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Death Toll Tops 21,000 From Turkey-Syria Quake As Hopes Fade; FBI Finds New Information About Chinese Spy Balloon; Pence Subpoenaed By Special Counsel Investigating Trump; Ukraine Makes Do with Some of West's Obsolete Weapons; Hope for Survivors Fading as Death Toll Tops 21,000; Leaked Chinese Government Files Reveal Surveillance Reports on Uyghur Families; Bursting the Bubble on Climate Change; Hogwarts Legacy Game Releases amid Controversy. Aired 1-2a ET
Aired February 10, 2023 - 01:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[01:00:30]
MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us all around the world. I'm Michael Holmes. Appreciate your company coming up here on the program, holding on to hope. The latest on the race to save survivors trapped in the rubble in Turkey and Syria.
The curious case of the suspected Chinese spy balloon, the Pentagon has released more details on what they found inside.
And it's a magical day for Harry Potter fans everywhere after years of production, the Hogwarts Legacy Game has finally been released.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Live from CNN Center, this is CNN Newsroom with Michael Holmes.
HOLMES: And it is 9:00 a.m. across Turkey and Syria, where time is running out to find survivors from Monday's massive 7.8 earthquake. Teams in Turkey are digging mass graves to bury some of the 210 people who were killed. That makes this earthquake deadlier than one in 1999 that claims 17,000 lives.
The scale of the damage is immense. Entire towns reduce the mounds of rubble. People are afraid to go back inside the buildings that are still standing out of fear they could collapse. Through it all, rescue workers are forging ahead. They've had some success, but temperatures are falling below freezing at night, diminishing the chance for survival more than four days on.
Those who have survived are huddling around fires in streets, sleeping in their cars and crowding into makeshift camps. The World Health Organization says without proper sanitation and medical resources, the worst may be yet to come.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT HOLDEN, WHO INCIDENT MANAGER, EARTHQUAKE RESPONSE: We are in real danger of seeing a secondary disaster which may cause harm to more people than the initial disaster if we don't move with the same pace and intensity as we are doing on the search and rescue side.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: Turkey's foreign minister says his country has received offers of assistance from 95 nations and 16 separate international organizations. The World Bank pledging nearly $1.8 billion, but no matter where you look, it doesn't seem to be enough. CNN's Nick Payton Walsh reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): 80 hours in and in Antakya any sign of hope will do. Rescuers rush in these buildings first three floors have collapsed down, but left their upper floors upright. And little Yamore (ph), aged eight, is inside, possibly alive.
By the time they get her to the ambulance, though, it's clear they were too late. Her mother outside, only able to watch her everything vanish. My little one, she says, don't take her. Don't let her get lost.
Antakya's streets a chilling patchwork of what's left standing and what's not left in its ruins. Anxious crowds of rescuers and locals thinking they heard someone alive, demanding silence so they could listen again.
Down here is Achmed (ph), the rescuers say alert, responsive, a Syrian refugee. The building next to him, barely hanging on at angle, their work desperately wishing it were quicker.
Across the city, hell has landed. This man guarding his neighbor's books with his father in law next to the body of his mother in law. He gestures behind him to where he once lived.
WALSH (on camera): It's kind of hard to get your head around just how inhabitable a city of this size has become so fast. Literally every street you walk down has a scene like this. And the roads out while they are jammed full of people trying to get away at safety because the building still could collapse. The roads in rescuers people even trying to get their possessions back. And those who've stayed, lining every part of the green spaces we can find, with tents to try and stay warm.
[01:05:00]
WALSH (voiceover): The trees perhaps in just enough space, away from buildings that could crumble a new world for children smiling, neither oblivious nor somehow shaken too hard.
Dusk and the smoke of fire settles with the dust to choke the streets. But back where were an hour earlier, there has been relief. Achmed (ph) was saved, pulled out from the hole, his family perhaps still inside. The medics keep asking him, did you hear any signs of life from them? No, he says. They say he cannot wait for them, that he must be treated after 86 hours entombed the weight of grief even as he is saved. His friend Jameel (ph) was pulled from the rubble. I've been given life again, he says. I saw death before my eyes. I saw my own grave.
The same twist of fate here. There have been noises deep inside the bottom of what was once an apartment block.
First out comes one man, Suleiman (ph), age 21. The frantic work of medics here suggesting he did not make it.
WALSH (on camera): I think it's the impossibility of hope here that somebody could emerge after all this time alive from the wreckage that's driving this large crowd of rescuers. Most intense work done by hand, right at the front of the rubble there.
