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Firefighter Dies in India Building Collapse; State of Emergency in New South Wales; Carlos Ghosn's Audacious Escape; Satellite Images Show Uyghur Cemeteries Razed in China; Sex Trafficking Victim Sentenced to Life Now Freed. Aired 5-5:30p ET
Aired January 02, 2020 - 17:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[17:00:00]
LYNDA KINKADE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Inferno in Australia: the bush fire death toll increases as people plead for more government help.
Also newly released emails in the impeachment of U.S. president Trump, how Pentagon officials thought withholding aid to Ukraine could be illegal.
And destroying graves and history, a CNN investigation reveals the latest atrocity in what some say is China's war on a Muslim group.
Welcome to CNN NEWSROOM, I'm Lynda Kinkade. Happy New Year.
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KINKADE: Australia is suffering a national crisis as the most severe bush fires in decades turn large parts of the country into a furnace and it is expected to get much worse in the hours and days ahead.
So far 18 people have been killed in those fires which began several months ago. New South Wales is under a state of emergency after being hit by the hardest by those fires. Authorities in Victoria have declared a state of disaster.
The prime minister is under pressure for the government's response to the crisis. Some people confronted him when he visited a town that was ravaged by fire.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm only shaking your hand if you give more funding to our effort. So many people here have lost their homes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We need more help.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are an idiot. Nobody. You are out, sir, you are out. Goodnight. Goodnight.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What about the people (INAUDIBLE)? What about the people who have nowhere to live?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're not welcome, you (INAUDIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is not fair. We're totally forgotten about down here. Every single time this area has a flood or a fire, we get nothing. If we were Sydney, if we were North Coast, we would be flooded with donations, with emergency relief.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't come back. You're not (INAUDIBLE) welcome.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KINKADE: Well, thousands had to leave their homes as the fire spread but amid the tragedy some residents have had some luck.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I cried as I turned the corner because I saw my house, it was still there from the front and I started to cry, I was that happy it was still there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KINKADE: Well, the fires are so intense the huge clouds of smoke are visible from space. More than 3.5 million hectares are burning, that's roughly the size of Romania. This photo from a European space agency satellite shows just the area surrounding Batemans Bay in New South Wales.
Here is the view of the fire surrounding Clyde Mountain along the hard hit southern cost of New South Wales.
Authorities are urging everyone to leave now while they still have the chance before the situation gets any worse. Anna Coren spoke with residents trying to reach other family members to find somewhere safe to stay.
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TREVOR GARLAND, FIRE REFUGEE: My daughter is stuck down in Sussex with some friends down there.
ANNA COREN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Trevor Garland's 16 year- old daughter Haley (ph) is stranded in one of the hardest hit regions with some friends. She told him that she is safe but he is not taking any chances.
GARLAND: (INAUDIBLE) because it's one road in, one road out.
COREN (voice-over): It is dangerous but Trevor is not alone.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're just focusing on trying to get the family back together. COREN (voice-over): This woman and her family were away when the fires struck the family home three hours south of Sydney. They escaped unharmed but their house was completely destroyed.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was a family house so it hit a lot of people quite hard. It used to be a holiday house. So all our families stayed in there at some point or another.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KINKADE: Anna Coren is in Nowra on the south coast of New South Wales and joins us live.
Anna, the death toll has risen, the number of homes destroyed has increased and you've just been speaking to people fleeing the fires. A pretty tough start to 2020.
COREN: Yes, absolutely. I mean, Lynda, you are from Australia as well. We know that this is a country prone to bush fires; we have a fire season every year. But this season is unprecedented.
It is the worst fire season on record and that is because of the sustained temperatures for such a long time. This fire season began months ago and we are only in January.
[17:05:00]
COREN: This is going to go on for months. And these firefighters have been going out there day after day, trying to not just fight these fires but contain these fires. We are here at a staging ground in Nowra south of New South Wales, where there was a shift change.
Firies came and listened to where they have to go, what the instructions are for today. Obviously the priority is to get people out of those fire zones, residents and holiday makers here on the south coast.
But one of them showed us footage of what they were doing yesterday and he was backburning. There is so much fuel, so much debris in these state forests surrounding many of these coastal towns, he said that they lit the flame and that within seconds it had taken over the tree. And that was without any wind.
