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masterge77 · 5 years ago

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A brief list of atrocities committed by China in recent years

You hear about the Hong Kong Protests, you’ve most likely heard of the Tienanmen Square massacre, and you probably know of the Uyghur genocide, but it goes FAR beyond just that: This was taken from a comment made by Ender12123 on this YouTube video, credit to him for compiling this list: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ebMI2xDtn4

Hundreds of human rights lawyers (not even dissidents, just the LAWYERS who defended people) were snatched by gestapo all over China in what is known as the 709 Crackdown [1].

One of those lawyers, Wang Quanzhang was sentenced to 4.5 years for "subversion of state power" [2]. But that's not enough. China actually went after Wang's 6-year-old son, forcing him out of his school and banning any other school from taking him in [3].

A dissident, known as Wang Bingzhang was kidnapped by Chinese agents in Vietnam and sentenced to life in prison after a closed trial that lasted 1 day. [4]

A man wore a t-shirt with the word "Xitler" on it and was disappeared [5]. Eventually he was tried for "subversion of state power" while barred from meeting with lawyers. [6]

Another man, Wang Meiyu hold up a placard calling for Xi’s resignation & democracy. He was arrested for "picking quarrels”. He ended up dead in custody. [7]

A woman live-streamed herself splashing ink on a Xi poster. She was disappeared [8]. Her last social media update: "Right now there are a group of people wearing uniforms outside my door. I’ll go out after I change my clothes. I did not commit a crime. The people and groups that hurt me are the ones who are guilty" [9]. Later on, there was report of her being sent to a psychiatric hospital [10]. After the ink-splash woman's disappearance her father made a series of broadcast to call attention to her plight. He ended up getting taken away by the police in the middle of a live stream. [11]

5 people associated with a Hong Kong bookstore that sold titles such as "Xi Jinping and His Six Women" were disappeared. Only one managed to escape back to HK. He held a press briefing to tell the world about his kidnapping by China. He's now in exile in Taiwan. The other 4 are still somewhere in China. [12]

And, of course 1.5 million - 3 millions Uyghurs rounded up in concentration camps [13], including leaked footage of a large number of blindfolded Uyghurs shackled together. [14]

A Canadian journalist wanted to debunk reports of Chinese anti-Muslim repression so he went on a stage-managed show tour put on by China. That means he only saw a fake Potemkin village that China actually thought was acceptable by Western standard. But the brutality of even this fake Potemkin village stunned him. Now imagine what's really happening in the real concentration camps where millions of Uyghurs are being held. Imagine how bad the true situation is. [15]

Using minorities & political prisoners as free organ farms [16]. A doctor's eye witness account: 'The prisoner was brought in, tied hand and foot, but very much alive. The army doctor in charge sliced him open from chest to belly button and exposed his two kidneys. Then the doctor ordered Zheng to remove the man’s eyeballs. Hearing that, the dying prisoner gave him a look of sheer terror, and Zheng froze. “I can’t do it,” he told the doctor, who then quickly scooped out the man’s eyeballs himself.' [17]

Call for retraction of 400 Chinese scientific papers amid fears organs came from Chinese prisoners. [18]

15 Chinese studies retracted due to fears they used Chinese prisoners' organs Cultural genocide (and organ harvests, of course). [19]

A uyghur's testimony: "First, children were stopped from learning about the Quran, then from going to mosques. It was followed by bans on ramadan, growing beards, giving Islamic names to your baby, etc. Then our language was attacked – we didn’t get jobs if we didn’t know Mandarin. Our passports were collected, we were told to spy on each other, innocent Uyghur prisoners were killed for organ harvesting" [20]

And now China is moving beyond Uyghur and cracking down on its model minority Hui Muslim. 'Afraid We Will Become The Next Xinjiang': China's Hui Muslims Face Crackdown: "The same restrictions that preceded the Xinjiang crackdown on Uighur Muslims are now appearing in Hui-dominated regions. Hui mosques have been forcibly renovated or shuttered, schools demolished, and religious community leaders imprisoned. Hui who have traveled internationally are increasingly detained or sent to reeducation facilities in Xinjiang." [21]

Along with the Uyghur and Hui Muslims, Christian churches are being closed down throughout the country, with some churches being forced to replace the Ten Commandments with quotes by Xi Jinping, and portraits of Mao Zedong as a means of forcing people to adhere to the party at all times. [22]

One church had it’s cross torn down [23], and throughout the country, Christians have been being hunted down [24].

