By Jay Clemons    |   Friday, 01 July 2022 10:16 PM EDT

In recent years, China has been accused of committing crimes against humanity — including possible genocide — involving the Uyghur population and other mostly-Muslim ethnic groups in the region of Xinjiang.

Human rights groups believe China has detained millions of Uyghurs against their will over the past few years, while placing them in a network of "re-education camps" and  sentencing them to prison terms.

On Friday evening, Newsmax host Greta Van Susteren conducted an extensive one-on-one interview with Rushan Habbas, a human rights activist who has taken public exception to China's alleged Uyghur concentration camps.

Here are some excerpts of Habbas' Part 1 discussion on Newsmax's "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" program:

What goes on inside the Uyghur camps?

"The most horrific things you can imagine," said Abbas, while adding the camp prisoners are immediately forced to give up any kind of ethnic identity and are forced to forsake their religion. 

"They cannot speak their own language. They are forced to speak Chinese," said Abbas, who also heard that the prisoners are regularly indoctrinated to Chinese political ideology.

"They're subject to inhumane treatment," said Abbas, while noting the prisoners are often deprived of food, water and sleep. They also suffer from poor hygiene, the result of 40 to 50 people being herded in one room together. 

"[The prisoners] are not given the opportunity to drink enough water," said Abbas, while  saying the lack of sufficient food, water, sleep and proper restroom facilities is a true test "of how long the internal organs can last."

Abbas cites estimated reports of more than 3 million prisoners in the Uyghur camps, or roughly 25% of the total Uyghur population in China. "But today, the streets are empty [among the general population]."

The fears of Uyghurs being captured and imprisoned by the Chinese government have forced the people into hiding, said Aabbas.

The mostly Muslim Uyghur people believe in burying the dead. But Abbas said that crematorioum construction is booming near the camps.

"For a culture that belives in burials, why is there such a need for crematorias?" she asked Van Susteren, rhetorically.

This prompted Van Susteren to ask how the worldwide Muslim community has reacted to reports of the concentration camps in China.

Abbas said the Chinese government — which doesn't support ideological religion, characterizing it as a "mental disease," according to Rushan — has demolished mosques and anything else associated with organized religion.

"Basically waging a war on Islam," said Abbas.

The Western world has been slow to denounce the Chinese government's handling of the Uyghur people, said Abbas.

"Even in the United States, where you see corporations that [take pride] in being woke," very few celebrities are calling attention to the Uyghurs' inhumane treatment. 

"Everybody's so quick to criticize our government in America, but where are they [for the Uyghurs]?" wondered Habbas. "When the perpetrator of genocide has the money and the power, everyone takes the economic benefit" of being silent.

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