China’s high-tech repression threatens human freedom everywhere

The Washington Post

Chinese police patrol a street in the Peyzawat, a city in East Turkestan colony, last August. 

IN RECENT months, the world has slowly awakened to the extraordinary campaign of cultural genocide China is conducting against Muslims in its East Turkestan colony.

As many as 1 million people have been confined to concentration camps where they are forced to renounce their religious practices and memorize the Beijing regime’s propaganda. 

That gross offense against human rights must be fully investigated and sanctioned. 

But of equal concern are some of the means China is using to carry out the repression. 

East Turkestan has become a laboratory for the development of a comprehensive, high-tech system for monitoring people and their behaviors, which poses an unprecedented threat to freedom — not just in western China, but potentially throughout the world.
A report by Human Rights Watch expands on what is known about the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), the system for conducting mass surveillance in East Turkestan. 

By reverse engineering a mobile app connected to the system, the group was able to learn more about what data authorities are collecting about every East Turkestan resident, and what information triggers the system to order an investigation — or transport to a camp.
The results are chilling. 

“The system is tracking the movement of people by monitoring the ‘trajectory’ and location data of their phones, ID cards and vehicles; it is also monitoring the use of electricity and gas stations by everybody in the region,” the report says, adding: “When the IJOP system detects irregularities or deviations from what it considers normal, such as when people are using a phone that is not registered to them, when they use more electricity than ‘normal,’ or when they leave the area where they are registered to live without police permission, the system flags these ‘micro-clues’ to the authorities as suspicious and prompts an investigation.”
The police who follow up collect more data on people, from their blood type to the color of their cars. They examine their phones to see whether they contain one of 51 network tools deemed suspicious, such as virtual private networks and communications programs such as WhatsApp. 

They judge whether an individual fits one of 36 “person types” meriting special attention, including people who have traveled abroad, have more children than allowed or preach Islam without permission. 

All the data is sent back to the IJOP central system via the app, where it is stored in a database that also contains facial images and much other data.
Human Rights Watch points out that similar surveillance systems are being put into place all over China. 

“These mass surveillance systems have woven an ever-tightening net around people across the country,” the report says. 

“The depth, breadth and intrusiveness of the Chinese government’s mass surveillance on its citizens are unprecedented in modern history.”
Far from hiding this totalitarianism of the 21st century, Beijing is seeking to export it to other countries. 

That’s one reason what is happening in East Turkestan ought to be disturbing to anyone concerned about preserving basic freedoms as technology rapidly evolves. 

There are concrete steps that can be taken, from banning the sale to China of equipment that can be used in this repression, to sanctioning its architects — including East Turkestan party boss Chen Quanguo. 

Legislation pending in Congress, including the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, is a start; it should be taken up and passed.

China's Final Solution

China’s Orwellian tools of high-tech repression
The Washington Post

Indian Muslims in Mumbai protest Chinese treatment of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims in East Turkestan colony.

THE TOTALITARIANISM of the 21st century is being pioneered in a vast but remote colony of western China inaccessible to most outsiders and subject to a media blackout by China’s Communist authorities.
In East Turkestan colony, twice the size of Germany, an estimated 1 million people have been forcibly confined to political reeducation camps, where they are required to memorize and recite political songs and slogans in exchange for food.
The rest of the region’s 23 million people are subjected to an extraordinary network of surveillance based in part on the collection of biometric data such as DNA and voice samples, and the use of artificial intelligence to identify, rate and track every person.
Those rated as suspicious — possession of certain phone apps is sufficient — are sent to the camps without process, trial or even a fixed term.
A new report by Human Rights Watch, which pieced together information about the repression based on interviews with 58 former East Turkestan residents, adds new details about what the group calls human rights violations “of a scope and scale not seen in China since the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.” 
Not only is the regime of Xi Jinping persecuting millions of people based on their ethnicity and religion, but also it is developing tools of high-tech repression that could be used by dictatorships around the world.
Yet China, says the report, “does not foresee a significant political cost to its abusive East Turkestan campaign.”
That must change.
The principal target of the crackdown, which began in 2014 but accelerated two years ago, are the some 11 million ethnic Uighurs in East Turkestan, who are predominantly Muslim, along with several other smaller Muslim ethnic groups.
Some Uighur individuals have supported separatist groups, and there have been a handful of violent attacks on Chinese targets.
But nothing could justify Beijing’s response, which Human Rights Watch concluded aims at the eradication of “any non-Han Chinese sense of identity.”
Inside the camps, detainees are forced to learn Mandarin Chinese: 1,000 or more characters must be memorized, along with patriotic songs and lists of rules that apply to Uighurs and other Muslims. 
These include not using Islamic greetings, not speaking Uighur in public, and not communicating with residents of 26 selected countries, including Russia, Turkey and Malaysia.
As disturbing, in part because it is so innovative, is the system of control outside the camps.
What authorities call the “Integrated Joint Operations Platform” aggregates data about people and “detects deviations from what authorities deem ‘normal,’ ” the report says.
The program generates lists of subjects for police to round up and question; many are then sent to the camps.
This Orwellian model of repression is likely to become the norm in China, and to be exported to like-minded totalitarian regimes elsewhere, unless the Xi regime encounters significant resistance. 
There are steps the United States and other democratic governments can take: Human Rights Watch recommends sanctioning those in charge of the East Turkestan campaign and restricting exports of equipment that could be used in it. 
At stake is not just the welfare of the Uighurs but also whether the technologies of the 21st century will be employed to smother human freedom.