Kenneth Roth - Human Rights Watch: How We Can Stop China From Abusing Human Freedom

Full transcript: Kenneth Roth on London Real

3:58 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Kenneth Roth, the American attorney, former federal prosecutor, and executive director of Human Rights Watch, with over 400 people in a hundred countries. You investigate and report on rights abuses happening in all corners of the world.

4:17 In 1997 you were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for helping introduce the mine ban treaty, which saved countless lives. You’ve documented war crimes in Bosnia, Iraq, and Sierra Leone, and you’ve also done extensive work to end the use of child soldiers over the past four decades. You’ve expanded the Human Rights Watch reach, growing the organization eightfold. Kenneth, welcome to London Real. Great to be here.

4:37 Great. A, when you say all those yous, that’s Human Rights Watch, not me. Okay, the collective you, but okay, I appreciate you. That’s Human Rights Watch, first off. What’s it like being in London I know you were here.

4:46 You had a conversation with, I think, Ai Weiwei last night. What was that like, and what was it like being in London for you? Well, it’s always great to be in London. I mean, I get here three or four times a year. We have a big office here.

4:57 It’s obviously a media center of tremendous importance, so it’s always fun to come here. The Ai Weiwei conversation was interesting. I mean, I’d met him before. We had done something together in Geneva about a year ago, but this was an hour and a half on stage before 1,700 people and it was really a conversation. And this is a brilliant, quirky guy.

5:16 You know, he has this ability in any situation to find some like odd take on it that just wakes people up. And, you know, for the longest time he still is very focused on the repression in China, which is getting so bad that he can no longer live there, but he’s also these days focusing a lot more on refugees and really taking a global perspective on things, and it was a great conversation. Wow, and he knows China just so well because he spent time there, but he also was in New York City for some time, then went back, and now he’s outside of there.

5:47 I mean, he’s got a real interesting perspective on that. Yes, I mean, what’s most interesting is that his father was kind of a major revolutionary figure, a poet and knew all the, you know, the founding members of the Communist Party. Hmm. And so he kind of comes from within the system, knows the system well, for better or worse. And so he sees all the evil that it generates, the repression.

6:12 They’re clamping down on people, but he also has seen, you know, as he describes it, the, it’s long-term strategy. It’s you know, in the West we think, you know, a quarter ahead, you know, in three months. That’s my strategy. You know, whereas they’re, they think, you know, decades ahead. So he’s very impressed by that, and the Communist Party’s ability to adapt.

6:31 So what was striking to me is that on the one hand, you know, he’s an activist. He’s constantly pointing out the ways in which the Communist Party serves itself rather than Chinese people, but he also is a pessimist, and he does this activism not out of a real theory of change, but more just out of a sense of duty. Hmm. and he’s not convinced it’s gonna make any difference. So it was, you know, I found myself, you know, almost arguing with him, saying, wait a minute, you know, these are the strategies, these are the ways we can make a difference, and he, you know, kind of kept coming back to, well, this party is so malleable and it’s got a long-term perspective and so it was some that I was taken aback by.

7:11 Right? His lack of optimism, you know, but maybe he should know, or maybe that’s his, that’s just who he is. You know, but he, you know, he is an artist, and so, you know, he is very centered on, you know, how do you take this particular situation? Where do you find the absurdity in it that wakes people up to what’s going on, and he can do this like no one else and does it obviously with you, an enormous understanding of China, but also, you know, really is now globalizing his perspective.

7:40 He he’s just putting on a big film on the road: Rohingya Muslims who’ve been chased from Myanmar through crimes against humanity and arguably genocide. He’s done a big film recently, Human Flow, on refugees around the world. I think he traveled to, say, 30 different places of some massive investment, and he essentially sells his paintings to finance his films, so it’s very impressive. Wow. You know, I wanted to talk about China today, but it’s an interesting time to talk about China, because it seems like the coronavirus almost magnifies some of the human rights issues in China and brings it all to the surface, to where it almost shows the whole world where the problems are.

8:19 Yeah, is that quite as completely true? In other words, I mean, the Chinese government tries to sell it by saying, you know, yes, we’re a bunch of dictators, but we’re a benevolent dictatorship. We can get things done. Where’s democracy in the West? It’s so messy.

8:33 They don’t get anything done, right? And this is obviously difficult time to defend democracy. You know, between Brexit and Trump, and, you know, there are problems, so you have to concede that. But, you know, when you look at China, the impressive thing is they’ve taken, you know, 600 700 million people out of poverty, but it is still a regime that focuses foremost on itself, and that has come through with this coronavirus outbreak. So, you know, the initial reaction, you know, every public health 101 says be transparent, give out information, you know, move quickly, because if you can nip something in the bud, you can save many, many lives.

9:11 SARS which was 2003, another coronavirus that broke out in China. They covered it up at first, and it spread around the world. They ended up doing the exact same thing with this Wuhan over owner bribers, and there were actually eight doctors at the outset who said, hey, something’s going on here, people are getting this odd new pneumonia, and they were told to shut up, right? You know, and as did something online. One of them, yeah, and they were all there, all chastised, you know.

9:35 So one of them is actually come down with the virus. Now they’ve, you know, they’ve obviously had to be more open as the virus has spread, but even if you look at, you know, how they’re responding, they still are trying to limit the social media conversation. They’re trying to downplay the scope of it, and they are also responding with this sort of ruthless lockdown that ignores the individual. So they have locked down 60 million people in Hebei province, the province, of which one is part, and they are essentially locking people in their homes with, you know, minimal food.

10:11 They, you know, one person a day is allowed to go out, but the horrible thing is that if you come down with the fever and you suspect that you have the coronavirus, you’ve got to beg for an appointment to get tested, and they’re so overloaded that you can’t get tested, and until you’re tested you can’t get treated. So they’re kind of forcing people to just stay at home and sometimes die, which is partly why the numbers, I think, are undercounted so far, but it also shows this kind of indifference to the individual, which is telling. I mean, that’s just the way trying to.

10:43 Isn’t it the same government that, you know, has been investing big time in very visible, you know, job-producing projects: the bullet trains, the highways, the high-rises. At the same time, they’re under-investing in public health, and so you see these horrible scenes coming out of a handful of hospitals, and move on, and they’re utterly overwhelmed. People are begging. They’re sitting in lines, you know, waiting and waiting and waiting, hoping to be treated, probably infecting each other in the process.

11:10 So it you know, it shows the way this regime is gone, and it’s obviously a big emergency. Anybody would struggle with it, but they would struggle more openly, because the more open you are in a case like this, the more people can save themselves and guard themselves against infection. It’s a transparency issue, and the infrastructure hasn’t been there. As well, infrastructure is not there, and of course, you know, this is just the latest thing. But if you look at, you know, how is China responding overall?

11:34 I mean, this is the government that’s terrified of its own people, and so Xi Jinping, who is you know, trying to become president for life, contrary to the Chinese tradition. He has completely shut down civil society, independent lawyers, independent journalists, activists. There just is no more permitted dissent. You know, even social media, which for a brief period was interesting, it was kinda within the Great Chinese Firewall, so, you know, which was designed to prevent Chinese people from talking to the outside world, but they could talk to each other, and that’s dangerous if you’re a dictator.

12:13 So they’ve now shut that down. And the epicenter of this repression is Xinjiang, the northwestern region, which is home to about 13 million, mostly Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims. The government has now detained in roughly a million of them, probably more, for forced reeducation, which in essence means, you know, until you abandon Islam, until you abandon your culture, until you speak Mandarin, until you worship Xi Jinping in the Chinese Communist Party.

12:43 And so you can imagine how this goes. I mean, a million adults, call it 10% of the adult population, and kids are being orphaned, and they’re shipped off to school for indoctrination. So it is a horrible situation on top of this, they’ve built a surveillance state the likes of which the world has never seen, and Human Rights Watch was actually able to get a hold of these handheld devices that the police use in Xinjiang, and we reverse engineered the app to see: so, what are they, what information are they collecting, and there are like 11 pages of data on people, you know, some obvious biographic data, but also things like, you know, do you enter your house from the front or the back?

13:22 Because you enter from the back, that’s suspicious. You know, how much electricity you use, and all these things that they think might be indicative of independence or contact with the outside world, and that is then used to determine who gets detained. And people literally have barcodes on their doors, so the police can just go up and figure out, you know, who’s there, and decide, you know, do you detain the person who’s showing up, but you’re at your checkpoint or not?