Just like the Nazis, the Chinese are now burning books that don’t comply with the party’s stringent and intolerant ideology, most especially religious texts. [5]

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What is occurring in China is horrible and appaling, and big corporations continue to prop up this inhumane government, and nobody's doing anything about it, the corporations are blinded by greed that they don't see the atrocities in China.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/709_crackdown

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/28/wang-quanzhang-china-sentences-human-rights-lawyer-to-four-years-in-prison

https://chinachange.org/2019/09/06/imprisoned-lawyer-wang-quanzhangs-six-year-old-son-once-again-forced-out-of-school/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Bingzhang_(dissident)

https://www.hongkongfp.com/2016/11/03/young-chinese-activist-missing-after-sharing-plan-to-wear-xitler-t-shirt-on-cpc-anniversary-report/

https://www.hongkongfp.com/2017/02/15/chinese-xitler-activist-trial-subversion-lawyers-barred-seeing/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/27/death-of-chinese-activist-in-police-custody-prompts-calls-for-investigation-into-torture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9sF34fJwh0

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-woman-dong-yaoqiong-disappears-spraying-ink-xi-jinping-a8455166.html

https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/07/23/chinese-protester-splashed-ink-xi-jinping-poster-sent-psychiatric-hospital-report/

https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/07/14/police-interrupt-youtube-live-stream-father-missing-chinese-woman-splashed-ink-xi-jinping-photo/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causeway_Bay_Books_disappearances

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/04/us-accuses-china-of-using-concentration-camps-uighur-muslim-minority

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/d722aw/chinas_detention_of_uighurs_video_of_blindfolded/

https://nationalpost.com/news/canadian-went-to-china-to-debunk-reports-of-anti-muslim-repression-but-was-shocked-by-treatment-of-uyghurs

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/c1my5j/china_is_harvesting_organs_from_detainees_uk/

https://nypost.com/2019/06/01/chinese-dissidents-are-being-executed-for-their-organs-former-hospital-worker-says/

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/06/call-for-retraction-of-400-scientific-papers-amid-fears-organs-came-from-chinese-prisoners

https://www.newscientist.com/article/15-15-studies-retracted-due-to-fears-they-used-chinese-prisoners-organs/

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/china-uyghur-muslim-rules-laws-treatment-chinese-human-rights-religion-a8534161.html

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/26/763356996/afraid-we-will-become-the-next-xinjiang-chinas-hui-muslims-face-crackdown

https://www.foxnews.com/faith-values/china-ten-commandments-church-crackdown

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1031890/christian-persecution-christianity-china-news

https://www.ibtimes.sg/video-after-uyghur-muslims-christians-are-being-hunted-china-bible-banned-36046

https://www.ibtimes.sg/china-just-like-nazi-germany-1930s-burning-books-35711

#china #hong kong #hong kong protests #uyghur #uyghur people #religion #christianity #islam #human rights #freedom of speech #freedom of religion #THIS IS IMPORTANT

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psitrend · 6 years ago

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Missing in China: people who disappeared in China in 2018

New Post has been published on https://china-underground.com/2018/12/14/missing-in-china-people-who-disappeared-in-china-in-2018/

Missing in China: people who disappeared in China in 2018

2018 was another terrible year for human rights in China.

Between rehabilitation centers in Xinjiang, an ever more invasive and effective surveillance system, social control, a very heavy censorship, and an intensive propaganda, Xi Jinping’s China has become a reference model for the authoritarian regimes, not only from the political point of view but also from the technological one.

The past few years had already been characterized by various limitations of individual liberties and by the disappearance or detention of numerous prominent figures from a cultural point of view, like the case of Hong Kong booksellers, but what happened in 2018 has particularly struck the international attention because almost every month there have been sensational episodes of disappearances of Chinese and foreign citizens.

The pattern is often the same.

If witnesses are present, they tell of agents taking their victims, often also using force.

The arrested are then detained in survey centers to be interrogated.

They are often accused of generic crimes of corruption, within the framework of the anti-corruption campaign of Xi Jinping, who among the important victims has already left on the field political opponents of Xi as Sun Zhengcai in March.

In the meantime, they disappear and are prevented from communicating with the outside, relatives or lawyers.

Sometimes the missing people reemerge to make a self-criticism, like the well-known actress Fan Bingbing, while others disappear forever without a trace.

We try to retrace the most sensational facts.

