{"id":3804,"date":"2017-06-30T14:13:52","date_gmt":"2017-06-30T14:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2017\/06\/30\/xinjiang-authorities-take-further-steps-towards-total-digital-surveillance\/"},"modified":"2017-06-30T14:13:52","modified_gmt":"2017-06-30T14:13:52","slug":"xinjiang-authorities-take-further-steps-towards-total-digital-surveillance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/xinjiang-authorities-take-further-steps-towards-total-digital-surveillance\/","title":{"rendered":"Xinjiang Authorities Take Further Steps Towards Total Digital Surveillance"},"content":{"rendered":"
RFA<\/a><\/div>\n
Chinese authorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang are ordering residents to hand in all digital devices for \u201cchecking\u201d at local police stations by Aug. 1, as part of an operation targeting \u201cterrorist videos,\u201d according to an announcement and official sources.<\/div>\n
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“According to the requirements of stability maintenance measures, the Baoshan community district will be carrying out a specific anti-terrorist videos operation,” a notice issued to residents of the regional capital Urumqi\u2019s Baoshan district said.<\/div>\n
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\u201cPlease would all residents and business owners of the district submit their personal ID cards, cell phones, external drives, portable hard drives, notebook computers and media storage cards and any similar devices to our district police post for registration and scanning by Aug. 1, 2017,” the June 27 notice said.<\/div>\n
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“Anyone who fails to submit the above devices and content by the stated time will be dealt with according to the relevant national law, should any problems arise,” it said, calling on local people to respond “proactively” to the order.<\/div>\n
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An employee who answered the phone at the Baoshan district committee offices confirmed to RFA that the order is genuine.<\/div>\n
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“Handheld computers, smartphones, and storage devices [must be handed in],” she said. “We have a special system for scanning them, and this is happening across the whole city, not just here in our district.”<\/div>\n
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“These are orders from higher up.”<\/div>\n
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\u2018Everyone must obey\u2019<\/div>\n
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A Han Chinese officer at the Baoshan district police station also confirmed the directive, saying the directive was to \u201ccheck and clean up illegal audio-video content.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u201cAs long as you are a Chinese citizen, it is your obligation to cooperate with us, under the necessity of stability maintenance,\u201d he said.<\/div>\n
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\u201cAs soon as residents see the announcement, they should bring their smart phones, USB drives, [tablets] and notebook computers\u2014these four types of devices\u2014to the nearest police station for inspection.\u201d<\/div>\n
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According to the officer, authorities will install software that opens \u201ceverything\u201d stored on the devices, including documents, archived items, and \u201canything unclean,\u201d without providing details.<\/div>\n
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He said that \u201cevery Chinese citizen has an obligation to participate\u201d in the inspection, though he acknowledged that the order did not extend beyond Xinjiang, where he said the situation is \u201cunlike any other part\u201d of China in the aftermath of ethnic unrest in Urumqi, on July 5, 2009.<\/div>\n
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If anyone fails to bring a device for inspection, \u201cwe will find them through their mobile phone,\u201d the officer said.<\/div>\n
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\u201cEveryone must obey\u2014if they don\u2019t come, they will face legal consequences,\u201d he added.<\/div>\n
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The officer said that anyone born in Xinjiang must comply with the order, regardless of whether they are living in other parts of China, or even in one of \u201c26 designated countries\u201d abroad, without specifying which nations.<\/div>\n
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\u201cThey must bring their devices for checkup as soon as they return,\u201d he said.<\/div>\n
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\u201cThis includes all Han Chinese and ethnic minorities. As long as you are from Xinjiang, you understand well what we\u2019re doing here.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Increasing restrictions<\/div>\n
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The new measures come after the regional government issued orders earlier this year for all vehicles to have compulsory GPS trackers and microchip license plates installed, enabling police to pinpoint the position of vehicles at all times.<\/div>\n
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Beijing in December 2015 passed an anti-terrorism law banning anyone from disseminating images or information regarding \u201cterrorist\u201d activities, and authorizing anti-terrorist operations by security forces beyond China’s borders.<\/div>\n
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U.S. officials have said they fear the new law could be used to target peaceful dissent and religious activities among ethnic minorities in China, particularly among the Uyghur ethnic group.<\/div>\n
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The ruling Chinese Communist Party blames some Uyghurs for a string of violent attacks and clashes in recent years.<\/div>\n
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But critics say the government has exaggerated the threat from the Uyghurs, and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for violence that has left hundreds dead since 2009.<\/div>\n
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Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the exile World Uyghur Congress group, said the monitoring program will likely result in even more arrests.<\/div>\n
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“I think this will mean that the situation gets even more unpredictable,” Raxit said. “They are now forcibly prying into Uyghurs’ private belongings.”<\/div>\n
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Control and surveil<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Sophie Richardson, China director at New York-based Human Rights Watch, called the new measure an unprecedented strategy by Chinese authorities to control and surveil residents of Xinjiang, and questioned its legality.<\/div>\n
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\u201cThere is no basis for that in Chinese law, absent some sort of credible suggestion that the communications are taking place with the view towards committing some kind of actual crime,\u201d she said.<\/div>\n
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\u201cFrom our perspective it\u2019s another counterproductive strategy. Instead of actually addressing the legitimate grievances of the Uyghur people in the region \u2026 authorities are compounding them by preventing people from discussing them freely.\u201d<\/div>\n
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An ethnic Kazakh resident of Urumqi told RFA that the authorities are increasingly stepping up pressure on his ethnic group too, however.<\/div>\n
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“Since 2000, all the ethnic minority schools, including Uyghur and Kazakh schools, have been merged with Han Chinese schools,” the Kazakh resident said. “That includes 2,000 Kazakh schools that have been merged with Chinese schools.”<\/div>\n
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“Ethnic minorities’ right to their language and religious beliefs have been stripped away,” he said. “We should continue to fight for justice, and say what needs to be said. We shouldn’t allow them to suppress us.”<\/div>\n
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RFA Chinese authorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang are ordering residents to hand in all digital devices for \u201cchecking\u201d at local police stations by Aug. 1, as part of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-3804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3804"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=3804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}