You know, conditions have eased in the last couple days, temperatures down, winds are down. But tomorrow we are expecting a return of the catastrophic conditions that we saw on New Year's Eve.
That is where there was that tragic loss of life where people lost their homes. And it's terrifying for the people who are here, trying to get out or who are trying to protect their property -- Lynda.
KINKADE: Absolutely terrifying. We're thinking of all those people this weekend as those conditions are expected to get worse. Anna Coren in Nowra on the New South Wales south coast, thank you so much.
(WEATHER REPORT) KINKADE: Well, international police organization Interpol has issued a red notice for the arrest of Carlos Ghosn. The former Nissan chief managed a daring escape from house arrest in Tokyo. He was expected to face trial there in April.
Through his representatives, Ghosn announced he fled "a rigged Japanese justice system." He's charged with financial wrongdoing and maintains his innocence.
Ghosn is in Lebanon now and Japanese authorities have searched his Tokyo house where he was staying. It's not clear how he was able to slip out of the house or, for that matter, the country undetected.
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KINKADE: The flight tracker, Flight Radar 24, showed a private jet flying from Osaka to an airport in Istanbul and another plane continuing to Beirut at the time Ghosn is said to have arrived. It's not known whether he was on either of those flights.
Earlier I asked Gul Tuysuz what the Interpol red notice means and what Lebanon plans to do about it. Take a listen.
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GUL TUYSUZ, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL PRODUCER: Lynda, that red notice alert went out from Interpol. But those notices are more like requests rather than orders that go out to international law enforcement for fugitives.
Whether or not it will actually bring to fruition any sort of extradition of Ghosn back to Japan is quite unlikely at this point because there is no extradition treaty between Lebanon and Japan.
Having said that, here in Istanbul, there's also been a development. There has been an investigation that's been launched by the Istanbul prosecutor's office; so far seven people have been detained.
Four of them are airplane pilots and one is a manager at a private aviation company, as well as two members of the ground services staff. Their testimony may shed some light on how it is that Ghosn managed his audacious escape.
But looking at what's been happening, there's a lot of speculation as to how Ghosn got out. There are media reports saying that perhaps his family was involved. And we heard from Ghosn himself today.
In a statement he said, "There has been speculation in the media that my wife, Carol, and other members of my family played a role in my departure from Japan. All such speculation is inaccurate and false. I alone arranged for my departure. My family had no role whatsoever."
Those are Ghosn's words. Of course, at this point there's still so much remaining about how Ghosn himself managed to get himself out of Japan and back to Lebanon. And Ghosn has said he's likely to speak in the coming days and weeks ahead. And we will all be watching and waiting to hear what he says and if
anything that he says reveals on how it is he managed to evade Japanese authorities -- Lynda.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KINKADE: Thanks for that report.
U.S. President Donald Trump is warning Turkey against military intervention in Libya. He spoke by phone today with President Erdogan after Turkey's parliament authorized sending troops to Libya to shore up the U.N. -backed government in Tripoli.
They asked Turkey to help them fend off a months-long assault by a renegade general supported by Russia, Egypt and others. Today's vote in Ankara is unlikely to put boots on the ground right away; no date has been set for any deployment.
The U.S. Senate returns to work tomorrow after holiday break with the upcoming impeachment trial of President Trump still in limbo as Democrats and Republicans argue over the format. Newly unredacted documents show just how concerned the Pentagon was about President Trump's orders to withhold military aid from Ukraine. CNN's Sara Murray has more.
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SARA MURRAY, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the face of warnings from the Pentagon that holding nearly $400 million in Ukraine aid could be illegal, a top budget official made it clear the orders were coming directly from the president.
"Clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold," Michael Duffey, a top Office of Management and Budget official wrote in an email to Defense Department comptroller Elaine McCusker on August 30th.
National Security focused website justsecurity reviewed the unredacted emails, which had previously been released by the Trump administration with heavy redactions. The emails reportedly show weeks earlier McCusker flagged concerns that if the hold wasn't lifted soon, the Pentagon couldn't guarantee all of the money would reach Ukraine in time.
The emails highlight the finger pointing between OMB and the Defense Department over the freeze on Ukraine funds.