The citizens of Xinjiang

Uyghur detainees in a rehabilitation center in Xinjiang. (photo April 2017, Lop County (Luopu), number 4 re-education center “洛浦县第四教育培训中心”)

In Xinjiang, the western autonomous region with a Muslim majority, many structures have been introduced and strengthened to hold Xinjiang citizens over the past few years.

In October, China even legalized these re-education camps for “religious extremists”.

According to some reports in these prison camps, up to a million ethnic Uyghur citizens are gathered, to be re-educated according to the requirements of Beijing.

One of the aims is to organize “ideological education to eliminate extremism”, to conduct behavioral and psychological correction operations in order to “help the trainers to transform their thoughts and return to society and their families”.

Gui Minhai, 桂敏海

Gui Minhai and daughter Angela

Gui Minhai is a Hong Kong publisher with Swedish citizenship.

Gui, after being held in custody in China for over two years, was snatched from a train bound for Beijing, while he was accompanied by two Swedish diplomats.

In 2015, Gui became a symbol of the Chinese government’s willingness to suppress criticism from the outside when he disappeared from a holiday in Thailand in 2015.

He was accused by the Chinese media of outrage to party leaders.

After months of his disappearance, he reappeared on national television confessing his guilt for an accident that occurred 10 years earlier, when he killed a person while driving drunk.

In October 2017 he was released, without being able to leave the country.

During a train trip to Beijing, accompanied by two diplomats of the Swedish consulate in Shanghai, the man was approached and taken away by 10 agents.

The two diplomats were accompanying him to the Swedish embassy in the capital for some medical checks.

Meng Hongwei, 孟宏伟, Head of Interpol

Head of Interpol arrested in China

Meng Hongwei, former deputy minister of the Public Security Bureau, was Interpol president from 2016 to 2018, when he literally vanished during a visit to China.

He was later accused of accepting bribes from the anti-corruption authority.

His sudden arrest and his imprisonment, which seems to have occurred without trial, have raised numerous questions about the role that China can play in the world community, and about the legal practices of the Chinese government.

Meng “resigned” in October.

Meng had come to China on September 25, 2018. After sending a knife emoji to his wife, he disappeared.

According to some sources, he was arrested shortly after having arrived in the country, accused of favoring a cybersecurity company.

Lu Guang, 卢广

Lu Guang is a Chinese photographer and his works consist of projects on the social realities of the margins of Chinese society.

On November 3, Lu Guang was traveling to the western region of Xinjiang, when his wife Xu Xiaoli lost all contact with her husband.

Patrick Poon, a researcher at Amnesty International, believes that the Chinese authorities are afraid the photographer has taken some shots that testify the real conditions of what is going on in Xinjiang.

A few days ago, the family was contacted by the Kashgar security office who informed them of the arrest, even if no written document was issued, and the photographer was not allowed to contact the family or his lawyer.

Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor

Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are two Canadian citizens arrested in China.

Some elements may suggest the hypothesis of espionage charges, as a form of retaliation against the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the powerful daughter of the founder of Huawei, happened a few days ago in Canada.

Michael Kovrig is a former diplomat who works for a think tank and is currently held in Beijing from December 10th.

Michael Spavor, an entrepreneur specializing in travel to North Korea, is being investigated by the Dandong City PSB.

Wang Yi

Pastor Wang Yi (photo: Facebook)

Christian pastor Wang Yi of the Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu was charged with subversion against the state after his church was raided.

Over 100 other members of the congregation were interrogated and taken into custody, some of them reported violence during the period of detention.

The Early Rain Covenant Church is one of the major unofficial churches.

Nothing is known about the situation of the pastor’s wife, Jiang Rong.

Wang risks a sentence between 5 and 15 years. Wang Yi’s assistant Li Yingqiang was also arrested for causing “disorder” online.

Before becoming a pastor, Wang was a human rights activist and was quite famous especially among Chinese Christians abroad.

The Early Rain Covenant Church did not operate underground like many other Protestant congregations in China, but posted online sermons and practiced evangelization in the streets.

In fact, unauthorized religious gatherings are illegal in China, and this year’s amendments to the Religious Affairs Regulation give more power to local cadres to prosecute unauthorized religious groups.

Marxist students

Members of the Solidarity group for Jasic workers pose for a photo in Shenzhen, Guangdong

While in the previous cases the missing people in some way are not aligned with Xi’s vision, that of the Marxist students is a very bizarre case.

