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President Trump In London For NATO Meeting; House Judiciary Committee Will Hold First Impeachment Hearing; Typhoon Kammuri Forces Manila Airport Closure; U.N. Climate Change Conference Begins in Madrid; Leaked Documents Expose China's Detention of Uyghurs. Aired 12-1a ET
Aired December 03, 2019 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello and welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm John Vause, live from Studio 7 at CNN World Headquarters.
Ahead, NATO prepares for an unpredictable U.S. president, keep it short, brief and informal and agree to not agree on anything.
Just one typhoon on the planet now but it's making landfall in the Philippines. Tens of thousands seeking emergency shelter, while heavy rains and winds have forced Manila's airport to close.
And a dire warning, how the climate emergency is passing the point of no return.
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VAUSE: The U.S. president is in London at this hour for a gathering of NATO allies to mark the 70th anniversary of the defense alliance. Just don't call it a summit, don't expect to dinner with the queen and don't expect a joint communique at the end. But what you can expect is more of this from Donald Trump.
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TRUMP: So I'm going to London to NATO. We're fighting for the American people. It has not been a fair situation for us because we pay far too much.
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VAUSE: CNN's Nic Robertson is live from outside the residence of the U.S. ambassador in London.
So I guess we have a bit of an idea what's on President Trump's schedule for today.
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, we do. He will be having breakfast, getting up a little bit more leisurely than we did. He'll have breakfast and about four and a half hours with Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of the U.N..
He will have a bilateral with French President Macron after that and a fairly leisurely day as far as we can see at the moment. Perhaps, he will be busy behind the scenes, then he will go to the palace for that state reception with the queen.
But there is a lot of trepidation when President Trump arrives here for the NATO leaders' meeting.
Why?
Because of his unpredictability, as you were talking about. The U.S. secretary-general seems to be trying to get ahead of that, if you will, and preset the situation so President Trump can at least be happy, saying that the NATO allies are now contributing $130 billion more than they were back in 2016.
This is something President Trump has been demanding. Back then, there were only three countries that met the 2 percent of GDP spent on defense funding. That's up to nine nations. Spectacular for how White House officials are calling President Trump's efforts to get that spending up.
Nevertheless, there are many are going into this leaders' meeting, including Macron, including President Erdogan, who believe that NATO is beginning to creak at the seams a bit.
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ROBERTSON (voice-over): From World War through cold war to war on terror, NATO has been a cornerstone of global peace. But as its leaders gather in London this week, celebrating its 70th anniversary, its past is catching up with it.
JENS STOLTENBERG, SECRETARY GENERAL OF NATO: The foundations of NATO are strong --
ROBERTSON (voice-over): Robust projections, but internal tensions are mounting.
EMMANUEL MACRON, PRESIDENT OF FRANCE: Wake-up call.
ROBERTSON (voice-over): Recently, French President Emmanuel Macron described the alliance as brain-dead.
TRUMP: As I told the countries, you have to step up. You have to pay.
ROBERTSON (voice-over): President Trump demands NATO partners pay their way. Now, likely (ph) the most pressing issue in London will be Turkey.
Its populist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, purchased the sophisticated Russian S-400 air defense system and now toys with the idea of buying Russian fighter jets too, both buys from outside the alliance, a no-no for NATO.
But don't expect public fireworks. Tensions with Turkey are not new. Neither is the solution, NATO better off with Turkey on the inside. But with that, comes danger, warns longtime NATO expert Jonathan Eyal.
JONATHAN EYAL, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, ROYAL UNITED SERVICES INSTITUTE: The problem that we have is that we are used to the game of -- of Mr. Erdogan.
What we are not -- what we do not know is what the limits are. And the danger is, always, is that someone will overstep the mark.
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ROBERTSON (voice-over): And then France, never an easy relationship within the alliance. Macron doesn't speak for Europe but tries to, recently pushing the idea the alliance is past fit for purpose and Trump is part of the problem.
EYAL: There's no question that in general, Trump's statements were distinctly unhelpful and have shaken the alliance to the core. The Brits lead the camp that say that Trump is a temporary phenomenon and will go away. The French lead the other camp.