WALSH (voiceover): Out comes a four year old boy named Al Pazlan (ph), rescuers said. Alive, seen trying even to take off his oxygen mask. His father, Toga (ph), who follows shortly, does not seem to move. 89 hours in the rubble that both tore a world apart, but found enough mercy to spare its youngest. Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Antakya, Turkey.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: Now the first UN aid convoy has finally crossed from Turkey into Syria, carrying desperately needed supplies. After nearly 12 years of civil war in Syria and a steady stream of refugees crossing into Turkey, there's only one humanitarian corridor between the two countries. The UN wants more border crossings opened, but Syria's government is under heavy Western sanctions and insists it should be the sole coordinator of aid.
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ANTONIO GUTERRES, UN SECRETARY GENERAL: Excess roads are damaged, people are dying. Now is the time to explore all possible avenues to get aid and personnel into all affected areas. We must put people first.
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HOLMES: All right, let's go live now to Istanbul and former CNN correspondent Arwa Damon. She is the founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief and Assistance, INARA, the group works with children from conflict areas who have suffered physical and mental harm.
To help survivors of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, by the way, you can head Inara.org/rapidresponse, that's just before we get underway. Arwa, you were out of the country when the earthquake happened. You're back now, you'd live there, you run your charity from there. Of course, many aid workers on the ground themselves were killed or impacted.
Speak to the sheer scale of the task of the aid effort from your own organization, but also the broader situation.
ARWA DAMON, FOUNDER, INARA.ORG: You know, Michael, it's like trying to fight a monster with multiple heads. The scale of the devastation, the sheer numbers of people in need, and for organizations like mine, INARA, and for other organizations that were operating in the area, our own staff who would have normally been mobilized to respond to something like this, they're also survivors or victims.
Luckily, all of INARA's staff has been accounted for, but we haven't been able to reach all of our beneficiaries. And A lot of the children who we treat, they were already injured, most of them inside Syria during the war, during the fighting that happened there. They're especially vulnerable to these conditions, and they have very specific needs. The scale of this, the sheer stretch and expanse of land where so much aid is needed, it's eclipsing anyone's capacity at this stage.
HOLMES: The survival window, of course, is closing. The temperature is still brutally cold. What then are the most pressing needs? And is enough help coming in?
DAMON: Everything is needed, Michael. And, no, there isn't enough aid, but that's also because of the sheer scale of what's been happening. And then you also have the other problem, that aid isn't reaching all of the areas where people are in need. And what they need is anything you could possibly imagine, from shelter to food to blankets.
[01:10:04]
And you have the normal humanitarian packages that are being distributed, which, yes, are very needed. One also has to take into consideration the things that aren't part of what is inside those packages. Hand and feet warmers, small stoves, specific medications, water purification tablets, power banks so people can keep their phones charged.
And then, of course, you have this conflict that's happening in some ways when it comes to access to humanitarian aid. Much is pouring into Turkey by land, sea, and air, but you don't see that same level of aid actually reaching those who need it inside Syria, especially northwestern Syria.
HOLMES: And that's the thing. I know you very well. You spent literally years at CNN covering Syria and the plight of the people there. 4 million people were reliant on humanitarian assistance in Syria before this earthquake. What then the status of help for Syria is particularly those in rebel held areas. Remembering, of course, access is complicated by the conflict.
DAMON: And you were just mentioning that, Michael, you know, it's one access point into northwestern Syria, into rebel held Idlib province. And so far there has been one UN aid convoy with about five or six trucks that actually made it across that border. And it was carrying, yes, much needed humanitarian supplies.
But what that area needs right now is so far beyond what that one individual convoy actually brought in. They don't have in this area anywhere near enough heavy machinery to dig through the rubble. They don't have the international rescue crews that we've been seeing landing in Turkey. They don't even have Michael diesel to run the heavy machinery that they do have in place.
It's a complete nightmare. And I've been talking to a number of organizations that operate inside Syria, and just to give you one example, getting money into that area so that they could source things in country or within rebel held in the province is so difficult right now because normally money gets transferred through the system known as the PTT. It goes, you know, through a Turkish system. That system went down with the earthquake.
It's back up now, but there isn't enough actual cash, so there's no way to actually purchase what's needed. This is a trapped population. It has been for so long, and now it's trapped in these horrible conditions.
HOLMES: And it was heartbreak. Actually, I read a piece, you just wrote a piece for the Atlantic Council, and you quoted a friend in Syria who set up the earthquake hit, quote, it did what the Assad regime and the Russians wanted to do to Earth all along, which just speaks to how bad it is.
