In camps, some have been eventually released.

But notably Communist Party officials have shown reluctance, freeing weaker intellectuals.

And, according to the weaker human rights project based in the U.

S.

Hundreds of scholars, historians, artists, writers, poets, musicologists have disappeared.

Activists call What's Happened.

A Cultural genocide correspondent Matias Bollinger has this report spanning Germany and Xinjiang as he tells the story of one missing professor from the city of Kashgar.

For many years, a few scientific books have been Tahir Motel.

Cahir is only linked to his family.

His father, motel apps Siddiqa Khiry had dedicated his life to linguistics, specializing in the etymology off weaken names.

A member off China's ruling Communist Party, the weakest collar was a model scientist in Xinjiang and the editor off Kashka Universities magazine.

Then, in 2017, he suddenly disappeared.

He had been accused by the authorities off spreading ethnic hatred.

What I had so the party decides who is a professor and who is a criminal.

My father was a professor and scientists because the party allowed him He was, of course, hardworking.

But it was the party who allowed him to do this work.

And now the party has made him a criminal.

Tahir Tahir is a university lecturer in gutting in Germany.

He has followed in his father's footsteps and teaches wigger, language and literature.

This semester, he is teaching a class on wigger pop culture online because of the Corona epidemic.

Mhm.

Some of the songs are just a few years old, but Tahiri, they already sound as though they are from a distant era.

Hundreds of professors who study wigger culture have been arrested.

Many artists and singers have been arrested.

The man we listened to today is one of them.

Since 2017, China has detained hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions of leaguers, thin reeducation camps or sentenced them to prison terms.

Members of the cultural elite, like his father, have been especially targeted.

Yeah, but I'm very angry, but I try to control my emotions, to stay human and peaceful.

The persecution is part of a campaign to assimilate minorities in China.

The wigger language has been removed from school curricula, while historic monuments like the ancient city off Kashka have been renovated and turned into tourist attractions.

Traditional lifestyles have come under attack.

All mosques inside the ancient city have been closed, many minarets being removed.

Some have been converted into tourist spaces.

Theobald Lucien facilities now host public toilets.

A desecration.

One mosque was even turned into a bar.

It has since closed in cash cars.

Two main bookstores We ask about the works of Mr Cahir is senior.

Let's exclude Mandela.

Oh, the ambush.

Well, my mama.

Official documents have clearly named the goal of thes policies to destroy the roots and break the lineage off the week.

Er's back in gutting And Tahir Cahir e finally heard news from his father in March 2019, 18 months after his disappearance.

Looking old and frail, he denied via video chat that he had been detained and sad.

He had spent the last months in hospital.

My son, you must not believe these lies.

You must keep your mouth shut and publicly renounced the accusations you have made and clean up the dirt that you left.

This'll will be best for us.

If you want to do something for us, do what I tell you.

Looks like I mean even now what's sad for me is that here he's defending the perpetrators.

I try to see Mr Cahir e.

Who lives on campus.

As soon as I am at the gate.

Police appear e.

I asked them to let me see.

Mr Carr Hero, Uh, you need todo something.

A lot of digger one million California.

I hope what calls to the university will not answered.

Tahir Cahir e has gotten confirmation from a court that the verdict has been issued against his father, but he has not been able to obtain its content.

He can now talk to his parents every two weeks for two minutes.

Then the line is cut off.

The Chinese government has made me a lonely man, a sad, lonely man in exile.

One of his only solace is, is that by teaching at the university, he can contribute to preserving the culture that has suffered so much under China's government.

We have weaker ethnomusicologist performance artist and filmmaker Muqtada's midget joining us.

She was born in the city of Vinci in what China calls its Xinjiang region.

Muqtada's This story of Mutalib Siddiqa Khiry has happened to many weaker scholars, and when so many stewards of a culture, from specialists and literature to music to history and anthropology are silenced like that.

What is the impact?

Um, this is a very important question, I think.

What is the impact?

The first impact is like we're losing so much knowledge, so much creativity, even for human society.

I mean, it is lost for everyone.

It is the the It is really tragic for the human civilization, I would say, because agriculture is really rich and it is a part off human history, human culture.

If we lose that part off humanity, it is a big loss for all of us.

Um, I know that many people doesn't really no, not really familiar with legal culture or bigger, um, arts.

But the main role of all these people who are disappeared in Chinese camps are really the the people who knows really a lot about these cultures and who were carrying on and making these cultural expressions alive.

So in that sense, it is a big loss for wigger society with your people, and it is also a big loss for anyone else.

That is a wonderful point you have highlighted because cultures interact so eager culture doesn't happen just in its own ecosystem.

It's shared by so many other people.

So tell us about your own recent work and how critical and important it is to preserve weaker culture overseas in free spaces.

I mean, you've taken traditional weaker styles and made them contemporary.

Um, yes, I have a very traditional, uh, wigger dance education.

I went to the art Institute in room G when I was still living there and I had this chance to encounter with so many brilliant order traditional dance masters.

And then when I came to Europe, I realized that my culture was so less known, like, less known.

It's a nice way to put it.

But a lot of people didn't know who are the burgers, and they they didn't know our existence.

So culture and artistic expression has always bean, uh, very important tool for me.

Thio, introduce my culture, introduce who I am and my people.

So and then I went to this journey off being if the musicologist and I I saw that actually, apart from what I learned in the art institute, I like my culture is so diverse, and there's so many things still be discovered for even for us, For someone like me who are who were studying wiggle culture.

So with all this richness and then with my own personal artistic journey that I I had in Europe and in in in the world, I started to think like wigger, dance with music.

They also have, like a very strong a power off expressing themselves.

It's not just a museum piece, and it's not just a fixed or crystallized for off artistic expression or it doesn't belong to the past.

So I wanted it to be a vibrant part off contemporary art, saying I wanted Thio make it more accessible, and I wanted to use my own roots to express myself and tell my stories.

Now if the Chinese state manages to control education and deploy propaganda the way it has for an entire generation of weaker Children, we're seeing this to try to essentially make them conform to ethnic Han Chinese norms.

What do you think will be the outcome?

Um uh, the outcome is the Uighur region is a very historic and, as you said, very mixed and very diverse part off the world.

And if we took away all the identity, all the Uighur identity or all the rich history and all the vibrant nous off these people and this culture And this displace on all like what Chinese government is eventually trying to do is just a raise, anything which make these people individuals, make these people free spirits and make these people different.

They're raising all the differences to bring them into, like, making, creating like machines or creating like a soulless, um, maneuver.

And they can create like they can work in, in in the factories.

And then they just have thio participate in this very dangerous and ambition off Chinese government to to really control world economy.

Luca Dust Midget.

Thank you so much for joining us.