ROBERTSON: President Trump is the most unpredictable U.S. president NATO has ever had to deal with. With him in the room, according to one informed source, NATO can never be sure if it's one whim away from a wipeout.
ROBERTSON (voice-over): One person in particular will be happy for any dissent in London: Vladimir Putin. Russia is weaker than NATO and feels threatened. Responding to his provocations is yet another challenge.
EYAL: NATO has a challenge, to try to suggest how, in a world like this, it still has the answers.
ROBERTSON (voice-over): A good outcome in London would be nailing differences behind closed doors. But with Trump in the room, that's not going to be easy.
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ROBERTSON: And the big NATO meeting, that is Wednesday.
But today, the British media and everyone else here will be looking out for some of those famous Trump's tweets. Is he going to say something that will cause wrinkles here in the U.K.?
Of course, an election coming up. One thing we are not expecting is a bilateral between President Trump and British prime minister, Boris Johnson.
Why?
Because that could negatively affect the prime minister in the election in just a few days away now -- John.
VAUSE: It's six minutes past 5:00 in the morning there in London, so thank you for being with us. Nic Robertson, live.
To Washington now and CNN political analyst and "The Washington Post" columnist Josh Rogin.
So if you look at what's happening, this is not a formal NATO summit. It's a leaders' meeting. There will be a reception with Queen Elizabeth, not a dinner. There will be no official joint communique and it seems to be part of a plan to keep it informal, keep it moving, minimize potential negative impact from whatever Donald Trump may do.
JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right. We've seen the president exhibit very poor behavior at past NATO summits and other international meetings of this kind. It's clear that everyone in the room is trying to wait out the Trump presidency and minimize the damage he can do to NATO.
In the meantime with his boorish behavior or by refusing to sign whatever they come up with, in other words, if there's nothing to agree to, there's nothing for Trump to destroy and they will set a very low bar and try to meet those expectations by making very vague statements about whatever it is they all still believe they believe in.
But the underlying, fundamental cracks in the NATO alliance are broad and obvious and that will be the story, not what comes out of the summit in terms of a formal document but how they manage these really deep divides that we are all seeing right now.
VAUSE: That's the downside of having a brief get-together. You can't deal with serious issues, like Turkey, right?
ROGIN: And China and Russia. These are the three big issues. Russia, the traditional NATO threat; China, the new NATO threat and Turkey, the rogue NATO member. President Trump and his European counterparts disagree basically on all of these issues.
The Trump administration wants to push the China issue and they are pushing against a Europe that sees a retreating America. There is a real gap there between America's call on Europe to do what it says and America's reduced commitment.
When President Trump reduces the U.S. financial commitment to NATO on the way to the summit, that sends a clear signal about how he feels about the NATO alliance. These countries know that. So you can expect them to grip and grin, to pose for pictures and try to not get caught in Trump's Twitter feed.
But that is about the best you can expect. And that's a pretty sad state of affairs for the world's most important military alliance.
VAUSE: There's also a different dynamic this time around, because Donald Trump will have a friend in NATO in the form of the new prime minister, Boris Johnson. Emmanuel Macron seems to be not so much as Donald Trump.
ROGIN: In the first couple years of the Trump administration, Macron positioned himself as the Trump whisperer. They had something of a bromance going. That's over now.
We saw it most clearly when President Trump went to the G7 summit and he and Macron did not see eye to eye on anything. Macron has repositioned himself as the main critic of Trump's NATO strategy and moved France closer to Russia.
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ROGIN: That's very unpopular for a whole host of reasons and nobody really understands what Macron is doing here but everyone can agree they do not like it. And that takes the heat off of Donald Trump, because the rest of the NATO allies have someone else to point their ire at.
VAUSE: As the U.S. president leaves for the gathering, the impeachment inquiry is heading into another committee. This is obvious as the nose on your face, the fix is in. Those Democrats planned it well. Here he is.
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TRUMP: The Democrats, the do nothing Democrats, they decided when I'm going to NATO, this is set up a year ago, when I'm going to NATO, that would be the time -- this is one of the most important journeys we make as president. For them to be doing this and putting impeachment on the table, which is a hoax to start off with.
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VAUSE: Seriously, one of the most important journeys of the U.S. president?
That's where he's going with this now?
