China using big data to detain Muslim minorities in Xinjiang
BEIJING: The Chinese government is using big data to arbitrarily detain Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, a leaked list of more than 2,000 detainees from the province suggests.
A new report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), which carried the list, says the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), a predictive computer programme, analyses data and selects members of minority communities to be detained.
“A big data programme for policing in China’s Xinjiang region arbitrarily selects Turkic Muslims for possible detention… A leaked list of over 2,000 detainees from Aksu prefecture provided to HRW is further evidence of China’s use of technology in its repression of the Muslim population,” the report released on Wednesday said.
The IJOP programme automatically selects possible detainees for the controversial camps set up in the remote region according to parameters including studying the Quran, wearing religious clothing or travelling internationally.
“The Aksu List (from 2018) provides further insights into how China’s brutal repression of Xinjiang’s Turkic Muslims is being turbocharged by technology,” said Maya Wang, a senior China researcher at HRW. “The Chinese government owes answers to the families of those on the list: why were they detained, and where are they now?”
“The Aksu list is the first time we have seen the IJOP in action in detaining people,” said Wang.
Experts from the UN and human rights advocates have said that at least a million from Muslim Uighur community have been detained in camps in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. China has denied that Uighurs were incarcerated in the camps, saying the government had set up vocational training institutes, which were also meant to de-radicalise locals and fight terrorism, separatism and extremism. The inmates have been released from the camps, Beijing has said.