13:47 So this is mystic. Sounds like a dystopian movie. It’s totally dystopian. They use, you know, there’s a lot of talk these days about facial recognition technology in, you know, in Xinjiang. The video cameras are pervasive.

13:59 It makes London look like, you know, a privacy paradise, and work because we have a few here. Yes. No, no, exactly. Well, then London is notorious. Port Penang is worse.

14:07 And they combine this with, you know, the use of facial recognition technology, so they can just track you, and all of the state is added into, you know, the individualized account that they have for every person, which the police can then access through these devices, and so it’s actually a feat of big data analysis, because they throw all this data together, but they now are, you know, developing the ability to process it, and through this decide who is dangerous in their political terms or not. It’s obviously super subjective, but the consequence can be detention, for any indefinite detention, really, until they decide that you were no longer a threat. Right?

14:48 So that’s what’s happening in Xinjiang, and it’s just a matter of time before that is spread out throughout China. They’ve had this thing called the social credit system, which is being rolled out. It’s supposed to be implemented by the end of this year, may take a little bit longer, but the idea is that everybody is assessed currently according to social criteria. You know, are you a good neighbor? Do you jaywalk?

15:14 Do you take out the garbage? You know, things like that. Yeah. Easy to add political criteria to this, but the idea is to use day-to-day incentives to control people, so you know, you only need detention in the extreme cases. Most people, you know, if they want access to a passport, they want access to the fast train, if they want access to a good school for their kids, they’ve got to have a decent social credit score, and if not, they’re stuck in the back.

15:44 And so they try to take, you know, the little things that everybody wants in life and say, you’re not gonna get it unless you behave according to our criteria. And they’re gonna do that for the whole country. There’s a show on Netflix called Black Mirror, and there was an episode where everyone has their social score above their head when you look out of kamon and you can see who’s highly ranked and who’s lowly ranked, and the low ranks are just off the grid, and the high ranks get all the cool parties and all the cool service and everything, and it was scary to people, and now they’re putting that into place.

16:16 They’re putting that into place, and I mean, that’s gonna be all of China. And I don’t, they’re not yet at the point where that are, you know, using your Google class, so you can get right, or as I look at you, but in essence with these handheld apps, they’re gonna be able to do that. So it’s not about having money or a passport or being a citizen. It’s what that score is, and that score can, like you said, at the extreme be something bad, but you don’t need to have the extreme to control people, right?

16:36 That most people just want the day-to-day goods of ordinary life, and this is kind of like what the Stasi used to do by reporting on everyone, but it wasn’t necessarily new, Merrifield or big dated. It was like people were spying. Okay, this person is doing yes or no, you would have a physical file, but you’d have to go to Stasi headquarters and read it, right? And it was slow, and it was, you know, whereas here it’s available to any police officer on the street, and the data is much more comprehensive, because they don’t rely on human informants.

17:03 You can get those as well, but a lot of this is just data that’s available through observation, right, through the cameras, and, you know, in facial recognition which is not being debated as a human rights issue in China. No, I mean, there’s no opportunity to. And I mean we, you know, in the West I think are beginning to appreciate facial recognition technology because we already, you know, allow ourselves to be tracked by carrying around our mobile phones.

17:30 Yeah, which are basically tracking devices. Yeah, and a big article in the New York Times: I was tracking everybody in the city and saying how easy it was to track who you are even if you’re anonymous, because they can see your residence and your work, and it’s just being, we’re just tracking where you are for 24 hours, almost identifies exactly who you are. You can totally figure out who you are, and then, you know, are you seeing a psychiatrist? You know, is there some secret contact you’re seeing?

17:52 You know, I mean, anything becomes apparent through this tracking device. Now, you know, theoretically you could leave your phone at home, which nobody does, but even then, as these video cameras are spun around and facial recognition technology is developed, they can track you that way as well. And so I think what in the West we’re beginning to appreciate is that, you know, we’re used to thinking of privacy is something that happens at home or in secret, but there’s an element of privacy that we all depend on out in public as well.

18:20 And that is, you know, really the presumption of anonymity that we all have when we go through day-to-day life, particularly in a city. And, you know, yes, theoretically the police can follow you, but that takes, you know, massive investment of time and person power. But, you know, today the police can track everybody just through computers, and suddenly, if they can reconstruct your life without any warrant, without any permission, something wrong with that?

18:46 Yeah. And so there is this kind of push back to reassert this, you know, right to anonymity in public, but we need to develop standards like that. It isn’t really written out yet, but, you know, China shows what happens when you don’t develop these standards, but we in the West have got to act before it’s too late here as well. Yeah, and I think we’ve seen things like Oakland Police Department in a few places, like rejecting the use of facial recognition, but it’s few and far between.

19:13 And I mean, the real daddy is the NSA, and you wonder if they’re there and if they’re choosing not to do it. It feels like it makes everything else potentially moot. Well, also, the police departments that are rejecting facial recognition technology are mainly acting on the basis of bias, because so far it’s quite inaccurate, and, sort of, the darker your skin, the more inaccurate it is. So it’s that kind of bias that people are objecting to, but even if it was 100% accurate, there are big problems.

19:39 Yeah, because you do lose this ability to be anonymous, which, you know, I mean, it’s not an absolute guarantee. If you’re that human right. Well, yes. I would say, in other words, I think it’s an element of the right to privacy, and it’s a presumptive right. So, you know, if you commit a serious crime, of course they can try to find you, but if you’re just leading your ordinary life, they should leave you alone, and the government as well as private companies shouldn’t be able to track you, which is why we have the process of getting a warrant, and you have to have probable cause.

20:08 The judge has to make the decision, and then you can tap into the information. Except that’s not how this works, right? Exactly. Not, yeah. Just finishing up with China.

20:15 The way you describe China, it feels like that is a hundred ex more important than any other place in the world right now for you and your organization. Is that, well, inaccurate to say? Well, you know, Human Rights Watch just did a big report on this. In fact, I was just blocked from Hong Kong because of this, just recently, cuz I knew you were far from okay. But you know, traditionally Human Rights Watch does reports on one country or one issue at a time, and once a year we do a global report.

20:38 We call it our World Report, and I always write an introduction to it, which highlights an important global theme, and this year I wrote about the threat that the Chinese government is posing to the entire International Human Rights system, and the motivation is what we’ve been talking about here, the domestic repression. But the Chinese government, particularly over the last couple of years, has become very concerned with preventing external criticism of what it’s doing, and so they’re very sensitive to it. Super NBA and all these people.

21:09 It’s strange, because the population isn’t necessarily following the Twitter feed of an NBA star, but when they say something, they shut down the TV rights. I don’t know, it surprises me sometimes. I mean, that’s a perfect example. In other words, if you think about it, you have some general manager in Houston, you know, a guy, you know, what he pays at introdu tweets support for the Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters, and Beijing goes ballistic, and they threaten to shut down the billion-dollar television contract that they have with the National Basketball Association.

21:42 Now, you know, obviously suddenly this guy’s tweet, every he knows about it, you know, otherwise I would have disappeared. So it backfires. I mean, has did their treatment of me, but it shows how sensitive they are. And so, on the one hand, they’re willing to use their economic clout not simply to censor at home which has been going on for a long time, but to force companies to censor their employees, and you see this over you saw this with Arsenal. You see this with, you know, Cathay Pacific.

22:08 I mean, there are a number of companies that have economic interests in China, and word has gone out, you know, if your employees say something positive about Tibet, you know, if they criticize Xinjiang, if they say something about Hong Kong, you’re in trouble. Your company’s in trouble, and so that’s one thing that they’re doing. But at the kind of governmental level, the major places where human rights are discussed, they’re still in the United Nations, and China has been investing big time in trying to build alliances to prevent any criticism of it at the United Nations, but actually a step further, to prevent any enforcement of human rights at the United Nations.

22:49 And so in the Security Council is a good example, where China actually has a veto. They operate with Russia to prevent, you know, any action on Syria, on Myanmar, and Venezuela, and there, you know, the theory is, you know, just let these people rot rather than create a precedent of enforcing human rights that might come back and haunt Xi Jinping and the authorities in Beijing. Okay. And they, you know, even in a place like the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva where there is no veto, they rally support really through economic incentives and threats.

23:22 So this whole Belt and Road initiative, this trillion dollar development effort that Xi Jinping touts, he’s, you know, it’s known for being kind of no strings attached. Like, unlike the World Bank, you don’t have to respect human rights in order to get the money. Right? This is the investment in Africa, another country design the world, right? But there’s a huge political condition attached, which is you vote with us at the United Nations, and if you don’t, I mean, I actually sat down with Imran Khan recently, the Pakistani Prime Minister, and said, like, why don’t you talk about your fellow Muslims in Xinjiang?

