A rare leak of a prisoner list from a Chinese internment camp shows how a government data programme targets Muslim minorities for detention over transgressions that include simply being young, or speaking to a sibling living abroad.
The database obtained by Human Rights Watch (HRW) sheds new light on how authorities in Xinjiang region use a vast “predictive policing” network, that tracks individuals’ personal networks, their online activity and daily life.
The list contains details of more than 2,000 Uighur detainees held in Aksu prefecture between 2016 and 2018, all apparently imprisoned after they were flagged by the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP).
The IJOP is a massive database combining personal data scooped from automated online monitoring and information manually entered into a bespoke app by officials.
It includes information ranging from people’s physical characteristics to the colour of their car and their personal preference of using the front or back door to enter their house, as well as software they use online and their regular contacts.
“The Aksu List provides further insights into how China’s brutal repression of Xinjiang’s Turkic Muslims is being turbocharged by technology,” said Maya Wang, senior China researcher at HRW.
Most of those on the list were held for lawful and non-violent behaviour, but some are simply noted as “flagged by IJOP”, without further information about how authorities reached a decision with such painful implications.
Behaviour listed as a reason for detention includes being “generally untrustworthy” and being “born after the 1980s”. One man appears to have been detained for not paying rent on his land, and others for practising polygamy.
Beijing initially denied the existence of the camps, but more recently has claimed they are a vital part of the fight against extremism and terrorism.
The details on the list, however, show a broad detention dragnet. “This contradicts the Chinese authorities’ claims that their ‘sophisticated’, ‘predictive’ technologies, like the IJOP, are keeping Xinjiang safe by ‘targeting’ criminals ‘with precision’,” said Wang.
