Xinjiang residents under tight control

[Greg.D.]

This is true but, in my opinion, seems to be a show of force by Chen Quanguo, the provincial party head imported from Tibet to do some extreme message sending and culture changing.

 

Qurans, Prayer Mats Confiscated in Xinjiang

 

These are unfortunate methods and I doubt it is seen as a way to go forward forever and Xi will probably kick Chen to the curb when he's of no use to him anymore. True there, as it is here: most Muslims there are not interested in violence or overthrowing the order but are now caught in the crossfire.

 

We're to believe that after the Party Congress things will revert to "normal". I don't think change can come very quickly in China as it is one huge ship of humanity to cautiously steer .... but I know Taiwan and Hong Kong were capable of change.

Edited October 4, 2017 by Greg.D. (see edit history)

[Randy W]

in the WSJ

About to Break the Law? Chinese Police Are Already On To You

Rights group says ‘predictive policing’ platform combines feeds from surveillance cameras with personal information

Quote

Human Rights Watch said Tuesday the “predictive policing” platform combines feeds from surveillance cameras with other personal data such as phone use, travel records and religious orientation, and then analyzes the information to identify suspicious individuals.

 

China’s government has turned Xinjiang, a vast region on the border with Central Asia that thrums with ethnic tension, into a laboratory for cutting-edge surveillance and social control. High-definition cameras, security checkpoints equipped with facial recognition and police patrols armed with hand-held smartphone scanners blanket the region’s cities and villages.

 

. . .

 

Some Uighur exiles and researchers describe an evaluation system based on a 100-point scale in which individuals are docked for biographical information authorities consider threatening.

 

Tahir Imin, a Uighur academic and journalist who fled Xinjiang for the U.S. last February, said a friend in Urumqi was detained in June after authorities docked his score for praying regularly, owning a passport and traveling to Turkey.

 

Edited January 2, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

Xi's regime continues to find ways to extend the reach of their law enforcement to other countries - from the Hong Kong booksellers to this in France - in Foreign Policy

Chinese Police Are Demanding Personal Information From Uighurs in France

Officials have threatened to detain relatives of those who don’t comply.

Quote

Police officers from local public security bureaus in China have asked French Uighurs to send their home, school, and work addresses, photos, scans of their French or Chinese ID cards, and, in some cases, the ID cards of their spouses and scans of their marriage certificates if they were married in France.

 

Chinese police have contacted French Uighurs directly via phone or WeChat, a Chinese messaging app, or have paid visits to their family members in China, asking relatives to convey these demands, according to screenshots of WeChat conversations and a phone recording obtained by Foreign Policy.

 

Edited January 2, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

from the People's Daily on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/PeoplesDaily/posts/1875411032510705

People's Daily, China added 5 new photos.

Yesterday at 2:09pm ·

#Xinjiang police deal with heavy workload protecting region from #terrorism

Quote

Given the region's high need for counter-terrorism efforts to help safeguard security, police officers in Urumqi are required to arrive at the scene of an emergency within a minute of receiving a call.

. . .

In order to better protect the area, certain individuals who work at local bars and restaurants are regularly trained by police. Every day, different types of cooperative emergency drills are held in this area.

Once an alarm is sounded, these individuals, chosen from at least 10 local stores, must arrive at designated areas armed with batons and shields to support police. This has proven quite useful as it helps bolster the currently undermanned police force in the region.

 

As Xinjiang has taken a zero-tolerance position on terrorism, the demand for police officers has surged in recent years.

In March, police in the city of Kashgar announced plans to recruit 3,000 officers nationwide, offering them 5,000 yuan ($790) a month with an additional 500 yuan for "maintaining stability." The Xinjiang regional government's target income for urban residents was 2,500 yuan a month in 2017.

Edited January 2, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

The article says it's happening to "Ethnic Uighurs in China's west" - from the Shanghaiist and Buzzfeed

 

China Is Forcing People To Download An App That Tells Them To Delete “Dangerous” Photos

The surveillance app, the name of which literally translates to “web cleansing,” scans for photos and videos and dispatches all the information to a mysterious outside server.