23:54 Basically says, I can’t. You know, this China owns us economically, right? You know, we’re in trouble, and there they’re buying us, so they’re using, you know, kind of economic clout and economic threats to build a group of supporters of the UN. Now, some are willing to do this. If you’re a dictator, the last thing you want is human rights enforcement, right?

24:11 But there are many democracies that are also kind of going along with China because of this economic clout, and so you know, we really have been highlighting this threat to the overall system. And part of it is also, you know, as we started off, you’re showing that this Chinese model of governance which is supposed to be so wonderful, is actually very self-serving, and when push comes to shove, power preservation is much more important than public protection. Right?

24:36 And then they would tell you that power preservation is what preserves order in the public. That’s what they would come back and say. Yeah, they, an order. Yes, you know, but order meaning, you know, no political competition, no alternative decision thing, no free discussion. And so, you know, I mean, even five years ago there was much more public debate.

24:54 There’s much more emphasis on the rule of law. There was kind of emerging civil society. That’s all gone. And is it a sign of weakness in your opinion when they have that kind of visceral reaction to some manager in Houston, because if they had the power, they might ignore it, or are they so concerned that they’re on the edge now of a revolt, or, you know, the information getting out? No, I think it comes from a sense of insecurity on their part.

25:19 Right. And they are very conscious of the demise of the Soviet Union, and they, you know, kind of wake up every morning and say, you know, what did the Soviets do wrong? How are we going to avoid that? And that is their dominant concern. So, you know, if they were strong, and, you know, the general manager of the Houston Rockets tweet something to say, who cares?

25:38 You know, come on. But, you know, when they could politicize it, or something like that, it’s a sign of insecurity. It’s also an effort to use their newfound economic strength, right? But there’s a limit to that, and I mean, one of the things we’ve been encouraging both countries and companies to do is to band together, because, you know, China likes to basically, you know, attack people one by one, because then it’s the big heavyweight versus some, you know, Denmark or whatever.

26:05 But if you get governments that band together, they can’t cut off relations with everybody. And so we’ve been doing that. We encouraged about two dozen governments at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to issue the first, in the biggest, really collective condemnation of what’s going on in Xinjiang. Nothing like this had happened before, but they felt safety in numbers, and they finally did it. But to give a sense of how scared governments were, the tradition in Geneva is that when you issue a joint statement, then one of the signatories stands up before the Human Rights Council and reads it.

26:44 Nobody would do that, so they just submitted it in writing, and that just showed the fear. Now, a few months later, we orchestrated the same thing at the UN General Assembly in New York, and then finally it was actually Britain that came forward and said, okay, we’ll read this. So, you know, progress, but it just, you know, that initial reaction showed the fear the governments have. But it’s important to respond collectively, because, you know, otherwise China’s going to prevail here.

27:11 And it’s interesting watching the reaction to something like this too, because, you know, you’d say, oh, what is trying to care? Just, you know, a couple dozen countries get together, but they were really bothered by this. They immediately orchestrated their own counter-statement of about 50 governments, but it was, you know, the thugs of the world. It was North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Russia. You know, so it was not exactly the highest moral authorities that came to China’s defense, but they’ve also been organizing these show tours of Xinjiang and saying look, everything’s fine.

27:42 You know, all these Uyghurs, they’re singing happy song from there. You know, you can imagine, you know, you’re stuck in some prison, and they come in and say, you better smile here or else you’re in big trouble. You know, some people play along, but even the journalists who’ve gone in have been able to talk to Uyghurs privately in the midst of the show tours, and get a sense of the ugly reality there. But China is making an effort to defend the indefensible, and that’s one step toward actually ending this contact.

28:07 Okay. I’m guessing when they look at the Soviet Union they realize it ultimately failed because of economic reasons. I mean, that is what kind of brought it down in the end. And they’re probably making sure that doesn’t happen to them. Yeah, and that, you know, that’s a big question, because obviously Chinese grow economically, they like to focus on GDP, gross domestic product, which is, you know, an indicator, but it doesn’t necessarily say how the people on the bottom are living, and they don’t really want you to assess that, you know, because a lot of people are left behind in the countryside.

28:37 You know, it’s more the coasts in the cities that are doing well. But the other question is, you know, as power is centralized in China, can you really manage this vast population, 1.2 billion people, through increasingly the decisions of one man, Xi Jinping? You know, this is how mistakes are made. And, you know, China has benefited so far through, you know, urbanization, which has boosted the economy, through, you know, the hard work of the Chinese people, through, you know, global trade and in cheap goods, and also through massive borrowing and these infrastructure projects that borrowing permits.

29:20 And it’s not clear that they can continue. You know, they may be bumping into the end of this. They have an aging economy. The urbanization has largely happened now. They’re trying to move to a kind of a higher category of goods, which, you know, need more freedom of thought and exchanges to succeed in.

29:38 That’s not the Chinese style, so they are it’s not clear they’re going to be able to maintain this growth rate, but Xi Jinping is terrified of this, because you know, if they can’t keep borrowing, if they’re somebody’s that’ll limit to, you know, the mounting debt, are they going to can sustain the 6% growth rate, right? And if they can’t, the Chinese people start saying, well, wait a minute, I thought the deal was, you know, we keep getting richer, and therefore we w daal our governance authority to you, but you know, you’re not keeping your end of the deal. So that’s what terrifies, right?

30:07 Which means he’s out of a job, maybe communism is out of a job. Maybe it turns into chaotic capitalism. Who knows? Well, I mean, and if you look at Hong Kong, I mean, part of why they’re so fearful of Hong Kong is because, you know, these are Chinese people after all, and you know, the people of Hong Kong, I have begun an exercise, because they suppose they were supposed to have the benefits of the one country, two systems agreement that Britain negotiated with Beijing when they handed over Hong Kong, and Beijing is gradually whittling away at that agreement.

30:40 So the protests were actually launched because Hong Kong wanted to adopt an extradition law. They would permit Hong Kong Chinese to be sent to the mainland, where there is no due process, there is no judicial independence. People went crazy, you know. This would just shut down the freedoms in Hong Kong, because anybody can be arrested and brought across the way. So, you know, these are Chinese people who want their freedoms.

31:02 Yeah, and that’s a terrifying thought to Xi Jinping. I’m impressed how hard they protest. I mean, they really believe in this. Yes, and it’s been, you know, now over six months. Yeah, and they still periodically can turn out, you know, hundreds of thousands of people.

31:16 And so, because they know what’s happening in China, and they know how bad it can get, they told me now and they’re willing to risk their lives for these protests. Yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s very impressive how deeply the Hong Kong people want their political freedom. Yeah, very much, because these are people that are well-off, that have, you know, potential good futures that might be able to leave the country, and that they’re really willing to sit there and fight for that city-state.

31:42 It’s impressive, and it’s very impressive, and it must drive the Chinese government crazy, because every protest is a symbol, you know, to the rest of the country that something’s not right and that people can want their freedoms. You know, now, you know, the irony is, I, this World Report that I described, which was focusing on China’s kind of global threat to human rights, I was gonna release that at a press conference in Hong Kong. When was this, a year ago?

32:05 No, this was three weeks ago. Wow. And I had, you know, I’d done less than two years ago a press conference in Hong Kong releasing another Human Rights Watch report on gender discrimination in the job market in China, and was completely uneventful. You know, I held it at the Foreign Correspondents Club. I went around the city talking to journalists.

32:25 You know, nobody was free city. And I flew back. This time they blocked me at the airport, and they just bring too afraid at this stage to, you know, how this is to go forward. And they totally shot themselves in the foot, because they’re blocking me was this huge media event, and so I just went back to New York. It was always a long weekend of flying Cathay Pacific.

32:48 What does that feel like when you get blocked? Does it feel a little weird, scary? Not scary no. I mean, I, you know, I wasn’t, no, I wasn’t fearful for myself, but it was just, what, you in a room or anything? Well, no, I mean, I did, I, you know, I went up to the immigration officer.

33:02 My name immediately popped up in the computer. They put me on some alert. He filled out a restricted form, and they sent me into a back room, and so during my four Neph hours I was basically guarded by three immigration officers. I was given this kind of perfunctory interrogation, and then, you know, they told me they were sending me back, and so it was a little scary. I mean, it’s funny, I at first asked, can we record that?