Your organization INIRA, you know, has worked with injured war, injured children, mainly in various conflicts, but focused in Syria. How are you able to pivot your organization to deal with an earthquake?
DAMON: You know, it's been extraordinarily difficult, again, because our resources that we have were human resources were just so gravely impacted. We're diverting staff. We're bringing them in from Lebanon. And so we're trying to focus on this two-pronged approach.
First, in the short term, the emergency chunk of time, we're trying to focus on what I'm calling fire engine response. So, we're trying to reach those families, who either can't get access to distribution points or areas for whatever reason, and also sourcing and providing specific need tailored items. And then we're also looking at partnering with organizations inside Syria, trying to navigate all those challenges that I was talking about.
And then we also have to think about the long term, Michael. We all need to focus on a long term sustainable response. My gut tells me that mental health is going to be a massive issue. We have families who we've been in touch with, whose children INIRA was treating, who are telling us that their children don't want to go inside anymore because indoors is deemed to be frightening.
We also have families who are dealing with children who are physically disabled. We have one family whose child is in a wheelchair and they are in a tent, which is very difficult given that situation. And they're afraid to move inside into a shelter because if another earthquake hits, they can't move that fast given that they have a child with special needs. It's all these different little elements that everyone really has to take into consideration when trying to figure out how we're all going to handle this. I mean, it's awful, Michael.
HOLMES: Yes, the problem, as you said, is just so vast. But I know you'll be doing your bit. Good to see Arwa Damon, founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief and Assistance. Once again, you can help INIRA do their work at inara.org/rapidresponse. You see it there on your screen. Arwa Damon good to see my friend, and thanks so much.
[01:15:04]
U.S. authorities are disclosing new details about the suspected Chinese spy balloon that flew across the country last week. Right now, parts of it are being processed in an FBI lab, but we're hearing analysts have yet to see, quote, the payload where most of the surveillance equipment would be.
One senior official saying the balloon was capable of monitoring U.S. communications and belonged to a fleet that had flown over more than 40 countries on five continents. In Washington, the U.S. House has unanimously passed a resolution that symbolically reduced China over the balloon, lawmakers calling it, quote, a brazen violation of American sovereignty. But some are loudly questioning those who claim the balloon was not a military threat and gathered very little new intelligence.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JON TESTER (R-MO): To know absolutely that this was of no military threat to us. I want to hear more about that in classified session too, because quite frankly, I'm not sure that you can say that unequivocally.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: Meanwhile, China pushing back against the U.S. President's very public criticism of the Chinese president. CNN's Will Ripley explains.
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WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): Firing new rhetoric from China escalating the suspected spy balloon scandal. Beijing blasting President Joe Biden for criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping.
JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: Can you think of any other world leader at trade places with Xi Jinping? Not a joke. Can you think of any of what? I can't think of what. This man has enormous problems.
RIPLEY: China says Biden's remarks are highly irresponsible and violate basic diplomatic protocols. Problems complicated by a growing pile of evidence. Pieces of the downed balloon pulled from the sea off the Carolina coast. Proof the Pentagon says China's weather balloon claim is nothing but hot air. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman says I have no knowledge about America's claim that this balloon is part of a fleet. I think it could be part of the information and public opinion war that the U.S. is waging against China. The international community can see clearly who's the world's largest espionage and surveillance country.
BRIG. GEN. PAT RYDER, PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: I can assure you this was not for civilian purposes. That is, we are 100 percent clear about that.
RIPLEY: That the U.S. linked the balloon to a vast Chinese military surveillance program. A growing list of global balloon sightings and questions. The U.S. believes many balloons are launched from China's Hainan Island, where A U.S. spy plane made an emergency landing in 2001. China took three months to investigate before returning the plane in pieces.
Now China is attacking the U.S. for shooting down its balloon and sending the pieces to an FBI lab. The spokesman says the U.S. insists on using force to attack Chinese unmanned civilian airships, which seriously violates international practice and sets a horrible precedent. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asked for a phone call with China's defense minister. Beijing bluntly declined. Will Ripley, CNN, Taipei.
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HOLMES: Juliette Kayyem knows all about this thing. She was a Homeland Security official during the Obama administration and is a CNN National Security Analyst. Always good to see my friend.
So the Chinese sticking to their story of this being a civilian balloon, weather research and so on. Why do you think they're not just admitting what it is, since as every fact emerges, it just becomes more and more obvious what it really was. Why keep denying?
JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Because it doesn't matter to them that the rest of the world doesn't believe them or certainly knows that it's not true. They'll keep consistent with this story because it's clear now, as the United States has been saying, and certainly certain many reporters are reporting, that this is a very large program. It's not a single balloon. This is over a couple of dozen countries. We now know it's capturing surveillance and intelligence, or what we call signal intelligence signal.
And so if they admit it, then they admit not just that this balloon was about spine and surveillance, but that all the other balloons of which we have some sense of what they are out there, and that would be in many ways, you know, sort of opening up too many risks for them. So they're better off, from their perspective, keeping it quiet.
HOLMES: That's a really good point. How much political, PR, diplomatic leverage does this whole affair give the US. Going forward in terms of its relations or not much. What do you think?
KAYYEM: Well, there's different pieces to this. I've been, you know, CNN over the course of the last year.
[01:20:00]
I think the United States has to figure out how to this enter our airspace and really not seemingly get detected until it's well over the homeland. I agree with the administration that it's seen too much of a risk to shoot it down once it was detected in the United States plane. But we have to be able to answer that question because it does look like a big vulnerability. Then it's shot down. The materials are and the surveillance materials and the cargo and everything else are in our possession. They're essentially ours. We can learn a lot from that.
So I think the Chinese would be happy to turn the page on this. They are being stubborn, but they know like we know there are many essentially hot spots ahead in this relationship between China and the United States. A balloon is really not one that either party should go to the cliff about.
HOLMES: Right. You mentioned SIGINT, how useful are the balloons in terms of risk versus reward compared to high resolution satellites? What are they getting?
KAYYEM: Right. In some ways this might have been a very clumsy policy sort of, a clumsy deployment or tactic by the Chinese. We have a way of thinking of them as being singular and focused. They are also a bureaucracy, so we don't know what kind of information they've been able to gather over the time period that they've been launching these balloons.
But here's the one big difference. The balloons can hover, unlike a satellite, which is just going to be flying through. Now satellites will continuously capture an area from different angles, but a balloon can hover and get the kind of essentially eavesdropping that would be very hard for a satellite to capture.
We know that it was hovering over potential critical infrastructure, including nuclear and energy facilities, and it may have been able to get pictures or even communications that couldn't have been captured by satellites.
And you asked a great question, though. Was it worth the risk to the Chinese? I think the United States has to assume it was.
HOLMES: From all the country, Americans were jamming it from the moment it drifted over, which at least is something. Something else I wanted to ask you real quick too, because people have been talking about this angle for a while, and today administration officials told lawmakers they think the order was given to send the balloon without President Xi's knowledge.
KAYYEM: Yes.
HOLMES: And so a lot of people have wondered about that given the timing right before the planned visit of Secretary of State Blinken, do you think it's feasible the Chinese military might have acted unilaterally and Xi didn't know?
KAYYEM: I've been hearing this for the last week. It is very possible that there's elements of the military that wanted essentially to sabotage the diplomacy. The reason why they would want to have done that is remember, Xi is coming out of this huge mistake of zero-COVID. They -- he has been making -- the Chinese have been making I won't say overtures, but have been trying to lower the temperature with the United States, as the United States has gotten more aggressive, in particular on the economic front against the Chinese.
So this is possible that China is not unified. I just want to raise the counter to that because this wasn't one balloon, but it's part of a policy of multiple balloons, dozens of balloons, capturing surveillance throughout the world. It'd be hard for me to believe that a policy like this and its focus was not known to the leadership in China.
HOLMES: Always great to get to your perspective. Juliette Kayyem, thanks so much. Good to see you.
KAYYEM: Thank you so much.
HOLMES: An important milestone in the U.S. Justice Department's investigation into the Capitol riot and the role former President Donald Trump might have played. The DOJ has subpoenaed Trump's second in command, former Vice President Mike Pence. It wants testimony and documents related to the two men's interactions in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election.
Officials also want to know about Pence's interactions with Trump on the day of the riot itself. A source telling CNN at this point, there are no plans for Trump's team to challenge the grand jury subpoena of Pence, but it is still possible for Trump to try to assert executive privilege over some of their conversations.
Social media giant Meta has restored Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts, allowing the former U.S. President to once again post and raise money on the popular platforms. It comes two years after he was banned in the wake of the January 6 insurrection., and as the Trump campaign ramps up ahead of next year's presidential election.
A current Trump adviser telling CNN the campaign would leap at the opportunity to resume using his likeness in advertisements on Facebook.
[01:25:05]
Some obsolete Western weapons getting a new lease of life in Ukraine.