 

Ethnic Uighurs in China's west say they are being forced to download an app that scans cell phones for audio and video files and dispatches their information to an outside server.

According to new research by a team supported by the Open Technology Fund under Radio Free Asia, the app Jingwang Weishi — which translates to “web cleansing” — records a phone’s identifying information, including its IMEI number, model, phone number, and manufacturer.

It also searches through the phone for unique, fingerprintlike identifiers associated with files, particularly photos, audio recordings, and videos, researchers found.

. . .

The app also dispatches information on every single file found on the device to an outside server, the researchers said. It does not use any encryption.

 

 

[Randy W]

This is from the Wall Street Journal - a unique look into the province.

 

[Greg.D.]

That video is fairly accurate. My wife is in Xinjiang right now. Changes include vehicle inspections and security checks going into places like malls. Also, it states several times that Xinjiang is a test lab for the technologies that will likely be rolled out in the rest of China some day. It's just what they do. Things that make us wince in those stories are not unique to Xinjiang, are actually found all over China. I heard someone say in a podcast yesterday: "if you're going to govern a people you first have to use violence to bring them into your universe"

 

While it is probably not the only way to get a result, China hates leaving things to chance and prefers to just force the change, in this case, integrating rural and left behind uyghurs into the contemporary system. Part of the history of Xinjiang includes Moscow fomenting divisions (post-war) just to make trouble for and weaken the central government - sound familiar?

[Randy W]

I'm seeing several articles about a large-scale crackdown in Xinjiang - one a few days ago showed a row of all but boarded-up houses.

This in the NY Times

 

Star Scholar Disappears as Crackdown Engulfs Western China

URUMQI, China — She was one of the most revered academics from the Uighur ethnic minority in far western China. She had written extensively and lectured across China and the world to explain and celebrate Uighurs’ varied traditions. Her research was funded by Chinese government ministries and praised by other scholars.

Then she disappeared.

The academic, Rahile Dawut, 52, told a relative last December that she planned to travel to Beijing from Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region where she taught. Professor Dawut was in a rush when she left, according to the relative, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of punishment from the Chinese authorities.

She has not been heard from since, and her family and close friends are sure she was secretly detained as part of a severe clampdown on Uighurs, the largely Muslim group who call Xinjiang their homeland.

 

[Randy W]

in the SCMP

 

UN says it has reports that China is holding 1 million Uygurs in ‘secret internment camps’

The allegations, called ‘credible’, came from multiple sources, including the group Chinese Human Rights Defenders

 

“We are deeply concerned at the many numerous and credible reports that we have received that in the name of combating religious extremism and maintaining social stability (China) has changed the Uygur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internship camp that is shrouded in secrecy, a sort of ‘no rights zone’,” she told the start of a two-day regular review of China’s record, including Hong Kong and Macau.

China says Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists who plot attacks and stir up tensions between the mostly Muslim Uygurs minority who call the region home and the ethnic Han Chinese majority.

A Chinese delegation of some 50 officials made no comment on her remarks at the session that continues on Monday in Geneva, Switzerland.

 

 

[Randy W]

from the WSJ on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/wsj/videos/221346628730953/

The Wall Street Journal

1 hr ·

Life Inside China's 'Re-Education' Camps

 

Quote

This is what goes on inside China's growing network of internment camps, where hundreds of thousands are believed to have been detained

Edited January 2, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

. . . and the Atlantic

 

China Is Treating Islam Like a Mental Illness

The country is putting Muslims in internment camps—and causing real psychological damage in the process.

Here’s an excerpt from an official Communist Party audio recording, which was transmitted last year to Uighurs via WeChat, a social-media platform, and which was transcribed and translated by Radio Free Asia:

Members of the public who have been chosen for reeducation have been infected by an ideological illness. They have been infected with religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology, and therefore they must seek treatment from a hospital as an inpatient. … The religious extremist ideology is a type of poisonous medicine, which confuses the mind of the people. … If we do not eradicate religious extremism at its roots, the violent terrorist incidents will grow and spread all over like an incurable malignant tumor.