33:25 Anything you can do for your own safety. Well, I was, I had my phone, okay, so I was in touch with colleagues, so I wasn’t really worried. They weren’t gonna do anything to me, but I asked two things. I said, so who’s making this decision, you know, Hong Kong or Beijing? And they said, oh, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, you know.

33:43 But I mean, the next morning, Beijing punctured that cover story by kind of admitting that they’d made the decision. Hmm. At first I said, well, so why am I being sent back? And all they would say is, immigration reasons, immigration reasons, you know. I couldn’t get past that.

33:56 But then there was certainly a series of explanations that were offered. The first one was that, you know, I was inciting the Hong Kong protests, you know, as if the people of Hong Kong need me to tell them to defend their democracy, or as if I have the capacity to mobilize a million people in the streets of Hong Kong. So that was like, you know, a little odd. And then we went back to New York and held a press conference at the United Nations, which, you know, because of what China has done to me in Hong Kong, was like a big publicity thing for the release.

34:25 So every journalist in New York showed up, and it was this massive thing. But a Chinese diplomat showed up to the Chinese mission in New York. They never talked to the media, so the journalists were thrilled that this guy shows up. So he had a hand on the microphone, and he explained then that, you know, the reason they blocked me was first because I was not giving them enough credit for the progress they’ve made. And, you know, of course I asked, which progress is this?

34:49 You know, the million detained in Xinjiang, or the suppression of all gone protesters, or, you know, but that was a separate issue. But then kind of the truth came out, you know. If you look at what you just sent today at this press conference, where I described this Chinese threat, that’s why we’ve watched money. You know, it was just, you know, it’s just censorship. So they need some PR help a little bit.

35:08 Yeah, but they, the one thing I did, which is sort of almost a tribute to highway way, come back to him. But I was my staff wanted me to do a selfie video while I was in Hong Kong. Yeah, I saw it, and I am but I was guarded the whole time, you know, so I really couldn’t do it, and they were putting me back on a plane, and they were actually holding the plane. I was the last person to get on the plane, and so I said, as I was for riding the Gateway, I need a moment of privacy, and so they said okay, and they backed off, and so I, like, pulled out my phone and did this like one minute, you know, one take selfie video, which you know, it is what it is, but then the most stressful part was trying to send it, because I had a kind of a loaner phone, which was not working very well.

36:03 You would connect to the terminal Wi-Fi, it wouldn’t connect to the phone system, and I was losing the terminal Wi-Fi as I walked on the gateway, and so I was trying to send the selfie, watching the bar move slowly along, and I wasn’t sure if it was sent. Yeah, it’s like, and I was slow-walking my way down the gateway, and they’re trying to push me along, the plane is waiting, and, you know, finally it made it. But that was the most stressful part. You know, do I get this thing out, and that stupid video has now been seen by four hundred thirty thousand people.

36:32 You know, was retweeted on my Twitter account. I think fourteen point five thousand times. It’s amazing, because it’s real, and it was in the moment. It’s how you felt, you know, you know. And that’s a little, a way, way tribute.

36:44 Is, yeah, you know. So, but that was like, sort of the owner somewhat funny part of the whole thing. Wow. And I mean, now you go back to America. This is a country that depends on China for trade.

36:55 We’re gonna see that be stressed now, with what’s happened with the coronavirus in a big way. How do you deal with the fact that, you know, big business wants to keep trading? You know, companies like Apple need them. I’m sure, you know, Trump signed the trade agreement, and maybe human rights isn’t in this, their agenda. How do you deal with those conflicting?

37:12 Well, I should say first of all, Human Rights Watch doesn’t oppose trade with China. We rather insist that the trade be done in a way that’s respectful of human rights. So, for example, nobody should be using components that are made in Xinjiang by forced labor there, because these people are detained. They’re being stuck in factories, and, you know, these are coercive situations. So, you know, every business is operating in China should insist on guarantees that their supply chain doesn’t include Xinjiang forced labor, and I’m not sure if they can at this point, but we, yes, those kinds of questions.

37:46 Okay. But the problem is that, you know, Trump, he’s been tough on China in trade terms, but he really could care less about human rights. He instrumentalized his human rights, and so he will sometimes talk about human rights in China the way he sometimes talks about human rights in Iran or Venezuela, but it’s a very selective process. You know, you don’t hear him talking about, you know, human rights in Israel or Saudi Arabia or, you know, the various Egypt, Turkey, the various allies who themselves are abusive.

38:12 So wouldn’t you have that overt selectivity? There’s very little credibility in the US response, and so we’ve really had to look to other governments who have a more principled approach. But, you know, everybody is reluctant to criticize China, and, you know, one ploy they often use is to say, oh, I did raise human rights. You know, what I met with Xi Jinping or others. You know, we’ve discussed it.

38:36 You know, and Merkel does that with Russia every time she meets Americal guesses with China, right? And they talk about natural gas, and then she says, I really think you should work on your human rights. You’re like, okay, we’ll see you next time. You know, but see, the problem is, I mean, if you recognize that the ultimate agents of change in any country are the people of that country, so you know, in China, it’s the 1.2 billion Chinese. You know, we and the outside can help them by, you know, creating space for them to operate politically, but we’re not gonna change China for them.

39:07 But if a leader shows up, and the people of the country see this smiling photo-op, they see the contracts being signed, but they don’t hear any protest. They feel abandoned, and so the real test of any leader is the people of that country hear you. And typically visitors to Beijing are not hurt, and so it does no good. You know, and, you know, Xi Jinping is perfectly happy to have being a some foreign ministry official in the back room of the foreign ministry, you know, issue some complaint.

39:40 It’s nobody hears it. And you see this problem with many leaders. You know, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is notorious for this. You know, he even, when he’s speaking publicly, he has this preference for the passive voice. He doesn’t believe in naming perpetrators.

39:53 You know, there were abuses in this country. You know, there were, we have serious concerns about what’s happening there, never says who did it. And, of course, when nobody feels the heat, when the people of the country don’t know that the UN Secretary General or some other leader stands behind them, they feel abandoned rather than embolden, and that’s, you know, we got to change that. If government officials are going to make any difference in human rights, that seems like that standard operating procedure at the UN.

40:16 It feels like it always will be. Well, it doesn’t have to be. You know, there’s this odd concept of diplomacy, which is very old-fashioned, that you never mention anybody. You know, these diplomats have this amazing ability to turn you know, this leader X murder that person into a person was murdered. You know, and it’s just, they have this preference for the passive voice, which is supposed to be diplomatic, but it’s just an abdication of responsibility.

40:43 So that’s something you know, we had Human Rights Watch don’t let them get away with, and when they resort to that, we pointed out and it’s usually terribly embarrassing. I mean, you’ll have this, you know, briefing by some, you know, UN humanitarian official or whatever in the Security Council, and they never say who did what. It’s just, you know, there’s this problem and there’s that problem, but there’s never a perpetrator, and if nobody feels the heat, there’s no pressure to change.

41:05 Okay. Other countries that you’re looking at right now? I’m guessing names like Saudi Arabia come up. Is Iran, Venezuela? What else?

41:14 All of the above. All the above. Okay. I mean, a list of, you know, I’m a for different reasons. Yeah, I mean, no, everyone for different reasons.

41:20 There may be one place to start right now, because an acute emergency is Idlib province in northwestern Syria, and not that many people focus on this, but today Russian and Syrian bombers are threatening three million civilians in a flip who are now huddled along the Turkish border, which is closed, and this could become a new refugee crisis, because you know Turkey has already taken in, say, three and a half, almost four million refugees. They’re not going to take another three million without opening up the Aegean, and Europe is going to have a new refugee crisis. So the stakes are extremely high, not to mention the potential bloodshed on the ground.

41:57 And the key to stopping this is Putin. Putin can turn it on and off at his will, but European governments have not really been talking about this very much, and they are, you know, kind of staring a disaster in the face unless they act and put pressure on Putin. So that’s a big issue right now that is not getting the attention that it needs. Erdogan, the Turkish president, is making some effort to stop this advance, but he’s very much alone, and there’s surprisingly little European support to him.

42:27 Okay, and Putin’s in the Syrian are bombing some of these areas. Exactly right. The New York Times has done some articles and proving that they’ve bombed hospitals. Yes, that’s how they do it in other sites. Bombing, it’s either, you know, indiscriminately across civilian areas, or where they get targeted, they bomb hospitals, and the hospitals are literally underground.

42:45 Right? I try to pretend with my mind. Yeah, build them underground, build them on the ground, and what they were doing is they were sharing the coordinates with the UN as a form of protection. The UN would then give them to the warring parties, and Russia would use these as target lists. So they do that because they’re gonna squeeze Europe with this crisis.

