8038 Dressing Up Oppression - Script

A report by Sébastien Faure and François Ruchti

April 2021

 

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- REPORTER: We will call him Herkin.

 

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He won't show us his face

 

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for fear of reprisals

against his family in China.

 

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He is twenty-five years old,

he's from Geneva and Uyghur.

 

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He told us to meet him

in front of this clothes store.

 

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One that is suspected

 

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of using cotton harvested by

by Uyghur forced labourers.

 

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How does it feel to be

in front of that store window?

 

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-Herkin: It hurts.

 

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When I see these clothes, I see

the blood of the Uyghurs

 

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and are taken away from their families and

forced to make these clothes.

 

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They do everything for money.

 

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The most important thing for them

is the money.

 

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Title: DRESSING UP OPPRESSION

 

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- REPORTER: Herkin and his family

live in the center of Geneva.

 

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At an address

that we will keep secret.

 

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When they receive us

in their apartment,

 

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they explained to us why they are

so afraid to reveal themselves.

 

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-HERKIN: My mother went

to a demonstration in Bern

 

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five months ago to close down

the concentration camps.

 

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- REPORTER: It was September,

she went to the federal square

 

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with dozens of

other demonstrators.

 

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They denounced these camps

where the government

 

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sends Uyghurs

by hundreds of thousands.

 

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For Herkin, this participation

would have had a direct impact

 

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on the rest of their family

in China.

 

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-HERKIN: After two days,

my uncle went missing.

 

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They called him at the police station

and we haven't heard from him since.

 

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Is he dead or in the concentration

camps, we don't know.

 

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We hope he is okay.

 

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- REPORTER: Do you think it's because

your mother at the demonstration?

 

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-HERKIN: I'm 100% sure.

 

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He hasn't done anything wrong

but breathe and live.

 

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- REPORTER: For Herkin's mother who has been a refugee in Switzerland

for a long time,

 

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it is a feeling

of total helplessness.

 

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Her brother was summoned to the

police and never came back.

 

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Where do you think

your brother is?

 

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-HERKIN’S MOTHER: Now, I don't know.

 

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Either in a re-education camp,

or in prison.

 

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I can't stand it.

 

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When I wake up, I see

his face is before my eyes.

 

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When I sleep,

I sleep in pain.

 

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- REPORTER: Her concern

is more than understandable.

 

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What we hear about these camps

is not reassuring.

 

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The Chinese authorities

have built hundreds of them,

 

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so-called

de-radicalization camps.

 

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Their aim is to repress

civil liberties

 

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of the Uyghur people,

a Muslim majority in Xinjiang.

 

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Foreign journalists

do not enter these camps.

 

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The only images they bring back

 

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are these shots filmed

from the outside.

 

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To understand

what's going on behind these walls,

 

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we went to the Netherlands,

in the city of Utrecht.

 

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That's where we are meeting

 

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one of the few witnesses

who knows what happens in these camps.

 

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She took refuge there

after spending months

 

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in several of these camps,

not as an inmate,

 

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but as a Chinese teacher.

 

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She wasn't given a choice.

 

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- QELBINUR SEDIK: The people who live in these camps,

are called "students."

 

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But anyone who enters these camps

knows that they are not students.

 

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They have no books,

no chair, no desk.

 

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The main purpose

of the Chinese with these camps,

 

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is to lock up all the Uighurs,

to restrict their freedoms.

 

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They sleep on the floor

on concrete.

 

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They have to go to the bathroom

at a fixed time.

 

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They can't even

drink water whenever they want.

 

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Their goal is simply to get rid

of the Uighur culture.

 

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-Reporter: She left China

18 months ago.

 

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She is not afraid

to show her face.

 

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because she doesn't have

relatives in China.

 

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She says that these memories

haunt her nights,

 

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especially the violent

torture of young women.

 

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- QELBINUR SEDIK: Regularly,

 

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police officers would come in during class

and pick up a girl.

 

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You could hear her screams.

 

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We just stood there looking at each other.

 

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The shouting could go on for hours.

 

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Afterwards, these girls would come back

days later.

