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Xinjiang
TechPolicy

China’s big data policing platform ‘arbitrarily’ targets Uygurs in Xinjiang based on age, family relations, HRW says

  • A Human Rights Watch report says China’s police surveillance platform flagged Uygurs for legal, everyday activities like travel and personal relationships
  • Predictive policing technologies are widely criticised, and HRW’s Maya Wang calls it a ‘pseudoscientific fig leaf’ for repression

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Chinese authorities have been accused of arbitrarily detaining members of the Uygur minority in detention camps officially known as “vocational skills education centres” in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Photo: Reuters
Masha Borak

Members of China’s Uygur minority are being targeted by a predictive policing system for a number of different legal activities and characteristics, according to a new report from the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The report, published on Wednesday, offers new details on the workings of the big data-based Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP) that is used to monitor potential threats in the country’s western Xinjiang region. Officials have used seemingly innocuous details – including being “born after the 1980s”, having “complex social ties” or “improper [sexual] relations” – as reasons to detain people, according to the report.

The report is based on a list of more than 2,000 Uygur detainees in Aksu prefecture held between 2016 and 2018, according to HRW, which credits an anonymous source. About 10 per cent of the names were listed as being detained for “terrorism” and “extremism”, but most people were put on the list for lawful, non-violent actions, the report said.

Other offences include studying the Koran without state permission, having more children than allowed by state policy and using software like virtual private networks (VPNs) and Skype. In one case, losing an ID subsequently used by someone else was a cause for detention, according to the report.

“‘Predictive policing’ platforms are really just a pseudoscientific fig leaf for the Chinese government to justify vast repression of Turkic Muslims,” Maya Wang, HRW’s senior China researcher, said in the report.

Repeated calls to China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), which HRW identified as the platform’s developer, and the Public Security Department of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region went unanswered. CETC did not respond to an emailed inquiry about the new report.

HRW has looked into IJOP before. In 2019, the NGO published an in-depth analysis based on information gathered by reverse engineering an app used by local police. That analysis also showed that the system was designed to flag behaviour deemed to be suspicious, even legal behaviour such as travelling overseas or collecting money for a local mosque “with enthusiasm”.
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