Still ahead, Ukrainian troops revive some military hardware that's been around for decades. Also still to come, a massive trove of hacked documents left exile world ethnic Uighurs learn what happened to their families. But what they learn is often painful. We'll have that story ahead in an exclusive report.
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HOLMES: We are getting word of a new Russian artillery barrage targeting energy facilities in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine says the city was hit at least 17 times in one hour on Friday morning, but it's still unclear how much damage the strikes have caused. All of this happening after Ukrainian officials say they are seeing the beginnings of anticipated Russian ground offensive. They say Russia is escalating attacks in the Luhansk region near the occupied city of Kreminna, but Ukraine says Moscow hasn't had much success yet. A regional Ukrainian leader says Russia's offensive is, quote de facto underway.
CNN crews on the ground say the uptick in fighting still does not amount to that.
Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday as he called for the delivery of Western fighter jets to Kyiv. In his speech he said Ukraine and Europe need each other to stay free.
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VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Unity of Europe is the fundamental way to security, a free Europe cannot be imagined without a free Ukraine.
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HOLMES: France will not be sending fighter jets to Ukraine in the coming weeks, but President Emmanuel Macron says he's not ruling it out in the future. Meanwhile, the Dutch prime minister hinted the option might still be on the table but says those talks are happening behind closed doors.
Western military aid has been a lifeline for Ukraine's military almost from the start of the war. But some of the weapons provided to Kyiv were made decades ago. Sam Kiley reports on how Ukrainians are making do with military equipment from another era.
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SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): Carrying weapons designed 75 years ago. These Ukrainians are grateful that they're training with an American vehicle, even if it's from another age.
They're a mixture of combat veterans and relatively new recruits. But all have been fighting in Ukraine's eastern front with Russia in the cauldrons of Bahkmut and Soledar. Their commander in chief, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has begged the west for modern NATO standard equipment and he's been given some modern weapons but not the strategic weapons like long range missiles and jets that he says he needs.
[01:30:05]
Meanwhile Ukraine's war is expected to intensify, and Ukrainians make do with old Soviet weapons and workhorse hand me downs like these M113s. Aluminum troop carriers, which the U.S. army started using in 1960, about 400 of these given to Ukraine by the U.S. and others -- this has been patched up since it took a direct hit in Bakhmut, where the top gunner was killed.
"To say that it's old, well it looks old, but it just looks battered. It does the job, 100 percent," he tells me.
Ukraine has been given better air defenses, better artillery, better missile systems than it had before. But Zelenskyy said that is not enough and anyway, not the best equipment, often, not even second best.
The Ukrainian military are keen to stress that they are really, really grateful for all and any help that they're given. These armored personnel carriers from America are better than some of what they started the war with, and they are an important part for battlefield replacement. They've been here since the summer. This one, already needs a new engine.
Ukraine captures a lot of what it needs from Russia. It's desperately cannibalizing ancient equipment for parts, like a 20th century nation under siege, not a nation backed that's by America and by NATO allies.
Making do is what Ukraine has done. Privately though, commanders here make it clear that it's going to take more than an iron will and hand me down weapons for them to win this war.
Sam Kiley, CNN -- in southern Ukraine.
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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Still ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM -- after five years in the making the newest Harry Potter video game is already breaking records but it's also causing controversy. We'll explain plane when we come back.
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HOLMES: All right. Let's get you up to speed on our top story now.
The death toll from Monday's earthquake in Turkey and Syria has now climbed above 21,000. Temperatures dip below freezing again on Thursday night as survivors fearful of further building collapses slept in their cars and on the streets.
[01:34:54]
HOLMES: And that is the sound of a miracle. Rescue crews pulling a mother and her six-year-old daughter from a collapsed house in the southern Turkey. At the moment the celebration becoming few and far between now.
The White Helmets leading rescue efforts in northern Syria say hopes of finding more people alive are fading. The situation there complicated by nearly 12 years of civil war and international sanctions on the Damascus government.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GER PEDERSEN, U.N. SPECIAL ENVOY FOR SYRIA: We need aid -- lifesaving aid. It's desperately needed by civilians wherever they are Irrespective of borders and boundaries.
We need it urgently, through the fastest, most direct and most effective routes. They need more of absolutely everything.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES: Well, no matter how much aid is getting through it is nowhere near enough, of course. Still many families hoping against hope, that their loved ones are still alive.
CNN's Becky Anderson reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BECKY ANDERSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A miraculous moments of survival -- a father and his two sons rescued 76 hours after that massive earthquake struck Turkey and Syria on Monday morning.
Omar is one of their cousins. He helped to dig them out.