43:02 It’s always, maybe, a political reason. Well, Russia would be happy for Europe to have a refugee crisis, because, you know, that’s how it’s, how eyes rise. I mean, why is Viktor Orban you know, pursuing his so-called, a liberal democracy, and Hungary, by, you know, fighting against this influx of migrants and asylum seekers. So, you know, Russia actually would love to have another refugee crisis in the West, but they also want things from the West. They want Ukraine sanctions lifted.

43:28 They want ordinary economic relations, and so the West has considerable leverage there. It’s just not using it. Right? There’s a lot of people saying, why would they bomb hospitals? But they do it, because this is all a political chessboard.

43:40 Well, it’s also, I mean, it’s worth stressing that hospitals are protected by the Geneva Conventions. Geneva Conventions say that medical care, even for combatants, is protected, and, sort of, to bomb hospitals is a war crime. But Putin and Assad, the Syrian president, are essentially pursuing the so-called total war approach, where they’re just going to kind of devastate the other side. Who cares about the Geneva Conventions? And, you know, bombing hospitals means that an injured combatant can’t get treated, and so even though the general, the Geneva Conventions say that, you know, you’re entitled to that medical care, but they’re just attacking it, and the war has been fought this way all the way along.

44:21 I mean, Assad and now Putin are notorious for attacking medical care. So that’s one big issue. Okay. I mean, you mentioned Saudi Arabia, and, you know, it’s, I mean, there’s Saudi Arabia at home is a problem, because Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, you know, portrays himself as a social reformer, but he wants all of this reform to be dictated from on high. And so, you know, for example, he gave women the right to drive, but the women’s rights activists who sought the right, right to drive are in prison, because they demanded that right rather than waiting for the benevolent dictator to give it to them.

44:56 Okay. And so there is, you know, everything’s on his terms, all on his terms. So there’s a complete crackdown on independent journalism. That’s why Shoji was murdered, on any kind of human rights or civic activism. So, domestically, in political terms, it’s horrible.

45:11 He’s also cracking down on his own people, his own heads of industry, and, you know, he, I mean, notoriously locked them, he blocked people in for since Carlton or the Ritz-Carlton, right? And essentially, you know, said, you hand over half of your fortune, or you don’t get out of here. Sounds like a Putin move. Yes, you know, and it’s, so he, you know, got, you know, many billions that way. But the worst thing he’s done has been in Yemen.

45:33 And Yemen today is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. There are, you know, between 11 and 13 million Yemeni civilians who are dependent on humanitarian aid. Many of them are on the brink of famine, and this is because the Saudi-led coalition has been over and over bombing civilians, you know, hitting mosques, markets. I mean, one piece of school bus, and they’ve been blockading by air and sea the entire northwestern part of, yeah. And this is, it’s a complete disaster, and Iran is involved as well.

46:07 Iran is, by backing the so-called Houthis, who heard the rebel force in that part of Yemen, who are fighting against the Sunnis. Recent General Suleimani was kind of involved with the Kurds force, and it’s a proxy war. There was some Suleimani was, I mean, certainly it supported the Houthi in Yemen, but I think what he was more known for was his support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shia militia that are operating in Iraq and, also, to some extent, in Syria.

46:35 Yeah, and so he had a long history of supporting proxies who would, you know, sometimes attack US troops, sometimes attack Israel. Oh, and so that, that was, you know, really why he was targeted. Okay. But all this Yemen crisis is major. He’s being talked about as much.

46:52 Well, and what’s interesting is that, you know, because these are blatant war crimes, the Saudis have come under real pressure, and Saudi Arabia’s another government that, you know, Western governments are reluctant to stand up to, because it has so much money, and they all want to sell arms, and so forth, but an oil for a trading partner. It’s hard to, yes, although, I mean, Saudi Arabia has to sell the oil, so it’s not as if criticizing Saudi Arabia means they’re gonna cut off their oil sales to you, but it’s more that they want the Saudi purchases. Okay, so but the pressure has begun to have an effect.

47:25 So the Saudi-led coalition involves the Saudis bombing, but the Emiratis, the you know, United Arab Emirates forces recently, about six months ago, announced that they’re pulling out of this coalition, and clearly the heat was getting to be too much for them. Sudan, which had been providing 20,000 troops on this new post-revolution government in Sudan, also announced it was pulling out. So increasingly the Saudis are on their own. They can bomb away. They have no ground troops to speak of, and so they are in some trouble there, and you know, the Yemen crisis continues but there is a sliver of hope there that the Saudis will have to sue for some kind of peace agreement, because they’ve lost the capacity in any sense to win this war.

48:06 Absolutely. Okay, a lot of places to talk about, which is unfortunate, but I want to get through some of these. Israel, what do you see there? There’s obviously been some support by President Trump to encourage, you know, taking back major parts of the West Bank. What do you see there?

48:21 Well, I mean, the Trump so-called peace plan is just a Netanyahu wishlist. It’s basically, you know, what is Netanyahu want? He wants to make permanent Israel’s illegal war crime settlements. You know, he wants to annex whole parts of the West Bank. He wants to entrench this oppressive, discriminatory system, where, you know, the Israelis on one side of the road say, get full rights, and the Palestinians on the other side of the road have very few rights.

48:50 And, you know, although ostensibly there could be a state, maybe, at the end of this process, it’s a Swiss cheese state, and it’s one that’s conditioned on all these steps being taken by the Palestinians, which will never happen. So it really is an effort to, you know, how Israel to annex its illegal settlements and to impose, on a permanent basis, this oppressive, discriminatory system that’s already been in place for over 50 years. Okay, which is just a further portion on human rights in your mind?

49:21 Oh, it’s, I mean, it’s a human rights disaster. Okay, and which is why, you know, no one has embraced this proposal other than Netanyahu. Right? But Trump’s doing it cuz politically it’s a good move for him. Well, might believe in it as well.

49:34 He, you know, look at he was facing impeachment. Netanyahu is facing indictment for corruption. I mean, that explains the timing, because otherwise, why did they rush it out at that point, right? You know, before Netanyahu’s elections are coming up. But he’s, you know, I don’t think anybody believes that this is serious.

49:50 It was more just, you know, from Trump’s perspective, he’s already put himself completely in bed with Netanyahu. It’s his way of appealing to the Christian evangelical vote in the United States, and to some extent, the Jewish vote, although American Jews are still, you know, much more opposed to Trump than not. So I think their political calculations that went into this much more than the serious peace plan. Okay, that’s concern for you as well. There’s a lot of other countries I want to hit here, but I also want to hit America.

50:20 Do you look at human rights in America, and what do you see? We absolutely don’t, cuz the Chinese will point over there. Russia today puts journalists and points there. You know, everyone says, what about your own backyard? Yeah, no, our largest country program is actually a program on the United States, really, and we focus, you know, largely on two broad areas, immigration and criminal justice.

50:43 And, with immigration, you know, what Trump has done on the US-Mexican border has been abysmal. You know, where he’s essentially written, ripped up the law to protect people seeking asylum. So you have these people coming from Central America, from the gang violence, from the complete lack of rule of law. They come to the Mexican border, and they have a right to enter the United States. There’s nothing illegal about that.

51:07 They were right to enter and seek asylum, and what Trump is saying is, you know, first of all, go wait in Mexico, which is completely illegal. It’s unsafe. Their people are, you know, very much in danger on the other side of the border. And he’s also then trying to change the rules to say, well, you know, since you passed through Guatemala, you should apply in Guatemala for asylum in a route from the United States, as if Guatemala or Mexico can in any sense provide asylum for people.

51:35 Human Rights Watch just put out a report on people who had been sent back from the United States to El Salvador, and we found that over the last, I think, six, seven years, they were over 100 people who had been killed after having been sent back. And so it, this shows how the asylum system is really being twisted by the United States to just stop immigration, rather than to live up to the rights to protect people who very much need it. So those sorts of issues, you know, that the separation of children from their families, the unnecessary detention of immigrants.

52:13 These are a range of issues that Human Rights Watch is looking at, as well as, frankly, the importance of trying to protect the many of the 11 million undocumented migrants who live in the United States now, and roughly two-thirds of them have been there for a decade, so they, you know, have US citizen kids and US citizen spouses and jobs and houses, and they basically are Americans in every way but four papers. And at some point, you know, there’s a statute of limitations. If you commit a crime, at some point there should be a statute of limitations.

