A Woman’s Journey Through China’s Detention Camps

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2019

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A last-minute booking, a furtive cab ride and a spy in the window. For the past year, Paul Mozur has been investigating the story of a son determined to free his mother from a repressive system of detention and surveillance in western China. In doing so, he found a crack in China’s surveillance state — and a mother on her deathbed in Xinjiang. Today, we hear from the man’s mother for the first time. Guest: Paul Mozur, a technology reporter for The New York Times based in Shanghai, spoke with Ferkat Jawdat, a Uighur who is an American citizen and lives in Virginia, and his mother in Xinjiang, China. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading:The Chinese authorities are using a vast secret system of facial recognition technology to control the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority in western China. The government may also be taking citizens’ DNA without consent to enhance the system.“We must be as harsh as them, and show absolutely no mercy.” Leaked documents reveal how the Chinese authorities orchestrated the crackdown on one million or more ethnic Uighurs.If you missed our previous interviews with Mr. Jawdat, here are Part 1 and Part 2.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily.
0:10.2	For the past year, my colleague Paul Moser has been investigating the story of a son
0:16.8	determined to free his mother from a repressive system of detention and surveillance in western China.
0:24.1	Today, we hear from the mother herself for the first time. It's Monday, December 9th.
0:38.6	So Paul, we have been checking in with you about your reporting on the Uighurs in China for
0:43.5	about a year and we have been talking to you about one family in particular. Remind us who
0:49.7	Faircat Jodat is and what we know about his family. So Faircat Jodat is from a Uighur family
0:58.3	who live in western China in a place called Xinjiang. And the Uighurs are a Muslim minority that
1:03.9	the Chinese government views as a threat in part because of their Islam. They see them as an
1:09.9	extremist presence in the country and they have built this extensive system of repression that
1:14.9	includes electronic surveillance and also a massive system of camps where more than a million people
1:20.9	have been locked up. Many have fled the country to other places like the United States. Faircat
1:28.1	is one of those and Faircat has kind of emerged as an important voice in the United States trying to
1:33.5	raise awareness and talk about what happened because he and his family got out around 2011,
1:38.8	but his mother was not able to follow them. And about two years ago Faircat's mother goes missing.
1:47.2	And it turns out she falls into the system of repression and is pulled into the re-education camps
1:52.9	there. And it's been quite a ride because when we first talked to him, he had no idea where
1:58.5	his mother was, the ensiener for more than a year. And then after we talked to him, you know,
2:03.4	we put out a show earlier this year and a week later, his mother all of a sudden appears.
2:08.7	Right, I remember. And he's able to talk to her for the first time and more than a year and a half
2:12.5	he can talk to her over the phone. Right, I remember after we published that first episode about
2:17.9	Faircat's mother, the Chinese government made a show of releasing her from a camp and letting her
	...

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