Welcome to Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker. From the moment of his birth, my guest today had good reason to view the Chinese Communist Party with deep misgivings.

Nuri Turkel's mother was a detainee in one of Mao's re-education camps at the height of the cultural revolution when he entered the world.

He and his mum barely survived those early months of desperate hardship,

while his father, a former maths teacher, endured prison for a good deal longer.

Terkel's family were Muslim Uyghurs from Xinjiang in the far west of China,

a land of mountains and steps which the party leadership

was determined to subjugate, culturally, politically and economically.

In his early 20s, Nouri Turkel was granted a travel visa to study at the University of Idaho in the US.

He left China in 1995 and has never been able to return.

In recent years, the repression of the Uighur Muslim community in Xinjiang has attracted worldwide

condemnation. Eyewitness evidence and leaks from Chinese official sources point to systematic efforts to eliminate

Uyghur identity in the name of a government campaign against terrorism and destabilization.

Hundreds of thousands of people have passed through detention or re-education camps,

accounts of violence, torture, sexual abuse and forced sterilization are legion.

The U.S. government and several others in the West say the Chinese actions amount to genocide.

Nuri Tockel, who is a lawyer, activist, and now chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom

is at the forefront of the campaign to put pressure on China to change course.

But is that a forlorn hope?

Well, he joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk.

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.

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