MANFRED NOWAK: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: You talked about detention on the border, the number of children that are detained, that are separated by their families in this country. And you're talking about an international violation of law.
MANFRED NOWAK: Yes. Of course this was, in my opinion, a decision that is inhuman treatment both to the children, very small children that are separated from their families, but also to the families. Sometimes the families have been deported back to Mexico or Central America and the children are still kept in the United States. The children don't know where their families are. The families are searching for their children. This is terrible if you imagine if you are a mother of a small child and you don't know where the child is.
AMY GOODMAN: Also, the children of ISIS fighters -- explain where they are being imprisoned.
MANFRED NOWAK: We have about 29,000 of these children. Partly they were recruited by the internet, by ISIS, partly whose families went to the so-called caliphate. And it's small children, or they were even born there, and now they are detained either by the Kurdish authorities in the north of Syria, or in Iraq, under deplorable conditions. And very often, European or other countries where they are coming from don't want to take them back. So what we are saying and recommending is that European and Central Asian and other states should take the responsibility for their own nationals, to actually take them back and try to re-socialize them. Not to punish them. Children in armed conflict, child soldiers, should be seen primarily as victims but not as perpetrators.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Uighur children. Talk about what's happening in China right now.
MANFRED NOWAK: What we know is that about one million human beings, Uighurs, Muslims from Xinjiang in China, are currently detained in camps for reeducation purposes. Of course many of them are children and those are children who have been separated from their parents. But we don't have enough information to really say how many, but certainly those are thousands, many thousands of children that are suffering there.
AMY GOODMAN: What does it mean when a state doesn't participate in giving over information?
MANFRED NOWAK: Of course we sent out a questionnaire to all member states of the United Nations, and we had a fairly good response. But of course certain states, including China and the United States of America, did not reply to our questionnaire so we had to rely on other official data. And that's why also our estimates are very conservative. If I'm speaking about 410,000 children in jails and prisons, it's a very conservative estimate. Probably the real number is much higher.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about a story that goes back in time but actually is in the headlines right now. It's about this latest news that we had in our headlines about the International Criminal Court finding the U.S. -- looking into crimes against humanity or war crimes. When you were the U.N. rapporteur on torture, you called for an investigation into President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes. This relates directly.
MANFRED NOWAK: Yes, For war crimes and crimes against humanity. For me, I was special rapporteur on torture for torture that was practiced both in secret detention camps, in Guantanamo Bay, in Abu Ghraib, and in other facilities in particular [inaudible] Afghanistan, the prison of darkness, et cetera, which were terrible crimes that were committed there under the direct responsibility of President Bush and of course Secretary Rumsfeld as well. So I am very happy actually -- it is a little bit late that the International Criminal Court only now is starting to investigate these crimes that happened in Afghanistan many, many years ago.
AMY GOODMAN: I was struck by how little attention this latest report that you have put out has gotten, when you're talking about seven million children, and it could well be more children, being detained, imprisoned, held in some way around the world. Some of the media tried to discredit it based on the news conference that you held, talking about a number you used. And I'm wondering if you could comment quickly on this, talking about the number of children in detention in the United States, in migration detention?
MANFRED NOWAK: Yes, it was a number that dated back to 2015, still under the Obama administration, but it was the latest reliable number that we had on the total number per annum that are detained in immigration detention in the United States. Currently, the latest figures that we have are 76,000 in 2019, so it's not that much different. And the U.S. is still the country with the highest number of children held in migration detention worldwide.
AMY GOODMAN: And so what you're saying is there has been a continuum from the Obama to the Trump administration.
MANFRED NOWAK: Of course. Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the legacy of the torture program of the United States, you having served for years as the U.N. rapporteur on torture?
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