various reports. Why would they need this technology? They can justify it by saying it’s for societal safety. In some instance, they use the sewage system safety as an excuse. Some responsible government may use it for responsible, reasonable reasons, but we cannot say the same thing about [China’s] authoritarian regime.

And in the case of ZTE [a leading Chinese 5G company], they’re bragging about their capability to develop street-lamp lights that has motion detector with a camera. That’s music to some authoritarian regimes’ ears. So, the Chinese surveillance techniques in the long term and short term should be perceived as a threat to civil liberties and democratic systems. At a bare minimum, those surveillance techniques can allow authoritarian regimes to even monitor election processes, their opponents’ public activities, internal communications. So, when somebody says that we have a serious threat from China [when it comes to technology], it’s not an exaggeration. Actually, it’s an understatement.

And something also needs to be brought up here. None of those Chinese high-tech firms are private. There’s no such a thing. The Chinese state owns [them.] Chinese state owns the technology. There are reportedly more than 2,000 red phones [phones that connect company execs to senior CCP apparatchiks] in China. Based on “We Have Been Harmonized,” a book by Kai Strittmatter, a German scholar and journalist who spent 20 years studying this subject, each and every one of [China’s] high-tech firms has a red phone directly connected to the central party leadership. So, anyone, any time from the central government can find and direct those tech firms, CEOs, and presidents to act in a certain way.

Crabtree: The Communist Party government gives phones to the Uyghurs that they use and that they’re mandated to have on them all the time so CCP officials can track every detail of their life, every text. Tell us more about how the Chinese government uses this to perpetuate the genocide.

Turkel: Starting in 2015, maybe even earlier, this app called WeChat become so popular. Even the Uyghurs in the United States were using that app. Nothing like WeChat has been invented in the Western world yet. We can essentially call it the combination of eBay, Amazon, PayPal, all the apps for communication. So, that allowed the Chinese government to build this massive database [of personal information on its citizens].

For example, the company Tableau, built and owned by Alibaba, shared its purchase history with the Chinese government. That includes what kind of material [consumers] purchased through WeChat, [including] prayer mats. And then, essentially starting in 2017, they use this platform called IJOP, Integrated Joint Operating Platform, that Human Rights Watch reverse engineered [in order to understand its capabilities]. As I noted in the book, in 10 days in 2017, this platform ordered the Chinese police to round up 20,000 people in just one village. They could not find 20,000 people, so they’re [searching] around and find 17,000 people, and they’re gone. And no one asked if those people committed any crime. So that’s how random the initial roundup was.

Even some people tried to stop using smartphones and switch to dumb phones. That also was noticed by authorities. So because of that, thousands of Uyghurs around the world, even to this day, cannot communicate with their family members because family members, including my own then, say don’t contact us.

Crabtree: Recently, all of Washington was captivated by Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, and I know you recently went there. Tell us about the trip and what you’re so concerned may happen in Taiwan.

Turkel: I’ve been going to Taiwan for a number of years now, starting from my initial law practice representing a Taiwanese airline. But the most recent trip I would say is the most meaningful, impactful trip. I was invited to go and give a keynote speech at a religious freedom conference. That to me was a remarkable conference.

I wanted to share with the Taiwanese people what this regime in Beijing is capable of. I wanted to [convey] a very simple message that the Taiwanese people must study the Uyghur genocide. When the Chinese started committing acts of genocide, the world looked the other way. When the Chinese destroyed Hong Kong’s democracy, [there was a] similar attitude. And now Taiwan is facing this security threat, an existential threat, people are still not taking it seriously.

I also wanted to share my personal experience to sound the alarm, if I could, on what reeducation really means. Reeducation means re-engineering, human re-engineering. They will force you to study Communist ideology. They will force you to give up your way of life, your religious beliefs, and also you need to be able to adopt [ways of thinking, communism] as your religion … I also wanted to show solidarity with the Taiwanese people.

Crabtree: You have a whole chapter dedicated to what the U.S. government is doing to fight back. As a journalist, that’s what I’m most interested in. Well, at the end of the Trump administration, under Secretary of State Pompeo, there was a big push to declare Uyghur persecution as a genocide. What weight does that decision carry?

Turkel: How is it going? This genocide disturbingly is in its sixth year; genocide should not continue. When the governments call it a genocide, a strong action must be followed, [it must be] stopped and hold those perpetrators accountable. That has not been done yet.

It’s not working I think for two or three reasons. One, our European allies are not speaking [out]. Most of the European countries are still not really getting this, taking this concern, threat seriously. So, the U.S. allies and partners are not really on the same page. They’re still in slow motion. That’s one problem.

The second problem is the business community. I think the biggest, if I may use the term “enemy” in this fight, is the business community, both global and domestic. During the process of legislating the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce publicly opposed it, and several companies, as reported in New York Times, lobbied against [it], including the companies Nike and Coca-Cola that sponsored the last genocide Olympics in Beijing. The same companies, during the hearing organized by the [Congressional-Executive Commission on China], would not even acknowledge that China has a human rights problem. The same companies quite quickly and comfortably go out to the U.S. public to criticize our government if something is wrong here. So, that gives you an idea how problematic the business community has been.

The United States is still one of the largest export destinations for products produced in China. This [Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act] is just being implemented and went into force three month ago. Without European countries and Asian countries to put in place similar types of legal mandates, administrative measures, I don’t think this is going to be resolved anytime [soon].

Lastly, the consumer community has not really stepped up to the plate as they did in the case of NBC during the Olympic broadcast. There was an NGO effort, a worldwide effort, [aimed at convincing television viewers] to stop watching or not to watch the Olympic game. As a result, the viewership dropped almost 50%. That kind of consumer activism needs to be seen.

Once the consumers start acting, showing their strength, this will be heard in the boardrooms and then it will affect their business practices.

This [genocide] has been in the making for almost two decades, but we are still dancing around. We have not been coherent. We have not even recognized our own ties to the problem.