Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest is a member of a much-discussed

cohort of political dissidents, the so-called Tiananmen generation of Chinese activists who

dared to demand freedom and democracy on the streets of Beijing in 1989. We know how it ended, of course, in a bloody crackdown.

Wu'u Kai Shi was lucky. He managed to flee the country and has lived in exile ever since,

long since settled, in Taiwan. But he remains a significant dissident voice, not least because he is

an ethnic Uyghur and has joined the campaign

to pressure Beijing to end its suppression of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, which has seen

hundreds of thousands of people interned in de facto prison camps for what the authorities call

re-education. China's government always claims stability

as its number one priority, and authoritarian control is the chosen method to maintain it, far

beyond Xinjiang. So is it time for the Tiananmen generation to acknowledge that Beijing has effectively snuffed out the spirit of 89.

Well, Wu Kai-shee joins me now from Taipei. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you very much. Thank you

for having me back. It is a pleasure to have you on the show. I think we must begin with what is happening in Xinjiang,

particularly to the Uyghur Muslim communities in Xinjiang. There is a rising level of international

condemnation at what the Chinese government is doing. Do you see any sign China is modifying

its policies? Small signs here and there, but not in the general

picture. For instance, there's one country, Turkey, being a Muslim country, and then also we share

a very common culture route and ethnic root. The president of Turkey have expressed his

condemnation to China,

perhaps one of the very few Islamic country leaders who have done it,

because a large number of Uyghur live in Turkey,

and then it creates a tension domestically in the Turkish politics.

...