{"id":898,"date":"2021-10-20T16:21:37","date_gmt":"2021-10-20T13:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/?p=898"},"modified":"2021-10-20T16:21:38","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T13:21:38","slug":"chinese-effort-to-gather-micro-clues-on-uyghurs-laid-bare-in-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/chinese-effort-to-gather-micro-clues-on-uyghurs-laid-bare-in-report\/","title":{"rendered":"CHINESE EFFORT TO GATHER \u2018MICRO CLUES\u2019 ON UYGHURS LAID BARE IN REPORT"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Guardian.<\/a> 19 October 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Below is an article published by The Guardian<\/a>. Photo:AP.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Authorities in the Chinese region of\u00a0Xinjiang\u00a0are using predictive policing and human surveillance to gather \u201cmicro clues\u201d about Uyghurs and empower neighbourhood informants to ensure compliance at every level of society, according to a report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) thinktank detailed Xinjiang authorities\u2019 expansive use of grassroots committees, integrated with China\u2019s extensive surveillance technology, to police their Uyghur neighbours\u2019 movements \u2013 and emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The findings shed further light on the extraordinary scope of the Chinese Communist party\u2019s grip on the largely Muslim and purportedly autonomous region, going beyond police crackdowns and mass arrests to ensure total control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report also revealed the identities of officials \u2013 including two former visiting fellows at Harvard University \u2013 and the organisations that make up the political architecture of the years-long crackdown by Beijing on Uyghurs, which rights organisations say has included the detention of an estimated 1 million people in re-education camps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report said the nominally voluntary local committees mirrored the Mao-era \u201crevolutionary neighbourhood committees\u201d, with daily meetings delegating home visits and investigations and assessing whether any individuals require \u201cre-education\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, according to ASPI, leaked police records showed the modern-day committees also received \u201cmicro clues\u2019\u2019 from China\u2019s predictive policing system, the integrated joint operations platform (IJOP). Such clues could include someone having an unexpected visitor or receiving an overseas phone call, and would prompt inspection visits modelled on neighbourly interactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instruction manuals cited by ASPI showed committee workers in the city of Kashgar were advised to \u201cshow warmth to their Uyghur \u2018relatives\u2019 and give kids candy\u201d while observing the Uyghur targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cXinjiang\u2019s community-based control mechanisms are part of a national push to enhance grassroots governance, which seeks to mobilise the masses to help stamp out dissent and instability and to increase the party\u2019s domination in the lowest reaches of society,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It detailed the case of an 18-year-old Uyghur man, Anayit Abliz, in \u00dcr\u00fcmqi, who was sentenced to three years in a re-education camp after he was caught using a filesharing app that is used widely in China to share movies, music and other censored content. \u201cWhile he was detained, officials from the neighbourhood committee visited his family members six times in a single week, scrutinising the family\u2019s behaviours and observing whether they were emotionally stable,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thinktank said the IJOP was managed by the political and legal affairs commission (PLAC). The PLAC, which the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has called the party\u2019s \u201cknife handle\u201d, is China\u2019s overseer of the national law and order system reporting directly to the CCP\u2019s central committee. The report found it wielded vastly expanded operational and budgetary control in Xinjiang, an expansion seen before in mass political campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cXinjiang\u2019s bureaucratic inner workings in the last seven years fit a wider pattern of authoritarian rule in China,\u201d wrote the report\u2019s lead author, Vicky Xiuzhong Xu, saying some tactics used in the campaign were conceived elsewhere, while others used in Xinjiang were being replicated in other regions including Hong Kong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ASPI also collected basic information of more than 440 principal and deputy county party secretaries in the Chinese region since 2014, unmasking the individual officials implementing the CCP\u2019s crackdown, including at least two who had been educated at Harvard as visiting fellows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report said the vast majority of county party secretaries \u2013 the most senior local officials \u2013 over the last seven years were of Han ethnicity. It said not a single Uyghur could be identified among secretaries in September, but they often served as a \u201cceremonial\u201d second-in-command figure. ASPI said its findings showed the CCP promise of \u201cethnic self-rule\u201d for the nominally autonomous region were a \u201cfig leaf\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report also alleged that, in addition to mass internment and coercive labour assignments, residents in China\u2019s far-west Xinjiang region were also compelled to participate in Mao-era mass political campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Responding to the report, China\u2019s embassy in London denied the allegations and accused the ASPI of being an \u201canti-China rumour-maker\u201d. It claimed its re-education centres were vocational training schools operating as part of its anti-terrorism efforts \u201cno different from the desistance and disengagement programme (DDP) of the UK or the deradicalisation centres in France.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ASPI report \u2013 funded partly by the UK, Australian and US governments \u2013 adds to a growing body of evidence of Beijing\u2019s crackdown in Xinjiang. China\u2019s government has been accused by Human Rights Watch and legal groups of committing \u201ccrimes against humanity\u201d, while some western governments have formally declared the government to be conducting a \u201cgenocide\u201d. China has denied all these accusations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report said Xinjiang authorities expected \u201cextreme and repressive practices of the 2017 re-education campaign to become the norm by the end of 2021, a stage the party state calls \u2018comprehensive stability\u2019\u201d. A recent media report from Xinjiang by Associated Press revealed a reduction in visible means of control and repression, but \u201ca continuing sense of fear\u201d among the population and ongoing surveillance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Guardian. 19 October 2021 Below is an article published by The Guardian. Photo:AP. Authorities in the Chinese region of\u00a0Xinjiang\u00a0are using predictive policing and human surveillance to gather \u201cmicro clues\u201d about Uyghurs and empower neighbourhood informants to ensure compliance at every level<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":899,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions\/899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}