The ideological reference point of these students is the one designed by Xi Jinping who strengthened the teaching of Marxism within Chinese universities, reaffirming ideological orthodoxy: less tolerance towards religion, the study of the texts of Marx, Lenin, and Mao.

The fault of these students was paradoxically that of having followed the teachings received too effectively, inexorably triggering the contradiction on which China is founded in the post-Mao era: solidarity with exploited workers, ecology, and rights for women.

Some students like Zhang Shengye were forcibly taken from the campuses and disappeared.

Others like Yue Xin, a 22-year-old student who had reported the case of a suicide of a girl raped by a senior party official, disappeared under other circumstances.

Another 50 students and workers have disappeared with them.

Shao Zhumin, 邵祝敏

Shao Zhumin, bishop of the unofficial Catholic Church aligned with the Vatican, of Wenzhou, Zhejiang, has disappeared, according to some priests of the diocese, despite the historic agreement reached between China and the Holy See just two months before, a preparatory agreement for a diplomatic rapprochement between the Church and the Chinese government.

The Vatican and China had interrupted diplomatic relations since 1951.

Only this year Shao disappeared three more times, each time held for periods between 10 and 15 days.

Fan Bingbing, 范冰冰

Fan Bingbing in Li Chen’s movie Sky Hunter (2017)

Fan Bingbing is one of the most famous Chinese actresses in the world and one of the highest paid.

In July her disappearance caused a stir.

After being under house arrest in a holiday resort in a Jiangsu coastal area, generally used to investigate party cadres, the Chinese actress returned to Beijing.

According to the investigations, which also uncovered the case of the yin-yang contracts used in the Chinese show business, to circumvent the limits imposed on the contracts for the stars, Fan Bingbing would have evaded something like 250 million yuan.

To avoid the arrest, Fan and his company had to pay a fine of 127 million US dollars.

The actress turned to her 62 million followers on Weibo to ask for forgiveness.

#ChineseStudents, #FanBingbing, #HumanRightsInChina, #LuGuang, #WangYi

#chinese students #fan-bingbing #Human Rights in China #Lu Guang #Wang Yi

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courtneytincher · 6 years ago

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China claims most people in Xinjiang camps reintegrated to society

Officials from China’s northwestern Xinjiang region said on Tuesday that most of the people detained in the area’s contentious re-education centres have been moved out of the facilities and have signed "work contracts" with local companies. However, those assertions were challenged by accounts from Uighurs and Kazakhs who say their relatives remain missing. The United States, human rights groups and independent analysts estimate that about 1 million Muslims have been arbitrarily detained in Xinjiang’s heavily guarded internment camps, which the Chinese government calls vocational training centres. The Xinjiang region is home to an estimated 12 million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities who have long reported persecution at the hands of the Han Chinese, the country’s ethnic majority. In recent years, Xinjiang has been blanketed with high-tech surveillance cameras and police checkpoints that single out Uighurs for identification checks. Former detainees and their family members have said in interviews with The Associated Press that the re-education centres resembled prisons where they were forced to renounce their faith and swear loyalty to China’s ruling Communist Party. They said they were subject to repeated political indoctrination and often did not understand why they were being held in the facilities. Travelling abroad, speaking to relatives in other countries and growing a long beard are all acts that might land someone in detention, according to Uighurs and Kazakhs who have fled the region. Shohrat Zakir, Xinjiang’s Uighur governor, declined at a news briefing to give a figure for those he described as "students" inside the centres. He defended the facilities as an effective and "pioneering" approach to counterterrorism. "Most of the graduates from the vocational training centers have been reintegrated into society," Mr Zakir said. "More than 90% of the graduates have found satisfactory jobs with good incomes." Uighurs and Kazakhs outside China, however, continue to appeal to foreign governments to help them locate their relatives still inside Xinjiang. Many say they have not been able to contact their loved ones for years, and they fear the worst. Shohrat Zakir, chairman of China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, speaks during a press conference at the State Council Information Office in Beijing Credit: AP Some told the AP that some detainees were released from the camps only to be forced into factory jobs. They were taken to a government office and handed labor contracts for six months to five years in a distant factory, which they were required to sign, according to one detainee who spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal. Xinjiang Vice Chairman Alken Tuniaz said accounts of mistreatment in the camps were concocted by a few countries and media outlets. The centres protected people’s liberties by allowing them to "request time off" and "regularly go home," Tuniaz said. While the people inside the centers are not permitted to practice their religion during their "period of study," they can resume activities related to their faith when they are at home. The officials at Tuesday’s briefing did not address whether the program is voluntary or how often people are allowed to go home. After international condemnation of and extensive reporting on the centres, China began organising highly choreographed trips to Xinjiang for journalists and foreign officials. Earlier this month, United Nations envoys from 37 countries, including North Korea, Syria and several Muslim-majority states, signed a letter supporting the camps and commending China’s human rights record. The letter was an apparent response to a letter signed by 22 countries - including Germany, Japan and the UK - condemning the camps. Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, called Zakir a "political microphone" used by Beijing to spread its "deception." "Shohrat Zakir’s remarks completely distort the reality of the systematic persecution that Uighurs are suffering in China," Raxit said. The US State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator, Nathan Sales, said in an interview in July with the US government-funded Radio Free Asia that the detentions of Muslims in Xinjiang had "nothing to do with terrorism" and was instead part of the Communist Party’s "war on religion." "It is trying to stamp out the ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious identities of the people that it’s been targeting," Sales told RFA.