 

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They couldn't even walk

or stand up.

 

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-REPORTER: Here is one of the 10 Europeans

 

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targeted this week

by sanctions from Beijing this week.

 

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This US-based university researcher

is one of the first

 

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to have alerted the international community about

about these camps.

 

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He looked at satellite photos

and internal documents

 

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of the Chinese government

to understand what's going on there.

 

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- ADRIAN ZENZ:  Basically, people are being broken

 

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by being subjected to very rigid routines,

even physical abuse

 

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And they are being subjected to very limited diets

 

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They’re having to undergo obedience exercises

Where they have to sit still for hours

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They have to recite Communist Party slogans

 

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and learn Chinese characters

and the Chinese language.

 

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-REPORTER: But the Chinese authorities

 

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have a completely different version of what

is happening in these camps.

 

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These are the images of the

Chinese television broadcast in English.

 

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It descibes camps

as internships.

 

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training camps where residents can learn

a trade

 

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and develop

their artistic talents.

 

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We called on

the Chinese ambassador in Bern,

 

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and this is how he describes

these camps.

 

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- WANG SHITING: These are places where they teach

the national language of China,

 

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legal knowledge,

where one acquires

 

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professional skills

and they attend

 

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special classes

against radicalization.

 

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-REPORTER: He says that these centres

have been opened

 

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to stop the wave of

terrorist attacks that hit Xinjiang between 2009 and 2014.

 

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Some very violent attacks

 

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affected Xinjiang,

with a large Muslim community.

 

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Chinese media are attributing it

to Uyghur separatists.

 

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This is the starting point of

the opening

 

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of these hundreds of

of deradicalization camps.

 

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- WANG SHITING: The purpose of these camps is to rescue

these people through education.

 

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These are people marked

by ideological tendencies

 

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and cut the evil at the root.

 

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At the same time, learning

professional skills

 

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heightens their chances

of getting a job.

 

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This allows people who started

with violent thoughts

 

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to quickly return to society

and live a happy life.

 

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-REPORTER: Mr. Ambassador

reads a lot during the interview.

 

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The speech is a kind of

copy and paste of what we see

 

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in these videos broadcasted by

China's national television.

 

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The video shows a prisoner

visiting his camp with his family

 

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and praising the comfort offered.

 

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- WANG SHITING: All the trainees

have completed their training

 

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and found a stable job.

 

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There is no longer a single educational camp

in Xinjiang.

 

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-REPORTER: You are telling me

that all these camps are empty,

 

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that there are no more camps

in Xinjiang?

 

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- WANG SHITING: Yes, that's right.

 

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-REPORTER: This is news;

Beijing has never suggested

 

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that these camps

were closed down.

 

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However, in Geneva, Herkin is still

still wondering where his uncle is.

 

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He also told us that he had

a long-distance love affair

 

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with a young girl in Xinjiang,

also Uyghur.

 

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-HERKIN: I had found a girlfriend there.

 

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We had a long-distance relationship

for three years.

 

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I can tell that she went into

into the camps because of me.

 

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From one day to the next, she disappeared,

I didn't hear from her anymore.

 

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After three months, she called me,

she'd lost 20 pounds,

 

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she had no hair,

 

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because she talked with me

who was abroad.

 

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-REPORTER: What is going on

in these camps?

 

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-HERKIN: She was telling me that there were

12 women locked up in 10 m2.

 

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There was only one toilet

and no privacy.

 

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They were injected a product

to sterilize women.

 

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-REPORTER: The stories of sterilization

in these centres are frequent.

 

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This has come up more recently,

 

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as have reports

of forced labor in these camps.

 

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-HERKIN: They are sent to the bottom of China

for forced labor.

 

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For Zara, Nike, lots of brands.

 

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-REPORTER: This would be

a massive operating system.

 

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Detainees like this, sent out

to work in the cotton harvest.

 

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On this front too, our

researchers areon the front line.

 

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He has sounded the alarm.