52:45 If you’re an undocumented immigrant, oh, kind people should just say, you know, you’ve got a life, you should be able to leave this. And that’s kind of being reversed under this administration, whether actually going after these people, and, well, Trump is seeing political advantage and trying to demonize immigrants. You know, from his perspective, you know, every immigrant is a racist, rapist, or murderer, or a drug dealer. And you know, we’ve actually been putting video cameras on the border in interviewing people as they are deported.

53:13 Just say, you know, so, which one of those are you? And, of course, they say, you know, I got my kids back home and I’ve been living there for 12 years. You know, I just lost my job because Trump deported me. So it’s, you know, the reality is very different from the caricature that Trump presents. And you also mentioned criminal justice.

53:27 As well, our focus in terminating trust, criminal justice has really been, you know, this radical over-incarceration used by the United States, and particularly the racial component to it. And so, you know, what you find is that, oh, there are enormous discrepancies between whites and Blacks in terms of how they’re treated by the criminal justice system. Drug prosecutions are a good example of this, where you you’ll have multiples of, you know, five, six, sometimes, you know, much larger than that, same offense, but whether you’re white or Black will depend on how likely you are to go to prison.

54:04 And we’ve been doing a lot of work recently on unbale, where people will commit some nonviolent offense, they’re charged with it, and they’re basically locked up just because they’re poor because they can’t post a nominal amount of bail. And with some success, now New York has just abolished money bail so that for nonviolent offenses, and, you know, if you’re out, you’re much more able to contest the charges, to find witnesses, to present a defense. If you’re stuck inside, you tend to plead guilty, then you have a felony record with all kinds of negative consequences, so that initial battle decision is enormously important.

54:45 And New York, California, there’s an increasing recognition that this is just unfair, that, you know, you may need bail for certain very violent cases, or if there’s a real risk of flight. But most people, there’s no need to be locking them up until trial. They’re presumptively innocent, and they should be able to mount their defense without being incarcerated. Okay, a lot to cover. I’m gonna keep it moving.

55:05 Climate change is that a human rights issue? And how so? Because a lot of people wouldn’t understand how that is. It is a human rights issue in that, you know, it obviously, if governments neglect it, it can have enormous consequences for, you know, just the right to life, the right to health. There could be forced migration and refugees, and, like, were created.

55:25 Human Rights Watch’s approach has really been to focus, you know, first of all, on defending the environmental activists who are on the front line of trying to fight against not only climate change but also some pollution and deforestation and the like, and that’s probably one of the most dangerous professions in the world. If you are a rural environmentalist, you know, out contesting deforestation or mining, you’re extremely likely to be killed, and so we do make a great effort to protect those frontline defenders, but we also are working to fight deforestation. We just did a big report in Brazil showing how Bolsonaro, the president there, you know, pretends the deforestation of the Amazon is just a bunch of small little farmers who are eating out a living.

56:08 But in fact, and we’re able to prove this, their big criminal cartels, who Bolsonaro was just green-lighting, and who are engaged in this industrial burning and deforestation of the Amazon, because Bolsonaro knows letting them. So we’re trying to stop that. We’re doing similar work in Congo, in Indonesia. And separately, we’re working on coal, because if you look at coal mining or coal-fired power plants, inevitably they are externalizing many of the costs.

56:36 So you’ll have a, you know, a highly polluting coal power plant that is, you know, spewing toxins to the neighbors around, undermining their health. They pay the price. The coal company doesn’t, and if we can kind of force the company to internalize those costs, to insure the coal production, our coal use reflects the real cost to society. You’re gonna get much less use of coal. So we try to find ways in which, you know, how our methodology, our kind of search orientation, or ability to get on the ground in the middle of these places can contribute to fighting climate change.

57:10 Didn’t Japan just announce they’re gonna build like 20 coal-fired, you know, power plants? Exactly. I mean, this was their reaction to the nuclear disaster. Like, okay. And, you know, one complicated trade-off for the environmental movement is that, I mean, Germany went through this as well, that if you, you know, many people don’t buy nuclear power because of a separate set of dangers, but nuclear power at least doesn’t have carbon emissions, right?

57:34 And so if you drop nuclear and add coal, it’s a tough trade-off, right? What about for whistleblowers, if we call them that, like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden? How does that fit into human rights and what you do? And how should, how should they be treated, slash, protected, and when should they be prosecuted or not? You know, well, we very much protect whistleblowers.

57:55 And, you know, one of the real problems we’ve had in, you know, a case like Snowden. I mean, if somebody like that is, you know, is charged with espionage, or charged with, you know, one of these national security offenses, if they were actually brought back to the United States, it’s very unclear under the law that they would be able to use a whistleblower defense. That’s not typically permitted in those kinds of cases, and that’s one of the real reasons we’ve opposed extradition in these kinds of cases, because there’s just no guarantee of a fair trial.

58:28 And so, because they breach national security, it’s considered treason, and they’re, you know, there are, you think, wrongly, for those things. Well, I mean, when you have somebody like Snowden who clearly was operating in the public interest. You know, what he revealed was this massive surveillance, this massive invasion of our privacy, and we’ve all benefited from his disclosure. In fact, you know, the US government scaled back some of that intrusiveness because of Snowden’s disclosures.

58:53 So he did a huge public service, and for him to be prosecuted for that is outrageous. At least he should be able to mount his defense and say, okay, yes, I technically just disclosed secret material, but this is why, you know, I had. There were all these people preceding me who had tried to use the official channels for whistleblowers. They all got nowhere. Many of them were prosecuted, so I did something else.

59:15 And I think he is a very strong just we would not be able to present that in a U.S. draw. Okay, what about Assange’s case back in the US? No, Assange is, you know, he’s in British custody, right? He still, since he left the Ecuadorian Embassy, right? And there too, we have, you know, serious problems about whether he would receive a fair trial.

59:36 And, you know, in a Assange’s case, he was essentially a publisher, you know, and you can say it was uncurated publishing. You know, he didn’t edit it the way a newspaper would. He just kind of dumped it in WikiLeaks, but, you know, nonetheless, he was a publisher, and so should be treated like a publisher, and what the US government is trying to do instead is to say actually, you were a co-conspirator, yet you conspired to help produce the leak. And that’s a very dangerous charge, because you could probably make that charge to any journalist who works with a whistleblower.

1:00:09 And so I think we have to examine that very closely. You know, and if all somebody does is to kind of enable a whistleblower to hand over the information secretly, that doesn’t make you complicit in the leak itself. And Glenn Greenwald is facing something very similar right now in Brazil. Yeah, we’re, you know, he received this very embarrassing leak showing that there had been collusion between the court and the prosecutor leading to Lula’s prosecution, the prosecution of the prior president, who was really, you know, potentially the major opponent of Bolsonaro era, and to show that this was this major due process breach was hugely embarrassing.

1:00:50 Now, the Brazilian government is trying to prosecute Greenwald, saying, were you colluded with the leaker? But, you know, if you look at the facts, all that really seem to be alleging is that Greenwald, you know, provided a secret way for the leaker to hand over the information. Right? That doesn’t make it criminal complicity, right? It’s like prosecuting the New York Times for publishing certain parts of the WikiLeaks things you shouldn’t, or setting up a, you know, a secure channel for a WikiLeaker to hand over the information.

1:01:19 But they’re doing that so they can hopefully scare people in the future. Yeah. Bentham of having in Australia is the worst right now. I mean, Australia has been actually raiding the offices of journalists to try to find who was the leaker, so we have to be very careful. I mean, whistleblowers are one very important way of protecting against governmental abuse, and we see these various efforts through the criminal justice process of governments to try to shut that down, because, of course, everyone, cover me, wants to maintain its secrecy.

1:01:45 Yeah, but that’s not always a legitimate, no, it’s a good point you make about Snowden. I mean, it was just so much surveillance going on, and then put to him to Americans, and just a legal, and it would have probably continued if it’s totally what it can would have continued. You know, made an enormous public service. Yeah. Just want to take it back a little bit to this whole concept of human rights.

1:02:07 This is a fairly new idea in human history. You know, I don’t even think in a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago anyone would have argued that was a thing, but it’s something that I don’t know if the 20th, the term was coined with Carter, but maybe you can just walk us back to this whole history of us even considering that human rights is something that’s unalienable and it’s cross-border, and that is, you know, it’s an interesting concept. Yes, well, I mean, there are precursors, you know, the Magna Carta, the US Bill of Rights, you know, the French Revolution.