ROGIN: Not only that, anyone who knows the Democratic Party knows they are not capable of organizing it --
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ROGIN: -- to time up with this NATO trip. It's not clear that Trump really cares about it in the first place. It's never a good time to get impeached, it's embarrassing for the president to go to foreign soil and everyone's looking over his shoulder at the TV screen to watch his impeachment proceedings.
But he should've thought about before he allegedly committed these impeachable offenses.
VAUSE: Quickly, when the Republican led Clinton impeachment was underway, the Judiciary Committee was meeting and votes were being held and witnesses called, while Clinton was in Israel, right? ROGIN: Right. And at the same time, Bill Clinton was accused of manipulating foreign policy to distract from his impeachment. So what's old is new again. And no president likes getting impeached and it's always embarrassing.
But this is what happens when you have a fundamental break in the U.S. political system. The spillover effect and foreign policy is falling victim to our domestic chaos.
VAUSE: We're out of time, thank you so much.
ROGIN: Anytime.
VAUSE: The White House is trying to portray President Trump's NATO trip as a world leader, addressing serious international concerns while Democrats are moving ahead with their obsession, trying to force him from office by their impeachment inquiry.
However you spin it, the impeachment process is moving forward with the House Intelligence Committee sending its report to the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. It will also be released publicly.
Republicans issued their own 123-page prebuttal of the president. The Judiciary Committee will hold its first hearing on Wednesday without the president and his lawyers in attendance.
Four constitutional law experts will explain the grounds for the removal of the president from office. President Trump again attacked the process, saying, the do nothing Democrats get three constitutional lawyers for their impeachment hoax. They will need them, exclamation point. The Republicans get one. Oh, that sounds fair.
To Los Angeles now, political analyst Michael Genovese, he joins us.
Michael, good to see you.
MICHAEL GENOVESE, POLITICAL ANALYST: Good to be here.
VAUSE: This is almost surreal. We've got the U.S. president attending a NATO gathering after admitting to withholding military aid from Ukraine on the front lines of Russia's Putin's attempt to rebuild an empire and destabilize Western democracy.
Whether Trump did because of his overall never before mentioned concern about corruption or it's an attempt to extort Ukraine into digging up dirt on Joe Biden. Whatever the motive was it is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry and Russia benefited.
GENOVESE: Yes, and the president's defenders in the House, who wrote a rebottle to a report they hadn't even seen yet, said that there was no problem here, there's nothing wrong.
But think of it this way. The president they say was concerned with the excessive amount of corruption in Ukraine. He asked Ukraine to do an investigation that he knows will be corrupt, this makes no sense. Donald Trump is not stupid but he is corrupt. VAUSE: The Ukraine president tell told "Time," while he never considered the conversation with Trump about military aid from the position of a quid pro quo but he chastised the president. Here's part of the interview.
"I don't want us to look like beggars. But you have to understand, we're at war. If you're our strategic partner, then you can't go blocking anything for us. I think that's just about fairness. It's not about a quid pro quo."
Keep that quote in mind because somehow this is what Donald Trump heard.
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TRUMP: The Ukrainian president came out and said very strongly that they did nothing wrong and that the case is over.
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VAUSE: So if the president has done nothing wrong, then why is there the need to constantly cherry-pick and twist statements so far out of context that they're practically meaningless?
GENOVESE: Well, President Zelensky said I don't want to appear to be a beggar but in effect that's exactly what he is. He's a very weak power facing Russia, a very strong power. And he needs the other strong power, the United States.
So he's in a position of great weakness and he has to kowtow to the president and he has no choice in the matter. He is defending his country and he'll do pretty much anything he can to stop Russia, even if it's bowing to Donald Trump.
But if you wanted to know how the language of the phone conversation between the president and Zelensky went, I saw the movie "The Irishman" over the weekend. The mafia was talking about -- I paint houses, which is another way to say i kill people.
Or they always use vague references. Well, so when Donald Trump says, "I want you to do me a favor," Zelensky knew what that meant and Trump knew what it meant. You and I know what it means.
VAUSE: Mafia Don, perhaps.
Republicans have also decided to defend Trump, they will ignore any of the wrongdoing and they're calling it all a Democratic partisan attack while discrediting those who publicly testified.
