In the era of big data, the Chinese authorities in Xinjiang are also evolving with the times in their stabilization tactics. They use big data to decide who to arrest, and arrest warrants don’t even have to include the charge of “provoking and provoking trouble,” just a computerized report.
That’s a fact described in a report released Wednesday (Dec. 9) by the U.S.-based NGO Human Rights Watch on the role of big data in stabilization policies in Xinjiang. The report, based on leaked information about 2,000 detainees in the Aksu region of Xinjiang, found details of how Xinjiang authorities are using the latest technology to intensify their brutal crackdown on Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.
The Xinjiang Uyghur Muslim concentration camp scandal has disgraced the Chinese Communist Party around the world. The Xinjiang authorities have built numerous concentration camps in many parts of Xinjiang, where millions of Uighur Muslims have been imprisoned, brainwashed, and persecuted, sparking outrage and condemnation from around the world.
The Chinese authorities at first vehemently denied the existence of such camps, then were forced to admit it in the face of overwhelming evidence, but argued that the facilities were vocational training centers. They later went further, admitting that the facilities were built to eliminate extremist ideology and the root causes of terrorism.
Human Rights Watch reported that it secretly obtained a list of names of people arrested by local authorities in the Aksu region between mid-2016 and 2018, and obtained an inside account of a concentration camp in Aksu.
Human Rights Watch has not released the full list due to concerns for the safety of those on the leaked list.
One person, identified as “Ms. T,” reported that she was arrested after authorities discovered, based on big data, that she had received several phone calls from countries considered “sensitive. In fact, the calls were made by Ms. T.’s sister in a foreign country.
Human Rights Watch researchers learned from the sister that her sister “Ms. T” in Xinjiang had been interrogated by the local police, but have had no direct news of her family since.
Human Rights Watch researchers found that the “vast majority” of those detained were arrested based on feedback from a computer program that the authorities set based on parameters such as the number of overseas phone calls to the home, whether they had a fixed address, and whether they changed phone numbers frequently. When a warning flag appears on a computer, authorities send an arresting officer.
The report said only about 10 percent of the people arrested were related to terrorism or extremism. AFP says that the reason for the arrests on the list they saw was “reported” by the computer system.
Spending on surveillance equipment in Xinjiang has risen sharply in recent years, and local authorities have installed facial recognition, iris scanning, DNA collection, and artificial intelligence equipment throughout the region in the name of counterterrorism.
The report says that Xinjiang authorities have set up a surveillance system called the “integrated joint warfare platform” and use data collected from this system to decide who to send to concentration camps.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian responded at a regular press conference Wednesday that Human Rights Watch “has always been full of bias and misrepresentation, and the remarks are not worth refuting.
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