1:02:37 I mean, there have been you know, events in history that spoke about rights, but this idea of having a kind of a global treaty that enabled the international community to defend rights, to say, you know, what you do inside your country is not solely your business. You have a duty to respect the rights of your people, and if you don’t, we, the international community, have a right to intercede on their behalf, you know, not violently, but we have a right to speak out about it, and that’s a new concept. It really is one that emerged after the Second World War.

1:03:06 I’m, it was initially the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was not a formal treaty. It was a declaration in 1948, and that was followed by a series of treaties. And today there are, you know, half a dozen major treaties that virtually everybody is ratified that articulate, you know, what are these rights? And they’re not foreign concepts. You know, they’re, you know, the right not to be executed, the right not to be tortured, the right to a fair trial, the right to be able to speak freely, but right to health care, the right to food, et cetera.

1:03:37 So these are pretty basic concepts, but where governments subject is that they actually want to be able to express that as a way of preserving power, and you know, you still see governments like China saying, oh, you’re infringing upon our sovereignty by talking about our human rights issues. You know, nobody really believes that anymore, but governments still try to use that as rhetoric to fend off human rights criticism. Okay. And what got you fascinated in human rights?

1:03:59 I mean, you got an interesting story. You’ve got family background. Yeah. What brings you here? Well, my father fled the Nazis as a young boy.

1:04:08 He grew up in Frankfurt, Germany, and came to New York in July of 1938, relatively late in the process. So, when I was a kid, my father would cut the hair of me and my brothers and to keep us quiet, he would tell stories about his life in Germany, and at first, when we were little, he would tell stories about the horse who delivered meat for my grandfather’s butcher shop, and it was, you know, a clever, funny, fast horse. You know, said they’re fun stories, but as we got older, he would tell stories about what it was like being a young boy growing up under the Nazis and being sent off to a second school, and being afraid that he’d be thrown into prison, or that his father would disappear.

1:04:47 And so I grew up, you know, very aware of the evil the government’s could do, and I think that that was kind of very formative, and setting me on this path where I wanted to do something about that, if I could, and I was very fortunate to be able to do that with my life. And just being a lawyer didn’t interest you much? You didn’t like that? I, you know, I tried out just being an ordinary lawyer for a short bit. It didn’t appeal to me.

1:05:11 No, I was, but I have to say My start in human rights was not terribly auspicious, because in law school I signed up for the one human rights course that was on offer, and every year, all three years, it was canceled. So I graduated from law school with no human rights training whatsoever, and I went into a job market where there were no jobs. Human Rights Watch at that point had two employees. So it all didn’t start off well, but I, while I was a practicing lawyer, I started volunteering, doing human rights work nights and weekends, and did that for six years, and became sort of known, and finally a job opened up at Human Rights Watch, and I jumped in it.

1:05:51 Well, okay, it’s only because you did that work on your own that you placed yourself. Well, I, as a result, I was sort of known. Yes, I mean, otherwise, yeah, they would have no idea who I was. Well, I certainly didn’t have any training. How does technology affect our human rights, and when I hear you talking about China, when I think about North Korea, part of me always says, yeah, but technology will get us there.

1:06:13 You know, if everyone knows what everyone’s doing, am I wrong in that assumption? And also, what other human rights issues does technology bring? Yeah, well, I think you’re right and you’re wrong. I mean, there is clearly a positive side to technology in terms of informing us what’s going on. So, I mean, simply your mobile phone, the fact that you know, any place in the world, people can take a picture and post it in social media, or a selfie video in Hong Kong.

1:06:36 We know a lot. There’s a lot of information out there, and in fact, you know, when human rights when governments try to block Human Rights Watch, say, no, we can’t enter the country, there are lots of things we can do to find out what’s going on, anyhow, you know, beyond, you know, just speaking to activists on the ground. But increasingly we use satellite technologies. So we have a partnership with a company called Planet, which literally takes a photograph of the entire world every day, and so we can ask it, you know, give us the photographs of the Rohingya villages in Myanmar that are being burned.

1:07:11 These are the dates we think it happened. Show us what happened, and you can actually watch as the army comes in and, day by day, you know, burns down the village, clears away the rubble. It’s just there, you know. So that’s very powerful. We are beginning to develop a capacity to do open-source searches.

1:07:28 So, you know, when all these people are posting photos or videos on their social media feeds, that’s evidence. You still need to corroborate it. You need to make sure it’s legitimate, you know, that it hasn’t been concocted. But if you can do all that, that can be very powerful evidence, but you gotta find it. And so we’re developing that capacity.

1:07:47 So those are all the ways in which technology, you know, enable us to sort of peer over borders, to peer over the front line, to see what’s going on, even in places where it’s too dangerous or too risky to go, or where we’re barred from going. Okay. But there’s a threat to it as well, and that is, you know, a paedophile. I, what’s going on in Xinjiang, but you know, technology is intrusive, increasingly, so we need to develop standards. We talked about, you know, facial recognition technology, the protection of our privacy from surveillance, but there are also issues like artificial intelligence.

1:08:25 So as algorithms are used to decide, you know, do you get insurance, you know, or what kind of insurance, what the price of it, or, you know, do you get bail if you’re arrested, or, you know, various factors that make a big difference in your life. We need to know that algorithm is fair, and which requires a degree of transparency, because, you know, one thing we find, for example, is these days, you know, modern policing means you use artificial intelligence to deploy the police to have maximum impact, you know, to be most efficient. So, sounds good.

1:09:02 Let’s look at the data. What’s behind that artificial intelligence? And there’s this old kind of computer concept, GIGO, garbage in, garbage out. You know, so if the garbage going in is like biased practices in the past, you know, the police deployed in the minority neighborhood, and therefore there was more crime in that neighborhood, because that’s what they saw. The algorithm coming out of that is gonna say, well, this is the high-crime neighborhood.

1:09:26 You got to deploy there. So you’ve got to make sure that you’re not just reinforcing the biases of the past, and that requires, you know, transparency and analysis, that many of these algorithms don’t want to allow, you know, such scrutiny up. So that’s something we’ve got to be, you know, very attentive to. So they’re just our new issues coming up. How does social media deal with hate speech, with incitement?

1:09:48 And so, you know, the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar was facilitated by hate speech on Facebook. At that point, Facebook didn’t have anybody who spoke the local language. They had no idea that their platform was being used this way. That’s an abdication of responsibility. They’re now moving to make some amends, but they still are basically doing it on the cheap.

1:10:09 They really are not investing in the large, you know, people capacity they need to have, the linguistic and the cultural knowledge to identify incitement before it explodes, which is their responsibility. From, you know, there’s probably the responsibility yeah, you know, and they’re making a fortune. It can afford to invest in the people that would oversee this. That’s Facebook also, the Google platforms, all of these social media and tech platforms as well.

1:10:34 Well, I mean, with Google, the issue is YouTube, you know, which is, again, another form of social media. Yeah. But anybody who has social media, you know, it’s a great service that enables us to talk to each other and learn from each other, but there’s a responsibility that comes with that, to make sure that it doesn’t incite violence or other forms of discrimination. What about data? Do I have a human right for you not to own my data?

1:10:55 Well, I mean, this is another issue that’s emerging. And these, you know, these big Internet companies are, you know, essentially data companies, and they are making huge profits over the data that you provide them. You should have ownership of that data, so you should, you know, in a way that works, be able to say whether they can use that data or not, you know, not these like lengthy legal forms of gobbledygook that people just kind of automatically check this.

1:11:19 Nobody in the history in the world has ever read it, but rather, you know, it should be a simple way to say, are you sharing your data or not? Can I have my data back? You know, things like that. So I think there’s movement in this direction, but the standards are not yet in place, which is back to kind of privacy really. I mean, that’s, it’s another form of prying, as a form of privacy.

1:11:39 Yeah, and you see companies like Google buying up all these Fitbits and things like that, collecting all this biometric data. There’s so much data, you know, now, which is scary, because, you know, what are they doing with that data? And, you know, what if your Fitbit shows you know, a problem with you, and is, you know, is an insurance company gonna buy the data and say, no, we’re not gonna insure you? You know, very possible, and lost their productions.

1:12:04 Yeah, or if there’s an accidental leak, you know, and then all of a sudden, that’s out there, right? And some actuary says, well, you know, let’s just not insure these people and that’s what we’re seeing, all these leaks today. You might think your information is all private, but then it’s not, then it’s not. What are the consequences? Yeah, I mean, even, you know, intelligence agencies are being hacked.