In the prebuttal, they described the witnesses as unelected bureaucrats who chafed at Trump's unusual approach to diplomacy.
Here's a statement from a senior lawmaker from the House Judiciary Committee.
"There are clearly some members of the majority who have never accepted the results of the elections. We have no right to overturn the considered judgment of the American people."
That last quote came from Democrat Jerry Nadler during the Clinton impeachment. Only he refers to the Republican majority, '90, '92, 1996 elections. This is a strategy which has clearly worked before. Clinton was impeached but not removed from office and could it work again?
GENOVESE: It all depends on whose ox is being gored. When your side is being attacked, you defend them no matter what with whatever you have that is available to you.
I think what you're seeing here is that the Republicans are trying very hard to use the fantasy defense, the "1984" defense, saying, up is down and down is up. Their prebuttal contained a lot of material that was counter to the evidence that we all know to be true.
Yes, we don't want to overturn an election but the Constitution gives us a procedure to do just that in certain circumstances. And we have passed that bar and Donald Trump has engaged in activity that one might argue is impeachable. So we need to play out the constitutional role. We still have a rule of law system.
VAUSE: If Trump is removed, the election results still stand and then Pence becomes president. But finally, you may recall that bizarre moment at a Trump rally in October, which is when he mocked Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the two FBI agents that were having an affair. And it was part of the conspiracy theory that the deep state was out to get Donald Trump from the very beginning.
They were investigated, they were cleared of any wrongdoing but, as part of the investigation, their personal text messages were collected and released to Congress by the acting FBI director and then leaked and then you have this from the president of the United States.
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TRUMP: I love you, Peter. I love you too, Lisa. Lisa, Lisa, oh, God, I love you Lisa. And if she doesn't win, Lisa, we've got an insurance policy.
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VAUSE: Well, Lisa Page is speaking out and told "The Daily Beast," it's like being punched in the gut. My heart drops to my stomach when I realize he has tweeted about me again. The president of the United States is calling me names to the entire world. He is demeaning me and my career. It's sickening.
And he did it again and attacked her again on Monday on Twitter.
This beggars belief.
GENOVESE: The president's words at the rally were despicable to take a citizen, even though it's someone who worked in the government and worked in the FBI and thinks that it was objectionable to you, you don't single out a citizen of no great importance and make her the focus of a mockery the way he did.
He was also referring to her committing treason. That is just beneath the president and he is playing well beneath his pay scale.
And why would he bother to do that?
Because the president would let no insult go unanswered. And he doesn't have the capacity to move on. He keeps on going back to old insults and he can't get past it.
VAUSE: I guess we can expect more of this stuff for the next year or so. Michael, thank you so much, good to see you.
GENOVESE: Thank you, John.
VAUSE: We'll take a short break.
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VAUSE: When we come back, tens of people on the move in the Philippines as a powerful typhoon makes landfall.
Also exposing China's mass detention of Uyghur Muslims. Hundreds of newly leaked papers reveal just how fierce the crackdown has been.
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VAUSE: As Typhoon Kammuri made landfall in the Philippines, tens of thousands were forced from their homes for emergency shelter. The powerful storm slammed into the most populous island, with winds near 215 kilometers per hour.
There are fears heavy rain could lead to dangerous flooding as well as mudslides, all this as the Philippines approach the 2019 Southeast Asian Games. Some events have been rescheduled, to say the least.
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VAUSE: Still ahead, the point of no return, the U.N. over its annual meeting on the climate crisis, warning it's now or never.
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VAUSE: Welcome back. Thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM, I'm John Vause with the headlines this hour.
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VAUSE: If it's one thing we have learned in recent years about global warming, it's not going to fix itself. For every delay, every moment lost, that's time we will never get back.
Leaders, delegates and scientists are now in Madrid as there is a warning across the globe that the Earth's climate is rapidly approaching the tipping point, an irreversible moment that could doom civilization as we know it. If there's any doubt about the gravity of the situation, here's the U.N. secretary-general setting the stage for this 12-day event.
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JENS STOLTENBERG, NATO SECRETARY GENERAL: Climate change is no longer a long-term problem; we are confronted now with a global climate crisis. And the point of no return is no longer over the horizon. It is in sight and hurdling towards us.