OMAR: We are trying to reach them. We have contact towards them. We had a call by mobile phone.
ANDERSON: More than 100 people lived inside according to the residents. And it's Omar's love for family that drove him to assist the rescuers sifting through the rubble. Painstaking work.
First, the rescuers and volunteers must dig and then plead for silence to hear any sign of life. Repeating the process until they get closer. . Neighbors, friends, relatives, and bystanders. All joining together in the freezing cold. To pray, hope, and wish for a miracle.
Until, finally, almost 56 hours on. Contact was made with one of them in the rubble. But it still took many more hours to finally free them.
Omar says while his uncle and two cousin survived with no injuries his aunt didn't make it.
OMAR: This is our responsibility. They do the same if we were in the same situation.
ANDERSON: One family's story giving hope to a grieving country.
Becky Anderson, CNN -- Gaziantep.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: And if you're looking for information on how to help earthquake survivors go to CNN.com/impact. You'll find a list there of organizations working on rescue and relief efforts. Again, that's CNN.com/impact.
After years without contact, several exiled ethnic Uyghurs are learning what has happened to their families. It is thanks to a new online tool that allows the public to search through a massive trove of hacked documents. The information showing the scope of the surveillance apparatus being used to monitor its Uyghur population in Xinjiang.
CNN's Ivan Watson with our exclusive report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The search for missing loved ones.
ABDUWELI AYUP, HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST: I am putting in my younger sister's ID number.
WATSON: Abduweli Ayup (ph) is a human rights activists and ethnic Uyghur from China's Xinjiang region. From exile in Norway he looks for the first time at a Chinese police file from 2017 on his sister, Sajida (ph) .
AYUP: It is (INAUDIBLE) in detail.
WATSON: He hasn't spoken to her in years.
AYUP: She got arrested September 6th, sent to an education camp, stayed there about a month. And then sent her to the detention center and sentenced 11 years.
WATSON: The Chinese police file states that Sajida Ayup is a two faced or treasonous government official. Police apparently flagged the high school geography teacher because of ties to her brother, an outspoken critic once jailed by the Chinese government.
AYUP: The government documents told me that, yes, it is related to you and it is your fault.
WATSON: Ayup got early access to this new search engine. It's linked to tens of thousands of files that were hacked from police computers in Xinjiang.
AYUP: It is 830,000 different people are in these files. And it's clear from the files that tens of thousands of them are detained.
[01:39:57]
WATSON: Adrian ZENZ (ph) a researcher with the Victims of Communism Memoria Foundation first released some of the hacked police files last year. The Chinese government has not denied their authenticity but state media has slammed his analysis of the data calling it, disinformation.
Beijing denies it committed human rights abuses, while detaining up to two million ethnic Uyghurs and other minority groups in reeducation camps in Xinjiang, a campaign of mass repression the U.S. government claims amounts to genocide.
ZENZ launched the search engine hoping it will provide the Uyghur diaspora information about family members back home in Xinjiang.
ADRIAN ZENZ, VICTIMS OF COMMUNISM MEMORIAL FOUNDATION: The black hole is the most terrifying thing. and I think that is part of why the Chinese state creates this black hole. It is the most terrifying thing that can be done. You don't even know the fate of a loved one is even alive or dead.
WATSON: Mamatjan Juma (ph) remembers June 12 2006, the last time he saw his family.
MAMATJAN JUMA, UYGHUR: I remember that day. I was passing the airport checkpoint. And they were waving. And I saw them -- their image is still in my mind, you know. The picture. It comes to me sometimes. That is the last time I saw my brothers.
WATSON: Juma is now a journalist with Radio Free Asia's Uyghur language service in Washington D.C. which Beijing labels as an anti China propaganda organization. Unable to go home for fear of arrest and unwilling to even call his relatives for fear they could then be punished.
JUMA: Let's see. I'm going to search one of my brothers.
WATSON: So now, he can only look at their police files.
Did the files confirms a detention of any of your loved ones?
JUMA: Yes. Detention of three of my brothers, yes. And then I found one of my brother's pictures in that file.
WATSON: A mugshot of his younger brother, Isajan (ph) taken in detention.
How did he look?
JUMA: He looks like he lost his soul. It gives you a feeling of guilt, you know? Because of that -- they are tied to you and they're prosecuted. It's not really kind of an easy feeling to digest.
WATSON: A photo of Juma and his brothers in happier times.
JUMA: I wish I could go back to this moment, you know? I wish I could go back to this moment.
WATSON: Today, Juma is left piecing together what happened to his family through the Chinese police files. And the level of detail, even on people who were never accused of crimes, is chilling.