Today an OMB spokesperson said, "There was agreement every step of the way between DOD and OMB lawyers, who were responsible for working out the details of the hold in line with the president's priorities."
Defense Department officials disagreed.
One said, "We were always concerned about the ramifications of holding the military assistance to Ukraine."
The new details come as the impeachment proceedings remain in limbo. White House aides were in touch with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office over the holidays.
But when the Senate returns tomorrow, McConnell plans to continue business as usual until Nancy Pelosi officially transmits the articles of impeachment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: Other House Democrats seem to be suggesting they would prefer never to transmit the articles. Fine with me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KINKADE: Our Sara Murray reporting there.
Still to come here on CNN NEWSROOM, a CNN investigation uncovers China's latest shocking move against a minority Muslim ethnic group.
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KINKADE: Welcome back.
For months, CNN has been reporting on China's persecution of an ethnic Muslim minority. China has been filling huge detention camps with Uyghurs, sparking global outrage. Now a CNN investigation has found evidence that China's efforts to stamp out their culture even extends to graveyards. CNN's Matt Rivers has the story.
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MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When Aziz Isa Elkun's father died it was too dangerous for him to go to the funeral in China. Aziz is an ethnic Uyghur who lives in exile in north London but he grew up in a western Chinese region called Xinjiang, an area activists say is the center of an unparallel human rights crisis in the world today.
AZIZ ISA ELKUN, POET: This is not a normal state, normal country can't do like this. This is pure evilness.
RIVERS: Xinjiang is where the United Nations says the Chinese government has detained hundreds of thousands of Muslim ethnic minorities, including Uyghurs over the past several years. Critics say China is doing that to try to eliminate Islam within its borders. Some detainees are seen here in leaked video blind-folded and shackled as they are transferred between places.
Former detainees have told CNN they're kept in a massive network of detention camps where inside allegations of torture abound. China's government denies that and says they're just offering vocational training designed to fight extremism. But last year, we tried to see those camps for ourselves and were met with police.
RIVERS (on camera): Can you tell me what that is?
Is this something you don't want us to see?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why you are here?
Tell me, why you are here?
RIVERS: We're here to film what we believe is a camp.
RIVERS (voice-over): In London, Aziz tells us his father was buried in this tomb near his family home in central Xinjiang. In the past he visited him in the only way he could, by using Google Earth to see the tomb from above. But in June, the satellite image changed. Before rows of tombs now a largely empty flattened field.
(on camera): What happened to your father's remains?
ELKUN: I don't know. I don't know. I have no idea.
RIVERS (voice-over): In a months-long investigation working with sources in the Uyghur community and analyzing hundreds of satellite images, CNN has found more than 100 cemeteries that have been destroyed, most in just the last two years, like this one in the town of Aksu, a cemetery first demolished and redeveloped with a manmade pond.
Or this one in Xayar, distinctive white tombs leveled and simply built over. The AFP first reported on this destruction and visited some sites. At three different places, they said they found human bones.
CNN has also found multiple government notices online. In one case giving families just 15 days to move remains.
[17:20:00]
RIVERS (voice-over): We showed these images to Ryan Thum, an anthropologist who studies Islam in China and uses satellite imagery to study this region.
RIVERS: There's no doubt in your mind what that is?
RYAN THUM, UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM: No, this is absolutely clear what this is. You can see the destruction encroaching and now if you look at Google Earth today, you'll see that this sort of flat surface now covers everything. And that is a phenomenon stretching right across the region of Xinjiang.
RIVERS (voice-over): In response, the Chinese government did not deny the cemetery destruction. They said in part, quote, governments in Xinjiang fully respect and guarantee the freedom of all ethnic groups to choose cemeteries and funeral and burial methods. In public documents, official reasons for the destruction include wanting to build, quote, civilized cemeteries to promote progress. Uyghur cemeteries are central to village life. A place to meet and connect, one generation to the last.
THUM: It's akin to, for an American, seeing Arlington Cemetery razed and the tomb of the unknown soldier dug up and paved over. It's a great act of desecration and a kind of open insult to Uyghur culture.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are stronger together.
RIVERS: Aziz believes it's a desecration that will have a backlash.
ELKUN: We cannot live anymore with them together. Because they are committing genocide against the Uyghur people.