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JOHN VAUSE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Jess Phoenix joins us now from Los Angeles. She's the executive director and co-founder of the nonprofit environmental research group Blueprint Earth.
Hey, Jess.
JESS PHOENIX, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR/CO-FOUNDER, BLUEPRINT EARTH: Hi, John. How are you?
VAUSE: I'm OK, but you know, the planet's not doing so good. You know, we've got hundreds of delegates, 50 heads of state. They're all in Madrid, trying to find a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so we can meet these commitments made in Paris in 2015 to try and limit global temperature increases, right, to 1.5 to two degrees Celsius.
Only this is the latest report from the U.N., and it found the world in on track to blow through those targets. It's going to warm by more than three degrees over the next 100 years, and that will leave large parts of the planet a wasteland.
So here's the thing. If we can't agree on those larger (ph) targets from Paris, what's the chance of them finding an agreement on cutting emissions by even more than before?
PHOENIX: I think the strategy that we're going to have to use is an economic one. It's basically, you can either get with the times and follow the lead of countries like China, which are heavily investing in renewable and green technology, or you can get left in the dust with outmoded technology that pollutes a whole lot.
So I think the economic argument is it's going to become ever more important, especially at big global conferences like this one. VAUSE: There's not just one tipping point here, though, right?
There's multiple tipping points. There's the health of the Amazon rain forest, the temperatures of the sea water, the acid level of the oceans. We're not quite sure when it's going to happen, but everything seems to be hurdling at us at once and faster than we ever predicted.
PHOENIX: That's right. And I mean, a lot of the models that we have now are increasingly more accurate, because with more data, we get our numbers better. That's basically the simplest way I can put it.
But, of course, even the best models can't account for every single thing out there, so what we do know is that this is a problem, it's not going to get better, and we need to take action. That's really what it boils down to.
So the worst-case scenario, if somehow our data were wrong, would be that we have a cleaner, greener, more sustainable future. That is the worst-case scenario, right? And the best-case scenario is that we can help avert massive economic and societal harm from irreversible climate change.
You know, according to the charity group Oxfam, on average over 20 million people a year were internally displaced by extreme weather disasters over the last ten years. According to Save the Children, 2019 will be remembered as this year the climate crisis, which devastated parts of east and southern Africa with floods, landslides, drought and cyclones, leaving at least 33 million people at emergency levels of food insecurity.
And then there's the study from UCLA. Many pregnancies are shorter as climate change causes more 90-degree days. That's 30 degrees Celsius. Climate change is here, and it's real. And its impact is being felt right now. There's no -- it looks like there's no time now.
PHOENIX: Exactly. I mean, we just had 200,000 people in California alone displaced by wildfires within the last month, and those are made more intense and more frequent due to climate change. And we're seeing the Australian bush fires, the typhoon you were talking about a couple segments ago.
These are all pieces of evidence that are staring us in the face. And if we don't take action, we are going to continue to see effects that we haven't even fathomed yet, like the one you just mentioned about pregnancies being shorter. We can't even possibly comprehend every single outcome that will happen from the climate changing the way it is. But we do know some of them, and they are not good.
VAUSE: President Trump infamously, or famously, however you want to look at it, withdrew the U.S. from the Paris accord, but the House speaker, the Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, she turned up to Madrid, if nothing else, to make this statement.
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REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): By coming here, we want to say to everyone we're still in. The United States is still in.
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VAUSE: That's great, but does the planet have the luxury of waiting for a year, or five years for Donald Trump to leave office so the next president can fix the mess?
PHOENIX: Definitely not. And that's why we really do have to make that economic argument. So private-sector leaders, as well as local and state governments can get on board here in the U.S. and help change the agenda.
The U.S. accounts for about 19 percent of the carbon emissions globally, but there's a whole other world out there that is still committed to following through on its Paris agreement details.
So that's what we need to be doing, is saying, yes, the president we have right now isn't going to be the president we have forever, so we need to act like we're -- like the planet's on fire, because essentially, it is.
VAUSE: We're out of time, but in the past, these are the issues that the U.S. would step up and lead on. Unfortunately, that is not there right now, and that's a major problem.
But Jess, good to see you. Thank you.
PHOENIX: Yes. Thank you, John.
