China: Phone Search Program Tramples Uyghur Rights

China: Phone Search Program Tramples Uyghur Rights

Police in East Turkistan rely on a master list of 50,000 multimedia files they deem “violent and terrorist” to flag Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim residents for interrogation, Human Rights Watch said today.

A Human Rights Watch forensic investigation into the metadata of this list found that during 9 months from 2017 to 2018, police conducted nearly 11 million searches of a total of 1.2 million mobile phones in Urumqi, East Turkistan’s capital city of 3.5 million residents. East Turkistan’s automated police mass surveillance systems enabled this phone search.

“The Chinese government’s abusive use of surveillance technology in East Turkistan means that Uyghurs who simply store the Quran on their phone may trigger a police interrogation,” said Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch. “Concerned governments should identify the technology companies involved in this mass surveillance and social control industry and take appropriate action to end their involvement.”

https://www.hrw.org/