Asia should beware rise of racism fuelled by emerging technologies, UN report says

Examples include mass surveillance of Uygurs in Xinjiang, Indonesia’s internet blackouts in Papau and the spread of hate speech in Myanmar

Considerable work still needs to be done to address the region’s issues, says UN special rapporteur on prejudice E. Tendayi Achiume

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The unchecked spread of hate speech on Facebook against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar was among the examples of racism enabled by new technology given in the report. Photo: AP

Published: 8:15pm, 16 Jul 2020Updated: 10:52pm, 17 Jul 2020

Asian countries should study how emerging technologies fuel racism, a UN-appointed rights expert said on Thursday, after presenting a report highlighting technology’s role in alleged racial discrimination in China, India, Indonesia and Myanmar.

E. Tendayi Achiume, UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, said considerable work still needed to be done to understand how new technologies could worsen racial inequality and discrimination in Asia.

“I think it would go too far to say there isn’t attention [being paid] to ethnic and religious and racial forms of discrimination in Asia; I would say that what you’re seeing less of is a conversation about how that discrimination overlaps with emerging digital technologies,” she said in an interview with This Week In Asia. “There are many different reasons for that. I think in many parts of the world emerging digital technologies are considered the purview of tech experts who aren’t necessarily the same universe of people as human rights advocates.”

Achiume made the remarks after presenting a report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday which described how technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence “exacerbate and compound existing inequities, many of which exist along racial, ethnic and national origin grounds”.

A Papuan activist with a separatist flag painted on his face demonstrates during last year’s anti-racism protests, which Indonesia responded to with internet blackouts. Photo: AP

“The public perception of technology tends to be that it is inherently neutral and objective, and some have pointed out that this presumption of technological objectivity and neutrality is one that remains salient even among producers of technology,” the report reads. “But technology is never neutral – it reflects the values and interests of those who influence its design and use, and is fundamentally shaped by the same structures of inequality that operate in society.”

Examples of alleged racial discrimination enabled by technology that the report points to include the mass surveillance of Uygurs in China’s westernmost region of Xinjiang; Indonesia’s imposition of internet blackouts in Papua and West Papua; the introduction of AI-based sanitation management that has eliminated jobs for workers from the lowest castes in India; and the spread of hate speech against Rohingya Muslims on Facebook in Myanmar.

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