Police State

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) control over Uyghurs is not only physical, but also digital. East Turkistan is now under the world’s most intense government surveillance. The CCP uses surveillance technology and other mass surveillance methods that they call “smart policing” as a way to repress Uyghurs in East Turkistan, and closely monitor their every move.

The budget going into public-security and the newest surveillance technologies have increased dramatically over the past few years. The region is blanketed with facial and number-plate recognition cameras used to track the movement and personal information of individuals. Moreover, tens of thousands of police officers have been recruited in East Turkistan, and thousands of new police stations and security checkpoints have been set up throughout the region. Special machines called “data doors” are situated at some checkpoints [1]. These machines collect information from the mobile phones or the electronic devices of the person passing through the checkpoint without their knowledge [2]. Uyghur people’s knives and front doors are engraved with QR codes that authorities can scan with a mobile app in order to immediately link the house and belongings to their owners [3]. In addition, biometric data of Uyghurs including DNA information, blood samples, iris scans and voice samples are also collected by the Chinese authorities.

In the city of Kashgar where about 85% of the population is Uyghur, about 68 billion records were drawn by the end of 2017. “In February 2019, Dutch cybersecurity researcher Victor Gevers discovered an online database run by the Chinese facial recognition company SenseNets that compiled real-time information on the movements of more than 2.5 million individuals in [East Turkistan], recording more than 6.7 million coordinates in a 24-hour period. Gevers consequently asserted that the database was used to surveil Uyghur Muslims” [4]. By comparison, at the end of 2018, about 19 million records were contained in the F.B.I.’s national instant criminal background check system [5].

In order to compile and analyze the enormous quantity of data on every individual collected through mass surveillance, the CCP uses a central system known as the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP) [6]. With this tool, the authorities then detect Uyghurs and ethnic minorities for “abnormal” behaviors, and target them for different types of restrictions or even for detention in concentration camps. Even ordinary, legal behavior detected by the IJOP such as the use of “unusual” amount of electricity on a particular day, for example, is being treated as suspicious by the authorities. Another example that can raise the government’s suspicion is simply leaving your house through the back door instead of the front.

This mass surveillance not only affects the Uyghurs in East Turkistan, but also their family and friends living abroad. Their only way of communication is through a Chinese app called WeChat which is also closely monitored by the Chinese government. The journal Wired explains it well: “For Uyghurs [in East Turkistan], any kind of contact from a non-Chinese phone number, though not officially illegal, can result in instant arrest. Most Uyghurs [abroad] have been deleted by their families on social media. And many wouldn’t dare try to make contact, for fear Chinese authorities would punish their relatives. It’s just one of the ways President Xi Jinping’s government maintains a tightly controlled net of surveillance over the Uyghurs [in East Turkistan], and it has a ripple effect on Uyghurs living all over the world” [7]. 

References

[1]  Roth, K., Wang, M. (2019, August 16). Data Leviathan: China’s Burgeoning Surveillance State. Retrieved from: https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/16/data-leviathan-chinas-burgeoning-surveillance-state

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid

[4] Retrieved from: https://www.cecc.gov/sites/chinacommission.house.gov/files/documents/2019AR_XINJIANG.pdf

[5]  Buckley, C., Mozur, P. (2019, May 22). How China Uses High-Tech Surveillance to Subdue Minorities. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveillance-xinjiang.html

[6] Ibid

[7] Cockerell, I. (2019, May 9). Inside China's Massive Surveillance Operation. Retrieved from: https://www.wired.com/story/inside-chinas-massive-surveillance-operation/