JUMA: Fingerprints, DNA samples, voice samples, profile pictures, iris scans. These are the biometric information they collected on my mother.
When you look at it, you see this perfect example of a full blown surveillance state.
WATSON: Half a world away in Adelaide Australia, Marhaba Yakub Salay (ph) just found a police file for her 17 year old nephew.
MARHABA YAKUB SALAY, UYGHUR: That's insane. That's terrible. I didn't expect that.
WATSON: The file states that in 2017 when the boy was only 12, police labeled him category two, a highly suspicious accomplice of a public security or terrorism case. And that is not all.
YAKUB SALAY: Yes, this is my niece.
WATSON: Your niece has a police file?
YAKUB SALAY: No way.
WATSON: The file claims that by the age of 15, Marhaba's niece traveled extensively, something her aunt denies.
YAKUB SALAY: Algeria, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Dubai, Egypt, Pakistan -- no way. Does that mean they are saying that she has been in these countries? .
WATSON: So far, another child has been detained. But Salay worries for their future. Their mother, Mayila (ph) her sister, has already been in and out of detention for years accused of financing terrorism for wiring money to her parents in Australia to help buy a house.
If you could tell them something, what would you like to tell them?
YAKUB SALAY: I am so sorry what is happening to them. I am so sorry for what is happening to their mother, my sister. I'm sorry I can't help them. They deserve so much better than this. They're innocent.
WATSON: The more than 800,000 police profiles only provide a partial snapshot at the broader system of surveillance and repression in Xinjiang. They don't alleviate the survivor's guilt shared by many relatives living abroad desperate to learn anything about their loved ones back in China.
Ivan Watson, CNN -- Hong Kong.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[01:44:45]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HOLMES: Today on Call to Earth, we are taking a closer look at something common in nature but often overlooked. They form in ocean waves and when raindrops hit a surface. They're easily trapped in ice and when the ice melts, they even make a sound.
And now, researchers at the university of California San Diego are using data gathered from this naturally occurring objects to better understand the impacts of climate change across the planet.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At the Scripps (ph) Institution of Oceanography, a trio of scientists, each from different disciplines are gathering important data from the same and somewhat surprising source.
KIMBERLY PRATHER, ATMOSPHERIC CHEMIST: What are those called, those little things in the water?
PEOPLE: The bubbles. It is all about the bubbles.
PRATHER: The bubbles tell you everything.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Atmospheric chemist Kimberly Prather, focuses on how human activity influences the atmosphere, climate and our own health.
PRATHER: One of the biggest questions is what was the planet doing before humans came along and we can't answer that right now?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oceanographer Grant Deane has spent his career studying the role of the ocean in weather and climate.
GRANT DEANE, OCEANOGRAPHER: My interest is primarily in the roughly 20 feet of sea level rise locked up in the Greenland ice sheet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Paleoclimatologist Jeffrey Severinghaus (ph) concentrates on greenhouse gases trapped in glacial ice particularly from Antarctica.
JEFFREY SEVERINGHAUS, PALEOCLIMATOLOGIST: Yes. So this is what an ice core looks like. I'm going to slice off a little bit so that you can really see the bubbles.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For all three renowned researchers, bubbles hold the key to unlocking a wealth of potentially groundbreaking information.
SEVERINGHAUS: It's really a cornucopia of things you can learn from the air bubbles. We found ice as old as three million years now.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Seriously?
SEVERINGHAUS: Yes, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is fantastic.
SEVERINGHAUS: So we know what the CO2 concentration was three million years ago.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow.
Severinghaus says that having this type of data from the past tells us how much humans are warming the planet today. Meanwhile, one of Grant Deane's areas of focus, is on using acoustic
monitoring to measure the ice melting, a process that produces an ample supply of bubbles.
DEANE: I'm going to play you the audio clip of what this glacier ice sounds like as it melts. You hear those popping sounds, like bacon frying? That's really bright, energetic, like fireworks going off? Each one of those pops is a bubble bursting out of the ice, into the water.
You need to count those bubbles. If we can count them we can forget how much ice is melting. That is important because so much of our civilization is in coastal regions.
[01:49:51]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For Kimberly Prather it's all about the aerosol particles and microorganisms that burst out of the bubbles formed by breaking waves, known as sea spray (ph) and how that interaction can either help warm or cool, the planets.
PRATHER: We've been trying to look at the connection between the microbes in the water and how they change the chemistry -- I'm a chemist. And then how that chemistry changes what gets out. And how that changes how the clouds form.
