China Putting Minority Muslims in "Concentration Camps"; Democrats Could Vote to Hold William Barr in Contempt of Congress
VAUSE: Beijing says it has nothing to hide but Muslim families claim they are being torn apart by a crackdown carried out by Chinese authorities. The U.S. says millions are being held in the northwest of the country and that's where Uyghurs are being placed in detention camps, something China calls vocational training centers. CNN's Matt Rivers and his team traveled to some of the most remote parts of China for a rare look at these camps. Here's the report.</s>MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The bedroom hasn't changed since they left, stuffed animals on the bed, their clothes in the closet. Their grandmother won't change it. She says it still smells like them. Onseela (ph) and Nuseela (ph), ages 8 and 7, left their home in Kazakhstan to go to China with their mother, Adeeba (ph) in 2017. Adeeba (ph) grew up in China so she went back for a short visit to see some family and take a few classes in Northwest China. Her husband and young son stayed home. But shortly after they arrived Adeeba (ph) and her daughters disappeared because they went back at the wrong time. Xinjiang is the region where the U.S. says China put up to 2 million people, nearly all Muslims, in detention camps over the last few years. Activists say Beijing has done that to try to eliminate Islam within its borders. Detainees told CNN they were tortured inside while undergoing political indoctrination. Adeeba (ph) and her family are Muslim. Her husband says a relative told him his wife was put in such a camp while his daughters were sent to live with distant relatives. He hasn't heard from any of them in nearly two years. "When he sees young women in the neighborhood he calls them 'Mama'" Esten says. "He doesn't even know what his own mother looks like." China says these camps aren't prisons but voluntary vocational training centers that are being used to not eliminate Islam generally, only Islamic extremism that the government has linked to past terror attacks in the region. So authorities play propaganda videos like this one on state run TV to show happy Muslims cheerfully learning. They interview some who have been supposedly been, quote, "reformed," steered away from a life of terrorism. But even if that's true, Esten says that still does not explain why his wife was locked up. "My wife is not a terrorist," he says. "She has nothing to do with it. I can't express with words how much pain I feel when I think of her there." We asked Chinese authorities what happened to Adeeba (ph). They did not reply to our question. So we went to Xinjiang ourselves, to some of the most remote parts of China, traveling thousands of miles in all. We went to six places, both to see what is happening here and, in one town, to try to find Adeeba (ph). Ethnic Muslim minorities have lived here for centuries; Uyghurs, Kazakhs and others, culturally distinct from the Han Chinese who dominate the rest of the country. But now, every day, they're forced to prove that they're not a threat to the state. Cameras watch their every move, in some places positioned every 50 meters. While Han Chinese regularly breeze through the myriad police roadblocks, anyone we saw who appeared to be a minority got stopped. Racial profiling appears rampant. But all of that is likely still better than life for those that end up in places like this, detention camps designed for Muslim ethnic minorities, like this one outside the city of Kashgar, what China calls a job training site to us looked a lot more like prison. High walls, barbed wire, guard towers, things multiple experts told CNN are telltale signs of detention centers. Images like this are rare. Few people have seen camps like this up close because China's government tries to prevent reporters like us from seeing them. A police officer soon reminded us of that fact.</s>RIVERS: What's happening here is that this police officer doesn't want us to film but we believe that's a camp right there. This is as close as we're able to get. And right over there we believe are family members, who could have family members inside that camp and they're waiting to see them.</s>RIVERS (voice-over): China says it has nothing to hide here but not only do they obstruct attempts to film or go inside the camps --</s>RIVERS (voice-over): -- they also prevent us from speaking to those that know anything about them. We tried to talk to this man that just brought food to his brother, who he says is being held in the camp. But before we can ask about life inside, plainclothes security surrounded us and told the man to be quiet. There are camps like these all across Xinjiang; nearly 1,000 miles away, we took a train to the city of Turpan to see another, same type of prison-like walls, some kind of secrecy. And the minute after we arrive, some kind of police harassment.</s>RIVERS: Ma'am, can you tell me what that is? Is this something you don't want us to see?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why are you here? You come here. Why are -- ?</s>RIVERS: We're here to film what we believe is a camp for Uyghurs and for Kazakhs and for Kyrgyz and for all ethnic Muslim minorities.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Who told you that?</s>RIVERS (voice-over): She threatened to arrest us and demanded that we delete our footage so we had to leave. Our last stop is the town of Ghulja (ph), where Adeeba's (ph) family says she was detained. Her husband, Esten, believes she has since been let out of the camp and is back living with her daughters. They have been told they can't leave China because officials took away her passport. He has no way to contact her and fears he could end up in a camp himself if he went to find her. So we tried to find her ourselves. But as soon as we arrive in town, traffic police block our way and officials following us insist on a group dinner. We declined strongly, saying no, no, no. But in the end, we got no choice. As Muslim minorities languish in camps not far away, government officials drink liquor and dance to folk music. It is an absurd scene but we can't leave. So we were unable to find her and we couldn't deliver this message, what Esten wanted us to share if we found her, quote, "Our son and I have been waiting and will always wait for you. You are the love of my life."</s>VAUSE: Matt Rivers joins us now live from Beijing. The sitdown for the official dinner, that's a new one. That's a new tactic being carried out. But we heard for a long time that Uyghurs have been the victim of the majority of this crackdown. They want to make it part of China. It's very much not part of China in the way it looks, the way it sounds and the way it smells. But they have complained for a long time. It seems it has accelerated though in recent years. What is the reason for that? Why are these crackdowns getting tougher?