China used app for surveillance of Uighur Muslims

BEIJING: A popular mobile filesharing application has been a key tool for the Chinese government to carry out surveillance on the Uighur Muslim population in Xinjiang where a million of them are interred in locked-down camps with watchtowers and 24/7 surveillance.

The northwestern province of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) is described by the Communist Party of China (CPC)-ruled government as a “key battlefield in the fight against terrorism and [religious] extremism in China.”

A cache of official documents leaked to a consortium of international journalists revealed the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities have been held in camps even before they committed any crime – many simply because they had used the app Zapya, developed by a Beijingbased startup, to download the Quran and share religious teachings. “A leak of highly classified Chinese government documents, the China Cables, now reveal that since at least July 2016, Chinese authorities have been targeting users of the Zapya app, known in Chinese as Kuai Ya (fast tooth), as part of their crackdown against the Muslim Uighur population,” said the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

The app developer didn’t respond to ICIJ’s request for comment. The ICIJ said the highly classified Chinese government documents “reveal the operations manual for running the mass detention camps in Xinjiang and exposed the mechanics of the region’s system of mass surveillance”. The Chinese government has dismissed the allegations, reiterating that the camps are institutes of vocational education and training .

A government policy paper issued in August called terrorism a “malignant tumour” and said “terrorism and extremism are the common enemies of humanity and the fight against terrorism and extremism is the shared responsibility of the international community”.

“These centres are education and training institutions in nature. To meet the needs of fighting terrorism and extremism, these centres deliver a curriculum that includes standard spoken and written Chinese, understanding of the law, vocational skills, and deradicalisation,” the paper said.

Responding to questions from ICIJ media partner The Guardian, the Chinese government called the leaked documents “pure fabrication and fake news.” In a statement, the press office of its UK embassy said: “There are no so-called ‘detention camps’ in Xinjiang. Vocational education and training centres have been established for the prevention of terrorism.” A leaked document instructs government officials to locate and arrest people described as “violent terrorists and extremist elements”.