“Religious belief is seen as a pathology” in China, explained James Millward, a professor of Chinese history at Georgetown University, adding that Beijing often claims religion fuels extremism and separatism. “So now they’re calling reeducation camps ‘hospitals’ meant to cure thinking. It’s like an inoculation, a search-and-destroy medical procedure that they want to apply to the whole Uighur population, to kill the germs of extremism. But it’s not just giving someone a shot—it’s locking them up for months in bad conditions.”

. . .

 

This is not the first time China has used medical analogies to suppress a religious minority. “Historically, it’s comparable to the strategy toward Falun Gong,” said Adrian Zenz, a researcher at the European School of Culture and Theology in Germany. He was referring to a spiritual practice whose followers were suppressed in the early 2000s through reeducation in forced labor camps. “Falun Gong was also treated like a dangerous addiction. … But in Xinjiang this [rhetoric] is certainly being pushed to the next level. The explicit link with the addictive effect of religion is being emphasized possibly in an unprecedented way.”

 

[Randy W]

from the SCMP on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/scmp/videos/329807061122870/

South China Morning Post

 

33 mins ·

Quote

The Xinjiang Uygur Autuonomus Region is one of the most tightly controlled areas in China. Here's why.

 

Edited January 2, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

from the NY Times

 

The Leaders Who Unleashed China’s Mass Detention of Muslims

 

 

 

 

Rukiya Maimaiti, a local propaganda official in China’s far west, warned her colleagues to steel themselves for a wrenching task: detaining large numbers of ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.

The Chinese government wanted to purge the Xinjiang region of “extremist” ideas, she told her co-workers, and secular Uighurs like themselves had to support the campaign for the good of their people.

“Fully understand that this task is in order to save your relatives and your families,” wrote Ms. Maimaiti, a Communist Party functionary who works on the western edge of Xinjiang, in a message that was preserved online. “This is a special kind of education for a special time.”

Her warning is one piece of a trail of evidence, often found on obscure government websites, that unmasks the origin of China’s most sweeping internment drive since the Mao era — and establishes how President Xi Jinping and other senior leaders played a decisive role in its rapid expansion.

 

 

[Mick]

I, for one, think this whole situation is a powder keg with a markedly short fuse. The Uighur Minority has gradually become more radical in its rhetoric and the lingering question is when and where the Chinese government will draw the line. As Ronny said, it is doubtful that the radicals will fly planes into Chinese government buildings, but they can take other measures that the Chinese government might consider a catalyst for "social unrest." At the very least, it is a situation that bears watching closely. Added to that, I think it is in our nations best interest to stay out of it.

[Randy W]

On 10/15/2018 at 12:30 AM, Mick said:

I, for one, think this whole situation is a powder keg with a markedly short fuse. The Uighur Minority has gradually become more radical in its rhetoric and the lingering question is when and where the Chinese government will draw the line. As Ronny said, it is doubtful that the radicals will fly planes into Chinese government buildings, but they can take other measures that the Chinese government might consider a catalyst for "social unrest." At the very least, it is a situation that bears watching closely. Added to that, I think it is in our nations best interest to stay out of it.

 

 

The Chinese government HAS drawn the line, due to riots, the attacks at the Kunming, Guangzhou, and Urumqi train stations, and the car bomb at Tiananmen Square.

 

See various topics tagged 'Xinjiang'  http://candleforlove.com/forums/tags/Xinjiang/

 

Quote

Mr. Xi made his first and only visit as national leader to Xinjiang in April 2014. Hours after his four-day visit ended, assailants used bombs and knives to kill three people and wound nearly 80 others near a train station in Urumqi, the regional capital. The attack was seen as a rebuff to Mr. Xi, who had just left the city and vowed to wield an “iron fist” against Uighurs who oppose Chinese rule.

 

Edited January 2, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)