And so, you know, you look over the oceans it's three-quarters of our earth. And without those clouds, we're in trouble.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On this day, she's in the midst of running the maiden research campaign and a cutting edge machine called, SOARS, the Scripps Ocean Atmosphere Research Simulator designed to replicate oceanic storms.
PRATHER: We can understand how the spray modifies the hurricanes. If you start think about can we stop a hurricane before we get slammed.
Right, that's the wild idea. We can do that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Deane helped develop SOARS as a bridge between the lab and the open ocean, offering a significant means of control. And the supply of bubbles. It's a potential game changer that will help scientists understand the planet in unprecedented ways.
DEANE: When I tell people that one of the things I work on is bubbles in the ocean. Their reaction is, are you serious? Is that really a serious scientific study? But it turns out that bubbles are very serious business.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: And let us know what you're doing to answer the call with the hashtag, Call to Earth.
You're watching CNN NEWSROOM, we'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HOLMES: The world of Harry Potter is getting new life. The highly anticipated video game, Hogwarts Legacy releases today to much fanfare and some controversy.
CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In light of your unique situation joining us as a fifth year, we've devised something extraordinary to ensure your success.
VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Harry Potter is back. But not in the way diehard fans may be used to. In the new open world video game, Hogwarts Legacy, players can experience the world of Harry Potter but set in the 19th century and with new characters.
The player isn't Harry, Ron or Hermione but their very own witch or wizard avatar.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is pretty much like my dream of being in Hogwarts.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is like a real life Harry Potter --
YURKEVICH: Hogwarts Legacy made by Avalanche and Warner Brothers Discovery, CNN's parent company, has been five years in the making. After two rollout delays, the game is finally hitting the market.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The expectations are quite high. Not just from the consumers, but also from the game makers themselves.
YURKEVICH: Some estimates suggest the game cost $150 million to make. But in a $200 billion industry, bigger than film or music, the payoff could be huge.
JOOST VAN DREUNEN, PROFESSOR, BUSINESS OF GAMES, NYU: My expectation for this title is that is going to easily sell 10 million copies Which puts it very much into the black, very quickly.
YURKEVICH: The game already broke a record on Twitch being the most watched single play or game played by streamers who got it early. And it is the number one presale this week on the gaming platform, Steam.
Warner Brothers has 20 years of experience putting out Harry Potter video games but based on the movies.
How has Warner Brothers been in terms of a game maker?
[01:54:54]
DAN MARTIN, GENERAL MANAGER, VIDEOGAMESNEWYORK: A little rocky. They definitely put out some big titles and worked with some big franchises. But their games have been hit and miss. This definitely feels as something new. You know, Harry Potter -- hold that thought. YURKEVICH: One of two caused an interview from someone looking for the
game.
MARTIN: It is not a commercial risk so much as it is a cultural one.
YURKEVICH: J.K. Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter, has made a series of offensive comments about the trans community, forcing pushback from some of the movies' actors and fans. Some who are boycotting the new game. Warner Brothers Discovery says Rowling is not involved in the game, but stands to make a licensing royalty.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I thought was going to impact my view on the whole Harry Potter world but right now I'm able to separate the situation with J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter world.
YURKEVICH: But the controversy has turned some fans off.
Are you still a Harry Potter fan?
JACOB FORD, HARRY POTTER FAN: No. I think it has become weirdly divisive and I'm old now. so I don't care.
YURKEVICH: Divisive how?
FORD: Because of the weird tension between the creator, the fans.
MARTIN: It, perhaps, has room to develop something new. To iterate on the existing relationship between the fan base. So perhaps, you know, making it into one of these big production video games, allows the franchise to kind of save itself a little bit from the drag it has been experiencing culturally.
YURKEVICH: Vanessa Yurkevich, CNN -- New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC)
HOLMES: Music legend Burt Bacharach playing one of his biggest hits. This was in the movie, "Austin Powers". On Thursday, a family member confirming the acclaimed songwriter and composer had died.
His songs became chart toppers for perhaps, his greatest interpreter, the singer, Dionne Warwick. But also for Tom Jones, Patty Labelle, Neil Diamond, and the Carpenters.
His romantic classics included "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head", "Close to You", "Do You Know the Way to San Jose" and dozens more.
Burt Bacharach won six Grammys and three Oscars. He died at the age of 94.
A good ending as we say.
Thanks for spending part of your day with me. I'm Michael Holmes.
You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @HolmesCNN.
Do stick around, my colleague Kim Brunhuber is mere feet way and will pick things up after the break.
[01:57:32]
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