1:12:21 Yeah. So, you know, the idea that any of this is safe is detection, single biggest challenge for you right now with Human Rights Watch for the next five years. Well, the thing I’m very worried about is this rye autocratic populist hsihu are challenging the very idea of democracy, and, you know, Trump epitomizes this, but there are, you know, many Trumps around the world, whether it’s Viktor Orban in Hungary, or Erdogan in Turkey, or Putin in Russia, Modi in India, Bolsonaro in Brazil.

1:12:52 And what they all have in common is, they gain power by demonizing some unpopular minority. So it’s an anti-rights agenda that they pursue and then, once in power, they all do the same thing. They all try to attack the checks and balances on their power. So the journalists, the activists, the judges, anybody they can constrain them, they want to try to undermine, and there is they use, you know, the language, the rhetoric of saying, we’re looking out for the people.

1:13:25 You know, we’re protecting the people from these immigrants. We’re protecting the people from these Muslims. There’s always, you know, somebody. We’re protecting the people from these gays. The reality is, they’re protecting themselves, and they’re using this, you know, unpopular minority to build an electoral majority, but then they’re looking out for themselves, not for the people.

1:13:43 And we need to demonstrate that and build up a much more vigorous defense of democracy, because, despite all of its imperfections, it still is the best way of having an accountable government, a government that serves the needs of the people rather than its own needs. Well, China, it would be a democracy. I mean, you never say never. We’ve got a long ways to go. I mean, at this point, you know, I’d be happy to have a country that is back where it was five years ago, where there was an emerging civil society, where there was the beginning of the rule of law, there was the beginning of independent journalism.

1:14:15 All of that’s been snuffed out, you know, five years ago. We didn’t have a million Uyghurs in prison, so, you know, before we start going to this kind of pie in the sky stuff, I’d like to have this dictatorship behave more responsibly. Right. About Russia, you know, Russia is also in trouble. I mean, Putin, you know, looks good compared to Yeltsin, his predecessor, who, you know, was a disaster, drunken disaster your total economic collapse.

1:14:40 But, you know, again, that the country is just stagnating economically. You know, it’s living on its oil revenue, but it hasn’t built up a diversified economy at all and so Putin also is, you know, using populist techniques to appeal to the kind of more conservative countryside, but he’s lost the big cities. If you look what happened recently in Moscow? Oh, there was a City Council election. The opposition put forward a bunch of candidates.

1:15:10 Putin had them all disqualified. So there are big demonstrations, but then the opposition got smart and they said, well, okay, you know, our candidates aren’t running, but we’re gonna vote for whoever is not your candidate, and they orchestrated victories for all Navalny’s non-Putin heights, you know, and they weren’t great people necessarily, but the whole point was that they were not the people if we’re gonna support Putin, and so you know, you see in the big cities of Russia as you see in the big cities of Turkey or Hungary or Poland. I mean, in many of these places, for unive rising autocrats is that they actually have lost the cities, and they’re appealing to this more conservative bastion in their, in the hinterland, but that’s, you know, not a long-term strategy.

1:15:49 And so they’re all backpedaling. They’re all on the defensive, and they’re all resorting to increasing repression to try to and maintain some grasp on power. Yeah, and repression, and also, you know, if you call it terrorism, but like Putin goes out and, you know, stirs things up, you know, assassinations in countries, and like you said what’s happening in Syria, they’re very good at punching above their weight by frightening other countries, probably with their old mechanisms of you know, if you know FSA and all that stuff.

1:16:16 Well, I mean, I bet these military adventurism in eastern Ukraine and in Syria are partly designed to whip up nationalism at home, but those have run their course. And in fact, at this point, people are saying, well, so why exactly are we in eastern Ukraine when Europe is imposing these sanctions as results and the Russian economy is completely stagnating. It’s hard to defend. Yeah, but also, we see assassinations in this country. Assassinations in Bulgaria, you know, blatant things used to project power, and it’s amazing how a few people doing that can give Putin the edges he needs internally and externally.

1:16:47 However, you know, that the FSB, his intelligence service, has been willing to assassinate, yeah, even in Europe it happened, and obviously in Britain, it’s happening in Berlin. Yeah, and you know, the person who’s doing this, just recently, it happened in France, just a week ago. Is Ramzan Kadyrov, who is the president of Chechnya, the Russian Republic, a very close ally of Putin, but who’s been the most ruthless by far, and he’s gone after critics of his rule wherever they are in Europe, and you know, I think the European protests have been too weak, often mute, so there is a need to stand up and say, you know, this is really a step too far.

1:17:24 Yeah, it’s hard to believe, when I read some of this stuff, that that’s actually happening. You know, these guys are travelling through these stations in London and killing the people, and using these, you know, rubbing these, you know, Vaseline-like substances and they’re attaching nerve agents. I mean, it’s just, you know, it’s just, it kind of pains me that that’s happening in 2020. You know, that’s still going on. You know, it’s, it’s remarkable.

1:17:49 All right. Unlike Ai Weiwei, are you optimistic in the future? A hundred years from now, Kenneth, do you think that we will be living in a place where human rights are generally respected, or do you think this will always be a battle? I think it’s always a battle. I am optimistic.

1:18:04 I mean, first, I think we’ve seen enormous positive changes. If you kind of look back 20, 30 years, there’s been huge transformations in the world. You know, Eastern Europe used to be Soviet dictatorships. Now they’re mostly democracies. Latin America was a bunch of military dictatorships.

1:18:19 It’s not mostly democracies. So you can look around the world. There’s been vast improvement in many parts of the world. Then there are other places like the Middle East or in Eastern Africa which are very problematic still. So I think it’s always a struggle, and the reason is that governments, by their nature, one of violate human rights, because governments by their nature want to stay in power, and human rights are inconvenient to that.

1:18:43 They make it more difficult to stay in power. And so you’re always going to need a human rights movement to fight back, to raise the cost of human rights abuse, and to kind of effect that cost-benefit analysis that leads the government to go one way or the other in terms of respect for human rights. So that doesn’t depress me. I think that’s just reality, but I keep doing this because I see over and over how this struggle makes a difference. It’s funny, I’ve got a guest on later today, Anthony Scaramucci.

1:19:10 You spent 11 days in the White House, and he says the whole battle in Washington is to take what is a three-dimensional person and turned them into a two-dimensional meme and then assassinate the character, and rinse and repeats, you know, and like you said, the government’s use that to fight each other, and then human rights are the first thing to go. So I guess this will always be a battle of media, of power, of human rights. That’s what it is. And, you know, we at Human Rights Watch, we’re actually good at fighting back.

1:19:38 You know, we have a whole team of people stationed around the world who collect the first-hand evidence. So, you know, we get the truth. We, you know, can immediately see through the cover stories, and we’re very good at getting that out. You know, we have a typical day we’ll have 140 unique articles about our work around the world, and we’ve got 11 million people following us in social media. We have an ability to project this, and, you know, governments hate that, but they’re stuck with it, right?

1:20:02 And so, yes, we can fight back. Okay. And you’re still going strong, right? You’re loving what you do, and you got plenty of things I feel incredibly privileged to have this job, and it’s fun. You know, I get into the battle, and that’s just you know, I like to be able to make a difference, and I see how the work does make a difference.

1:20:19 I got a great team behind me, and it’s fun to be able to deploy that. How do you stay positive when sometimes you keep seeing things that are inhuman out there? Well, you know, I sometimes think about this the way a doctor would, you know, a doctor sees illness all the time, but doesn’t get depressed, because they can do something about it, and for me, it’s the same thing. You know, yes, I see terrible things the government’s do to people. I collect that information, but I deploy it in a way that’s gonna try to stop it, and so there’s a reason for this, a rationale that keeps me going, because I see how the strategic deployment of information moves governments even on the other side of the world.

1:21:01 Right? And that’s invigorating. It’s exciting. Though, can I always ask you questions at the end? I’ll ask you, if you could, if you could take a phone and call up the 20-year-old Ken and give that young man some advice, and guess you’re in undergrad at this point based on everything you know now.

1:21:15 What would you tell him? What advice would Real TV forward slash tribe. Now let’s continue with the show. Very well said. Thank God for social media, it’s helping to change the game.

1:21:46 Yes, I learned a ton today, so thank you so much for that. I really appreciate the perspective on China I think a lot of us just don’t get that, because there’s so many messages, so many things going on, but also the things happen in our own countries that we need to be aware of. The fact that it’s not necessarily gonna go anywhere unless we keep this fight going. And so, yeah, I really appreciate your work you do, and thanks so much for coming, Ken. Thanks for having me.

1:22:07 It’s been great. All right, wishing you all the best. Thank you.