</s>RIVERS: There's a number of reasons. Some people point to the fact that a new party secretary in charge of the region came in in 2014. And that's when we started to see an acceleration of these camps building. You can also point to the fact that Xi Jinping took over in early 2013 and he has overseen a number of different crackdowns on religious groups, against Christians and other types of ethnic Muslim minorities. So there's a lot of different reasons that you can point to. But it is staggering the scale at which these camps were built and speed at which they were built. Think about the infrastructure that was needed to eventually house 2 million different people in one region. It is staggering how quickly they have done this. And what you hear universally from advocates to human rights groups, to critics here in China, is the reason they're doing this is to Sinicize this population. They do not want anyone in China to model the ethnic Han Chinese people that really dominate the government here. And the result, like we showed in our story, is that families are absolutely been torn apart and the story that we showed of that one family has been replicated countless times in this very unique part of China.</s>VAUSE: Yes. It's been going on for a while and it's one which obviously needs attention. Tomorrow, Matt will travel to the western part of the Chinese province. His crew meet with around the clock government surveillance that made it so difficult for them to do their job.</s>RIVERS (voice-over): He and at least a dozen others followed us every single hour of our six-day trip, never more than 20 feet away. In the car, in the train station, in the hotel, in the room next to mine.</s>RIVERS: So it's a bit of an odd feeling to be in your hotel room at 1:00 in the morning and knowing that, on the other side of this connecting door that leads to the room next door to mine, there's at least three or four of the guys that have been --</s>RIVERS: -- following us around over the past couple of minutes.</s>VAUSE: Be sure to watch Matt's report Wednesday. Tax records obtained by "The New York Times" show Mr. Trump in the early '90s was less qualified to host "The Apprentice;" more like "The Biggest Loser." The documents from 1985 to 1994 show Trump's businesses lost nearly $1.2 billion in 1990 and '91. His core business losses were more than double the next closest taxpayer. "The Times" report says Mr. Trump paid no income taxes for eight of those 10 years.</s>SUSANNE CRAIG, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Every year that we looked at, he lost money and the losses grew as he went further into the casinos and the losses that happened there. But it's unbelievable. We would have thought at least in one of the years that we saw, maybe the year he wrote "Art of the Deal," he would have made money. He didn't. He was just bleeding money every year that we looked at in his businesses.</s>VAUSE: The president says "The Times'" information is demonstrably false but failed to provide any specifics and prove that it was in fact demonstrably false. Democrats in the U.S. House could vote to hold attorney general William Barr in contempt of Congress. They have been asking the Justice Department for the full unredacted Mueller report but to no avail. Now the White House is extending the stonewalling strategy to another key player in this investigation. CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports.</s>KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The White House is stopping Don McGahn from turning over documents to House Democrats, the latest jab in the oversight showdown with the administration. In a letter, current White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, telling the House Judiciary Committee, that the former White House counsel will be ignoring their subpoena, arguing that President Trump may want to assert executive privilege in the future and McGahn does not have the legal right to disclose these documents to third parties. House investigators subpoenaed the documents as part of their investigation into obstruction of justice and were hoping to make McGahn their star witness.</s>KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP SENIOR ADVISER: It's harassing and embarrassing. Eating fried chicken and acting like fools is not part of the oversight function, the last time I looked.</s>COLLINS (voice-over): Republicans are urging Congress to move on.</s>SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: We had two years for Mueller to take a look at this. He filed a report. It's on the Internet. Everybody can see it. It's over.</s>COLLINS (voice-over): But the gap between them and Democrats is wide, with Democrats still trying to gain access to the full, unredacted Mueller report. Today, staff from the House Judiciary Committee met with Justice Department officials to try to reach an agreement on the matter. But the committee is preparing to hold attorney general Bill Barr in contempt of Congress if he doesn't turn it over. Democrats had a blistering response to McConnell's claim that the case is closed.</s>SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: So our leader says, let's move on. It's sort of like Richard Nixon saying, let's move on at the height of the investigation of his wrongdoing.</s>COLLINS (voice-over): House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump is making his own case for obstruction of justice.</s>REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), HOUSE SPEAKER: Trump is goading us to impeach him. That's what he's doing. Every single day, he's just like, taunting, taunting, taunting, because he knows that it would be very divisive in the country. But he doesn't really care. He just wants to solidify his base.</s>CHRISTOPHER WRAY, FBI DIRECTOR: I'm honored to be here today.</s>COLLINS (voice-over): And today the FBI director breaking with the attorney general.</s>WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINEE: Yes, I think spying did occur.</s>COLLINS (voice-over): Chris Wray telling lawmakers he doesn't agree with Bill Barr's use of the word "spying."</s>WRAY: Well, that's not the term I would use. Look, there are lots of people that have different colloquial phrases. I believe that the FBI is engaged in investigative activity and part of investigative activity includes surveillance activity of different shapes and sizes and to me the key question is making sure that it's done by the book.</s>COLLINS (voice-over): Barr said last month the Trump campaign was spied on during the FBI's investigation into potential collusion with Russia, an assertion Wray said he couldn't back up today.</s>SEN. JEANNE SHAHEEN (D-NH): And at this time, do you have any evidence that any illegal surveillance into the campaigns or individuals associated with the campaigns by the FBI occurred?</s>WRAY: I don't think I personally have any evidence of that sort.</s>COLLINS: Now Democrats have not said whether or not they're going to move forward with those proceedings to hold McGahn in contempt of Congress for defining the subpoena. But we're told by source we can expect the former White House counsel to issue a statement on the developments soon -- Kaitlan Collins, CNN, the White House.</s>VAUSE: Take a short break. A lot more on the looming China-U.S. trade war and the very subtle message coming from China: don't even think about it.