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whittlebaggett8 · 6 years ago

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Worried About Huawei? Take a Closer Look at Tencent

It has extended been comprehended that Tencent — the Chinese enterprise that owns WeChat and QQ, two of the world’s most commonly applied social media programs — facilitates Chinese govt censorship and surveillance. But around the previous calendar year, the scale and importance of this action have amplified and come to be more visible, each within and outside China.

Throughout the previous thirty day period alone, several functions have illustrated the craze and Tencent’s close partnership with the Chinese authorities.

On March 2, Dutch hacker Victor Gevers uncovered that the information of hundreds of thousands of conversations on Tencent purposes between consumers at online cafés are being relayed, alongside with the users’ identities, to police stations across China. Just a few times later, the company’s founder and chief government, Pony Ma, took his seat amid 3,000 delegates to the National People’s Congress, the country’s rubber-stamp parliament. Ma reportedly elevated the difficulty of info privacy even as protection organizations were employing facts from his company’s applications to root out unauthorized religious activity.

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On March 16, China watcher Chenchen Zhang shared an anecdote on Twitter about a member of the Uyghur Muslim minority who was stopped at mainland China’s border with Hong Kong and interrogated for a few times basically due to the fact another person on his WeChat make contact with checklist had not long ago “checked in” with a place placing of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The authorities apparently feared that the Uyghur man had traveled on pilgrimage to Mecca devoid of authorization, warning that these a move could produce 15 decades in jail.

As Tencent’s pattern of censorship and info sharing with China’s repressive governing administration carries on and intensifies, now is the time to contemplate actions that could possibly assist shield the fundamental legal rights of all buyers, irrespective of their place and nationality.

Tencent’s Job in China

Established in 1998, Tencent and its popular programs have speedily emerged as ubiquitous factors of China’s communications, money, and social cloth. In January, the firm declared that WeChat alone experienced a billion lively daily end users.

Though the firm has been forced since its inception to comply with demanding Chinese Communist Celebration information and facts controls, the blend of increasing federal government needs and WeChat’s in close proximity to current market saturation in China has greater the scope and effect of its complicity.

In the realm of censorship, media experiences and expert investigation suggest that WeChat has been refining the use of artificial intelligence to recognize and delete images, which netizens usually employ to evade censorship and surveillance of textual content-centered communications. The system has also shuttered 1000’s of independently operated social media accounts that produced unauthorized information and evaluation. These and other forms of censorship noticeably distort the information gained by Chinese users on crucial subjects. Analysis by researchers at Hong Kong University’s WeChatscope undertaking, which tracks deletions from some 4,000 general public accounts on the platform, located that among the the most censored topics in 2018 ended up key information stories like the U.S.-China trade dispute, the arrest in Canada of Huawei main financial officer Meng Wanzhou, the #MeToo motion, and public wellbeing scandals.

Monitoring of user exercise on the platform has been built less difficult by improved enforcement of serious-identify registration necessities for cell phones, the digital payment functions of WeChat, massive-scale law enforcement purchases of smartphone scanners, and new regulations facilitating general public safety agencies’ entry to data centers. As indicated earlier mentioned, content from Tencent applications is staying immediately “spoon-fed” to law enforcement in some circumstances.

