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20 ·
Question: And these are with Uigurs?
Senator Schacht:
With Uighurs.
Ms Thwaites: And that happens continuously, each time, but the last time was two weeks ago.
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The
Senator Schacht: Two weeks ago. Now again, that was informal information. We don't have any way of verifying it but we got that information separately, without minders being present, and I think that's a useful indication. Just as we discovered in Tibet, some of the most useful information was when Kevin, who speaks Tibetan, was able to speak without minders being present to Tibetan people. other thing I should mention was that even in Xinjiang Province, when we were away from minders individual members when minders weren't present - individual Uighurs said to us, "Who are you?"
"We're from Australia." "Ah yes, we've heard about you, you're the Australian human rights delegation, we've heard your name mentioned on Voice of America." So it was clear that they are receiving plenty of outside information through Voice of America, BBC Overseas Service, and so on. And also, we discovered that even in Shanghai people knew that there was a human rights delegation from Australia in China for two weeks. People said, "What are you here for? Why? We've heard news about it, this is interesting. But particularly, we found it pleasing that one way or the other, through very limited access to people directly in Xinjiang Province, they were able, they knew we were there and were pleased we were.
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Mr MacKellar: Just on that point about the situation in Xinjiang, in Kashgar, there certainly is evident movement between, particularly Pakistan and Kashgar. Actually, Kevin spoke with some Pakistan merchants there and the traffic between the two is noticeable along the roads and I think the point of your question is correct, that because of this interchange of people which is actively taking place, and they talk about developing it further as a trading centre, then of course outside influences will be around.
Question: And so one would assume the Chinese to be super- sensitive about the region and be more prone to a crackdown?
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Senator Schacht: In fact the local officials were surprisingly, in my view, open with us and they didn't try and apart from the ubiquitous people accompanying us everywhere they didn't put any obstacles in our way in addition to anything that had been done before in other parts.
Ms Thwaites: Before, the Uighur people when they go to former Soviet Central Asian Republics, actually they have meetings, the Chinese Government organise meetings and ask