China’s War on Dissidents Spreads Online
30 years after Tiananmen Square, Tibetans and Uyghurs activists are being targeted via chat apps and the internet
The Chinese had taught her that their rule of Uyghur land was “unifying,” yet as she read the Russian books Turdush discovered that East Turkestan had defended itself from Chinese dynasties for centuries, and had twice briefly formed its own republic before being claimed by China in 1949.
Turdush remembers that Uyghurs were discriminated against by the Chinese when she was growing up. “They wanted to eradicate Uyghur culture and systematically implemented this policy,” she says. While she was in Shanghai her brother was killed, one of 18 activists trying to block Chinese buses from entering Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. He was stabbed by members of a paramilitary group that ran the city, and Turdush says Urumqi’s police did nothing to investigate the murder.
In 1998, aged 28, Turdush left for Canada with her 5-month-old son. “We didn’t see any other way,” she says. “I wanted to see the world and freedom, for my son to grow up in a different world.”
The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China has called what is happening in Xinjiang the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.
Since the U.S. war on terror began in 2001, China has used claims of Islamic extremism to crack down on separatist movements, blaming them for a series of attacks against Chinese interests. It claims the detention camps are actually “vocational schools,” designed to defuse terrorism. Turdush does not agree and points to international reports of torture and killings at the camps. Muslim inmates are forbidden from praying, forced to eat pork and drink alcohol, and men have had their beards forcibly cut off, according to Nathan Sales, the U.S. ambassador for counterterrorism.
A U.S. State Department report of 2018 found that as many as 2 million Uyghur and other ethnic minority Muslims were being held in detention camps in the region. The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China has called what is happening in Xinjiang the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.
Turdush has lived in Canada for 20 years and has served as president of the Uyghur Canadian Society. But while she may have left China, actively campaigning for Uyghur rights has made her a target for harassment online and in the real world, and she says she fears for her life and that of her son. “They use a lot of bad words,” she says of attacks on Twitter and YouTube. “They attack with curses, they harass, say terrible things. They sometimes say I’m not real, but a machine. They email me private messages with threats.”
While giving a speech on Uyghur rights in China at Ontario’s McMaster University in February, Turdush was harassed by protesters apparently defending the Chinese government. The protesters filmed her, disrupted her talk and shouted while she spoke. “One by one, they came when I was talking to disturb me and I realized that they were there on purpose,” she says.
The Washington Post later reported that the students had used the messaging app WeChat to organize a protest against her speech, apparently guided by the local Chinese consulate. Activists claim that WeChat — which is owned by Chinese tech giant TenCent and claims one billion daily users — is used to spy on and harass them.
In a rare recent interview with the BBC, Chen Wen, minister at the Chinese embassy in London, defended China’s “reeducation camps” in Xinjiang and claimed that they had been established to prevent violence and terrorism. “There were thousands of violent attacks, arsons, sabotage incidents. Thousands of people’s lives were lost because of that and a lot of police officers lost their lives,” said Wen. “The measures we have taken were a response to people’s call.”
Of the major terrorist attacks in China reported since 2001, 344 people are believed to have been killed, including perpetrators. In March, a report from the Chinese government claimed that there had been no terror attacks in two years, which it claimed was a result of arresting 13,000 terrorists.
China’s technology arsenal is now rapidly expanding to include sophisticated facial recognition, surveillance and location tracking. These not only monitor and profile ethnic minorities, but track all citizens in order to analyze movement patterns and social behavior and to monitor those who are in debt. China claims it is preventing crime, though the efficacy of the system is disputed.
China has also been expanding a DNA database, collecting Uyghurs’ blood samples, iris scans, and other genetic information without consent. The government claims it is compiling a digital health system — but it is also establishing an unprecedented level of surveillance, according to the NGO Human Right Watch: “A DNA database allows police not only to search for an exact match, but also for those who are related family members and could lead to discriminatory profiling.” Uyghur activists fear that DNA databases could be used to track Uyghur dissidents and their families, as well as potentially use Uyghur DNA and blood samples for scientific experiments without their consent.
Meanwhile, technologies that can help activists, such as VPNs (which allow internet users to mask their location and access services anonymously), are now banned from both the Apple and Google app stores in China. Google is also developing a controversial censored version of its own search tool — codenamed Dragonfly — for the Chinese market, despite resistance from many of the company’s own employees. Neither Apple nor Google responded to OneZero’s request for comment.
“Now because of social media, we can communicate instantly. But if Tibetans sing blatantly about freedom or the Dalai Lama [and post it on WeChat] they’ll get arrested, tortured.”
Students for a Free Tibet has a large following on Facebook and Twitter, which has helped highlight their cause and mobilize support. Many Tibetans also use WeChat to communicate with relatives and acquaintances, though those still in Tibet risk their lives when they send reports of violence, intimidation, and detention by the Chinese authorities. “It’s been very difficult for Tibetans inside and outside Tibet to even communicate,” says Sonam. “Now because of social media, because of the internet, we can communicate instantly. But if Tibetans sing blatantly about freedom or the Dalai Lama [and post it on WeChat] they’ll get arrested, tortured.” Sonam notes that to avoid police, Tibetan users on the platform employ symbols and code to talk about sensitive topics.
Sonam claims that if an exile is found talking about the country’s politics, there will be repercussions for their family back home. “The Chinese government has full access to chats of Tibetans outside China and if they catch a Tibetan in exile talking about something political, they can trace you back to your family in Tibet,” says Sonam.
Turdush agrees. She doesn’t use WeChat to talk to her family or anyone in East Turkestan. “They’d go to jail if they did so. I don’t talk [with them] at all, they are so scared.”
Chokey says she’s received abusive voicemails and phone calls, has been harassed at street protects and received death threats. “China is extending its authoritarian arm outside China,” she continues. “China infiltrates campuses and institutions pushing propaganda and using force and intimidation to censor students and individuals. Because they’ve gotten used to getting what they want, they are now pushing this on to the international community, even in an open society like Canada.”
The harassment and intimidation of activists including Uyghurs, Tibetans, and practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice banned in China, has been reported intensively by international news and campaign groups.
“Although it is difficult to attribute many incidents to Chinese authorities, credible reports of an organized and sustained pattern of harassment and intimidation are consistent with allegations that they are part of a coordinated Chinese government-sponsored campaign to target certain groups and individuals outside of China opposed to Chinese government policies,” a 2017 Amnesty International report concluded.
“This pressure is something that I have seen increase in the last few years, especially for Tibetans with family inside Tibet, “ says Lobsang Gyatso, director of digital security programs at the Tibet Action Institute. Gyatso tells me that the Tibetan diaspora is so used to harassment that they have a running joke: “If for some reason, you haven’t received an email [with threats] in a while, maybe you are not doing enough for Tibet.”
Activists have taken advantage of recent coverage to post messages and videos on social networks denouncing the human rights situation in China, and demanding that governments take action against the country.
Their success has been limited. For most governments, including the U.S., China’s human rights violations are apparently dwarfed by bigger global concerns. No country, and few companies, is prepared to risk damaging its economic relationship with China over a human rights issue. The Tibetans and Uyghurs may be doomed to continue their lonely battle against the world’s biggest country. Much of that battle will be fought online, where China’s reach is growing by the day.