This surveillance is increasingly main to legal repercussions for regular buyers. A sample of conditions tracked in Liberty House’s China Media Bulletin above the earlier calendar year function penalties in opposition to a lot of WeChat customers for mocking President Xi Jinping, criticizing judicial officials, commenting on massive floods, sharing data about human rights abuses, or expressing views related to their persecuted religion or ethnicity, be they Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, or Falun Gong practitioners. The punishments have ranged from quite a few days of administrative detention to lots of many years in jail, in some scenarios for remarks that had been ostensibly shared privately with close friends. These dynamics have inevitably inspired self-censorship on the system.

World Expansion

Although WeChat’s key consumer base is in China, an estimated 100 to 200 million people outside the house the state use the messaging assistance. Amid them are thousands and thousands of users of the Chinese diaspora in nations like Canada, Australia, and the United States, but there is also broader enlargement in a great deal of Asia. Malaysia is reportedly property to 20 million WeChat buyers, out of a populace of 31 million. In Thailand, an estimated 17 p.c of the populace has a WeChat account. In Mongolia, WeChat was the second most downloaded software in 2017. Merchants in Myanmar’s Shan state together the border with China have taken up the application, and the variety of stores in Japan that take WePay (largely when serving Chinese vacationers) increased 35-fold past year.

Tencent recently obtained a $150 million stake in the popular information aggregator Reddit and is eyeing an entrance into the on line video clip sector in Taiwan, in accordance to Taiwanese officials.

Evidence that politicized censorship and surveillance might influence Tencent users outdoors China has begun to emerge. A 2016 examine by Citizen Lab found that conversations among an abroad consumer and a contact inside China ended up topic to particular forms of key phrase censorship, and that once an account is registered with a Chinese telephone variety, it remains subject to mainland controls even outside the region.

In Australia, a far more new research of information resources out there to the Chinese diaspora identified negligible political coverage of China on the WeChat channels of Chinese-language news companies. Extremely, in between March and August 2017, none of the WeChat channels posted a single post on Chinese politics, regardless of the operate-up to the vital 19th Party Congress that tumble. In Canada, WeChat censors have deleted a member of Parliament’s concept to constituents praising Hong Kong’s Umbrella Motion protesters, manipulated dissemination of news reports associated to Meng Wanzhou’s arrest, and blocked broader media coverage of Chinese government corruption and leading officials.

Amid a large crackdown in Xinjiang, Chinese law enforcement have also harnessed WeChat to hook up with overseas Uyghurs, need individual details or aspects about activists, and insert condition displays into personal groups.

How to Answer

Irrespective of whether or not Tencent is a unwilling or an keen accomplice to the Chinese government’s repressive policies, the actuality is that Tencent employees can be envisioned to censor, observe, and report personal communications and private info, in lots of scenarios foremost to harmless people’s arrest and torture.

This really should be the starting issue for anyone contemplating applying, regulating, or investing in the company’s providers.

For people inside China, it is just about not possible today to purpose with out applying WeChat to some extent. But people would be perfectly encouraged to exercising caution, restricting the software to its most sensible features and consulting offered guides on boosting digital protection and accessing facts on latest affairs more securely. (Independence Residence posted a established of these means final 12 months.)

Buyers outside China, particularly those people with out loved ones or buddies on the mainland, should really rethink regardless of whether WeChat is genuinely critical to their day-to-day life. People who do talk with individual contacts in China can help secure them by directing them to a lot more protected applications if a sensitive topic will come up, or using homonyms to substitute perhaps problematic terms, as some journalists have documented undertaking. Users in the Chinese diaspora need to examine means of increasing their sources of information and information beyond what is accessible on WeChat.

As governments all around the planet check out to deal with troubles related to “fake information,” political manipulation, and weak information protections on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, Chinese counterparts like WeChat should be topic to at the very least as a great deal scrutiny and regulation — and be held accountable for any violations. Governments and organizations really should also restrict use of WeChat among their workforce, significantly those people who function with delicate facts, as the governments of Australia and India have not too long ago carried out. Politicians communicating with their Chinese-speaking constituents really should make absolutely sure to do so across a diversity of platforms, not just those people that are topic to Chinese authorities command.

Worldwide civil society groups can help equally users and democratic governments by sustaining up-to-day electronic stability guides out there in Chinese, documenting the extent to which material outside the house China is censored or monitored on WeChat, and exploring authorized recourse for individuals whose legal rights could have been violated by Tencent’s methods.