RIVERS: In Xinjiang it seems even the dead can't rest -- Matt Rivers, CNN, London.
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KINKADE: Still to come here on CNN NEWSROOM, trafficked for sex, then imprisoned for life. Now she's out of jail and she spoke with me as part of CNN's Freedom Project. We will have that interview next.
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KINKADE: Since 2011, CNN's Freedom Project has been shining a light on modern day slavery, highlighting victims like Cyntoia Brown who, as a teenager, was forced into sex trafficking. One night her actions would eventually get her sentenced to life behind bars but thanks to the efforts of some pretty high profile advocates, she's now free.
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KINKADE: After 15 years behind bars you're free.
CYNTOIA BROWN-LONG, SEX TRAFFICKING VICTIM: Yes.
KINKADE: How do you feel?
BROWN-LONG: I mean, it's good, you know, it's a blessing. It's literally a miracle.
KINKADE (voice-over): Cyntoia Brown-Long has spent half her life behind bars. At just 16, she was forced by her abusive boyfriend into sex work.
One night she shot and killed a 43-year-old man who had bought her for sex. She claims it was self-defense. The prosecutors argued it was opportunistic, after she fled with his wallet and two guns. She was tried as an adult and sentenced to life in prison for murder and robbery.
(on camera): You would've been close to 70 by the time you got any chance of release. How do you deal with that at the age of 16?
BROWN-LONG: So in the state of Tennessee, I had the opportunity for parole, but it was not a meaningful opportunity. It was after 51 years I could be considered for release. And as I said, the prospect of that was just -- I mean, it was unbearable. I couldn't imagine.
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KINKADE: From activists to lawmakers to celebrities, people of all walks of life called for justice.
BROWN-LONG: Before all of the -- the outcry had happened, my attorneys had already been meeting with the governor's office and trying to talk about clemency, which clemency, less than 1 percent of applications are even reviewed by the parole board in the state of Tennessee. So to say it was slim to none chance of me ever receiving any kind of relief through clemency, I mean, that's an understatement.
KINKADE: Singer Rihanna posted about her on Instagram, asking, "Did we somehow change the definition of justice along the way?"
(on camera): Did you understand how much support there was for you on the outside?
BROWN-LONG: You know, for me, the biggest thing was seeing how many people across the world, seeing teachers, doctors, you know, single parents saying, I don't know what to do, I don't know how I can help, but I want to do something. KINKADE (voice-over): In the United States, all underage sex workers
are defined by federal law as trafficking victims. And now she's helping others understand that.
BROWN-LONG: And, you know, so often, we're told that there are just certain young girls who are fast, certain young girls who are promiscuous, that ask for these things. And it's important for young girls to know that you cannot consent to your own exploitation. If you can't consent to a sexual relationship with an adult, then you can't consent to them taking advantage of you.
KINKADE: There was another victim here, Johnny Allen. And his family feel like they're victims, too. They lost someone. What's your message to them, given that they feel the justice system didn't work for them?
BROWN-LONG: I feel horrible about what happened. I feel horrible that they're still having to live with this.
KINKADE (voice-over): In a statement, they said, "Our hearts are broken, because we feel like Johnny never got to defend himself. We never got to be a voice for him." Cyntoia Brown-Long is not entirely free. The newly-married 31-year- old will still have to report to a parole officer for the next decade on top of holding down a job, performing community service and undergoing counseling.
BROWN-LONG: You know, from the time that they told me I'd do life in prison, I never believed it. I always thought that one day, that I would be free and I held onto that. So --
KINKADE (on camera): You kept the faith.
BROWN-LONG: I did.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KINKADE: She really is now working to help others in similar situations.
Thanks so much for watching CNN NEWSROOM, I'm Lynda Kinkade. "WORLD SPORT" is up next with Patrick Snell.
PATRICK SNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And we have a packed show.
(CROSSTALK)
SNELL: Liverpool fans are pretty happy tonight (INAUDIBLE) Premier League title is just around the corner.
KINKADE: I'm looking forward to it. We're sticking around to watch
SNELL: Well, you'd better.
(LAUGHTER)
SNELL: The more the merrier. Happy New Year, by the way.
KINKADE: Yes, to you.
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