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VAUSE: A short break. When we come back China has always denied abusing the rights of the Uyghurs up in Xinjiang, but leaked documents suggest otherwise. We'll take a closer look at Beijing's mass detention of Muslim groups in a moment.
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VAUSE: Apparently, someone wanted to apparently someone wanted to buy them. Amazon has removed a number of items from its website which showed images of Nazi concentration camps.
The Auschwitz Memorial asked for their removal, calling them disturbing and disrespectful. The camp images were displayed on Christmas tree ornaments, a mouse pad, all being sold by third parties.
Amazon says sellers must follow company guidelines or face action, which could include their accounts being shut down. And maybe that's not enough.
China is again denying it runs its own detention camps, but mounting evidence suggests not only is Beijing rounding up hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, it's also using brutal methods to wipe out their culture and traditions.
CNN's Will Ripley has our report.
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WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): China doesn't want you to know the secret behind these walls. Men, women, children, sometimes entire families separated from each other, cut off from the outside world.
The U.S. State Department says they live in prison-like conditions.
Locked up for not what they did but who they are: members of Muslim minority groups from Xinjiang province in China's far west. Why they're kept here is a carefully guarded secret, and if China finds a person who leaked more than 400 pages of government documents to "The New York Times." They could disappear, too.
This person is a member of a Chinese political establishment, who wanted the leadership to be held accountable for the decisions that were made in Xinjiang.
Decisions made by Chinese President Xi Jinping, implicated in the mass round-up for the first time, what the U.S. calls the mass arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance of more than 2 million people.
Massive efforts to reprogram and entire ethnic group, Muslim Uyghurs. China blamed the Uyghurs for a deadly terror attack five weeks ago, attacks that killed scores of people. That same year, 2014, President Xi made a series of speeches calling for a crackdown on separatists.
"Show absolute no mercy," he said in one speech. This video from Xinjiang suggests that's exactly what's happening. Men with their hands bound, heads shaved and blindfolded at a train station. CNN is not able to independently verify this video, or when it was taken; but two former detainees from Xinjiang told CNN the same thing happened to them, describing being herded together with other inmates moved from jail to jail.
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The Chinese government initially denied the camps exist. Now it calls them voluntary vocational training centers, teaching people how to integrate into Chinese society.
GULCHEHRA HOJA, RADIO FREE ASIA REPORTER: Jinping's dream is one nation, one country.
RIPLEY (on camera): What happens to people who don't fit into President Xi's dream?
HOJA: So they've been tortured. They've been starvation. Their life is, like, unimaginable.
This is my brother.
RIPLEY (voice-over): This Uyghur journalist, now in the United States, says her brother has been missing in Xinjiang for more than a year. She burst into tears as soon as our interview ended, pain shared by every family torn apart. Someone they love vanished. No message, no warning, gone.
MIKE POMPEO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: These reports are consistent with an overwhelming and growing body of evidence that the Chinese Communist Party is committing human rights violations and abuses against individuals in mass detention.
RIPLEY: Tough talk from the Trump administration as the president praised Xi just this week.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have a very good relationship, as you know, with President Xi. We're in the final throes of a very important deal.
RIPLEY: China's human rights record has been a focus of six months of violent protests in Hong Kong. U.S. lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a bill supporting human rights in the Chinese territory. The president signed the bill on Wednesday.
CNN examined other secret government documents leaked by an investigative consortium. Guards are told, "Never allow escapes." Detainees "may not contact the outside world." So China's ambassador to the U.K. calls the mounting evidence pure fabrication.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no so-called labor camps. The government gave them an opportunity to learn language, Mandarin, you know, to be a good citizen, and effective worker.
RIPLEY: That carefully-woven narrative unraveling with each new revelation, shining light on a dark secret, what many believe is the Chinese president's plan to erase an entire culture.
(on camera): China's ministry of foreign affairs is categorically denying to CNN that it was involved in any human rights issues in Xinjiang. They call what's happening there, counter-terrorism, and deradicalization measures.
Will Ripley, CNN, Hong Kong.
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VAUSE: Thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm John Vause. Please stay with us.
WORLD SPORT starts after the break.
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VAUSE: Hello, everyone. I'm John Vause. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM, live from Studio Seven at CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta.
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