Finally, traders in Tencent really should seriously take into consideration the moral and political implications of their help for the organization. Any one concerned about human legal rights, electoral interference by international powers, or privacy violations by tech giants must divest from the business, such as retirement resources. Socially dependable financial investment options really should exclude Tencent from their portfolios if they have not presently. Even from a purely monetary standpoint, Tencent shares may possibly not be a wise purchase. The stock’s rate has dropped 19 percent above the previous 12 months, at least in component since of tighter federal government controls on consumer communications. Presented that Chinese regulators are now turning their interest to the gaming marketplace, the company’s most rewarding spot of activity, its price is possible to dip further. As stock analyst Leo Solar has warned, “investors in Chinese tech providers should really in no way underestimate the government’s potential to throttle their progress.”

No amount of pushback from buyers, democratic governments, civil culture teams, or investors is very likely to modify Tencent’s complicity with the Chinese government’s repressive actions. Its extremely survival depends on dutiful adherence to Communist Bash directives. But the ways prompt above would do a great deal to restrict the present-day and probable long run injury brought on by the company’s methods — for personal users, for the world’s open up societies, and for the pretty notion of absolutely free expression in the digital age.

Sarah Cook dinner is a Senior Study Analyst for East Asia at Flexibility Dwelling and director of its China Media Bulletin.

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#China censorship #China online censorship #china social media #Tencent #The Debate #WeChat #Asia #As

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foursproutwealth-blog · 7 years ago

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A Chinese province is collecting DNA and iris scans from all its residents

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/a-chinese-province-is-collecting-dna-and-iris-scans-from-all-its-residents/

A Chinese province is collecting DNA and iris scans from all its residents

Authorities in one Chinese province are collecting DNA, iris scans, fingerprints and blood types from residents.

The biometric data collection appears to be mandatory.

This province also monitors residents with facial-recognition cameras, surveillance apps, and voice-recognition technology.

Authorities in the Chinese province of Xinjiang have begun collecting DNA and biometrics from all its residents, Human Rights Watch reported Wednesday.

All residents between 12 and 65 are having DNA samples, fingerprints, iris scans, and blood types collected.

Called The Population Registration Program, police will be collecting iris scans and fingerprints during home visits or by creating centralized collection points. Medical authorities will collect DNA samples and blood type information during yearly physicals that are then sent to police bureaus “for profiling.”

Participation does not appear to be optional. One man told Human Rights Watch that local committee members “had demanded that they [people in his neighborhood] must participate in the physicals.”

Guidelines direct officials “to ensure that [information from] every household in every village, every person in every household, every item for every person” is collected.

It is also unclear whether locals getting examinations — under the program ‘Physicals for All,’ which ended in October — know their medical data is being collected.

“Xinjiang authorities should rename their physical exams project ‘Privacy Violations for All,’ as informed consent and real choice does not seem to be part of these programs,” Sophie Richardson, China director of Human Rights Watch, said. “The mandatory data-banking of a whole population’s biodata, including DNA, is a gross violation of international human rights norms, and it’s even more disturbing if it is done surreptitiously, under the guise of a free health care program.”

Xinjiang has a very different population to the rest of China

The demographics of Xinjiang are very different to the rest of China, and have led to strong government crackdowns.

Across China, 92% of residents are ethnic Hans. But in Xinjiang, 49% of its 20 million residents are ethnically Uyghurs, most of whom are Muslim.

Living in China’s largest province with their own strong ethnic identity and language, Uyghur people face discrimination and a large share of government oversight to suppress any potential separatism.

Reports have emerged this year of men, women and children being detained at “political education” centers in Xinjiang, where they are forced to watch government propaganda videos and renounce their ethnic and religious identities.

Uyghurs are living in a surveillance state

Government surveillance in Xinjiang is ubiquitous.

In the last year Xinjiang recruited more than 90,000 personnel for security positions. Nearly all of them will work at 7,500 “convenience police stations” dotted throughout the region.

Facial-recognition cameras are common and authorities have requested residents install surveillance apps on their phones.

In 2016 Xinjiang police bureaus began collecting residents’ voice samples. This was likely an early step toward China’s national voice database, that will be able to automatically identify targeted voices in phone conversations.

Also in 2016, several areas of Xinjiang announced that locals would need approval to travel overseas.

All passport holders had to report to local police stations where their passports would be held for “safekeeping.” Once passports were handed over, those wanting to travel internationally would need to apply for ” approval to leave the country.”

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