 

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- ADRIAN ZENZ: The initial evidence I was able to gather

Despite a lack of official statistics

Is that in 2018 alone,

 

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There’s direct evidence for nearly 600,000 ethnic minorities

 

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mostly Uyghurs, being transferred

to pick cotton.

 

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Although if you take into account

regions for which there was not data

 

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This figure was much higher

by several hundred thousand.

It could be close to a million

We don’t know exactly.

 

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It’s a very large-scale phenomenon.

 

00:11:26:18

NEWS REPORTER (ON TV): Welcome back, we have some breaking news

put of Washington…

 

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-REPORTER: After these revelations,

several countries have restricted

 

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imports of Chinese cotton

to denounce this forced labour.

 

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The world's leading

clothing brands are being called on

 

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to stop using

cotton from Xinjiang.

 

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Zara in particular is being singled out for

 its lack of reaction.

 

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We have called on

its parent company, this is their response.

 

00:11:54:17 Statement on screen:

We have a strict policy to ensure that forced labor does not find its way into our supply chain. Following an internal investigation, we can confirm that inditex has no direct or indirect relationship with factories in Xinjiang.

-          Inditex, Communication and Institutional Relations

 

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- REPORTER: the line of fire

US sanctions,

 

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there is this company, for example,

which is allegedly exploiting Uyghurs.

 

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The Chinese government retaliated

with this video

 

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shot in one of these factories

 

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to prove that no one

was forced to work.

 

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-REPORTER: Can you certify me

 

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that there was never

forced labour in these camps?

 

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- WANG SHITING: Forced labour

is an invented concept

 

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by anti-Chinese academics

with ulterior motives.

 

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These reports

aim at discrediting China.

 

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-REPORTER: The Uyghur cause is very present

on social networks.

 

00:13:22,600 --> 00:13:24,960

and very well known

by young people in the West.

 

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In Geneva, Herkin's little brother

no longer has to explain

 

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which community he belongs to

and why it is being persecuted.

 

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-REPORTER: Do your buddies know who

the Uyghurs are?

 

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-HERKIN’S BROTHER: Since there are social media

and influencers,

 

00:13:42,320 --> 00:13:45,680

they know the Uyghurs better.

 

00:13:45,760 --> 00:13:48,560

-REPORTER: When you see this video,

how do you feel?

 

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-HERKIN’S BROTHER: Hurt,

because they're not doing anything wrong.

 

00:13:52,680 --> 00:13:56,960

-HERKIN: The fact that you can't do anything

is hard to accept.

 

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Sometimes, for a week,

you try not to look,

 

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because it's hard.

 

00:14:06,600 --> 00:14:10,520

We're trying to do the best we can,

 

00:14:10,600 --> 00:14:14,360

to share on social networks

what's going on out there.

 

00:14:14,440 --> 00:14:18,040

But I don't think

people are really watching.

 

00:14:19,720 --> 00:14:22,760

-REPORTER: The mobilization has helped

to push Westerners

 

00:14:22,840 --> 00:14:26,120

take the first sanctions.

 

00:14:26,200 --> 00:14:30,160

They may not be enough

to change things,

 

00:14:30,240 --> 00:14:33,920

but the world has an idea of

what's going on behind these walls.

 

Lower thirds – Text on Screen Elements

00:00:56:24

Title: DRESSING UP OPPRESSION

00:04:07:13

QELBINUR SEDIK

TEACHER IN THE CAMPS

 

00:05:47:20

ADRIAN ZENZ

RESEARCHER, XINJIANG SPECIALIST

 

00:06:40:14

WANG SHITING

CHINESE AMBASSADOR TO SWITZERLAND

 

00:09:06:18

ERKIN

UIGHUR OF GENEVA

 

00:11:03:17

ADRIAN ZENZ

RESEARCHER, XINJIANG SPECIALIST

 

00:11:55:22

Statement on screen:

 

We have a strict policy to ensure that forced labor does not find its way into our supply chain. Following an internal investigation, we can confirm that inditex has no direct or indirect relationship with factories in Xinjiang.

- Inditex, Communication and Institutional Relations

 

00:13:09:02

WANG SHITING

CHINESE AMBASSADOR TO SWITZERLAND