China's mass surveillance state

[Double Edge]

China allowed diplomats from twelve countries with large muslim populations to tour around Xianjiang last month. These diplomats came from Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Thailand, and Kuwait

China takes diplomats from 12 countries, including India, on trip to Uyghur-dominated Xinjiang | HT | Jan 09 2019

“Xinjiang is an open place,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in a briefing in Beijing earlier this week. But he cautioned those who would visit to “abide by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and refrain from interfering in others’ internal affairs or undermining others’ sovereignty.”

All good

Exhibit A - Smiling Uighurs

No problems in xiangjiang



The harassment and beatings will continue until morale improves -- The management

[Oracle]

China is 'in a league of its own' on human rights violations, Pompeo says
Pompeo singled out Beijing for detaining members of Muslim minority groups as he unveiled annual human rights report

China is “in a league of its own” when it comes to human rights violations, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said on Wednesday as he unveiled the state department’s annual report on human rights around the world.

Pompeo also highlighted abuses in Iran, South Sudan and Nicaragua but singled out Beijing for its mass detention of members of Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang region.

China, often seen as the main strategic adversary of the United States in the long term and locked in thorny trade talks with Washington, “is in a league of its own when it comes to human rights violations”, he said.

The report said that authorities in the region have arbitrarily detained 800,000 to possibly more than 2 million Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs and other Muslims in internment camps designed to erase religious and ethnic identities.

“For me, you haven’t seen things like this since the 1930s,” said Michael Kozak, the head of the state department’s human rights and democracy bureau.

“Rounding up, in some estimations ... in the millions of people, putting them into camps, and torturing them, abusing them and trying to basically erase their culture and their religion and so on from their DNA. It’s just remarkably awful.”

Kozak said China had initially denied there even were camps, and is now saying “there are camps, but they’re some kind of labor training camps and it’s all very voluntary”.

The report came hours after a senior official in Xinjiang hinted that the system of internment centres – which China describes as vocational training centres – may one day be phased out.

“In general there will be fewer and fewer students in the centres. If one day our society doesn’t need them, the education and training centres will disappear,” said Shohrat Zakir, the governor of the region and its most senior Uighur official.

Zakir’s comments come after months of mounting international criticism, and signal what could be a new phase in China’s campaign in Xinjiang, as the costs prove unsustainable for local governments and a significant portion of the population passes through the camps.

The state department report said government officials in China had claimed the camps were needed to combat terrorism, separatism and extremism. However, international media, human rights organizations and former detainees have reported that security officials in the camps abused, tortured and killed some detainees, it said.

“It is one of the most serious human rights violations in the world today,” said Kozak.

Pompeo also said the Iranian government had killed more than 20 people and arrested thousands without due process for protesting for their rights “continuing a pattern of cruelty the regime has inflicted on the Iranian people for the last four decades”.

In South Sudan, he said that military forces inflicted sexual violence against civilians based on their political allegiances and ethnicity, while in Nicaragua, peaceful protesters had faced sniper fire and government critics had “faced a policy of exile, jail or death”.

The report also revised its usual description of the Golan Heights from “Israeli-occupied” to “Israeli-controlled”.

A separate section on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, areas that Israel captured along with the Golan Heights in a 1967 war in the Middle East, also did not refer to those territories as being “occupied”, or under “occupation”.

[Oracle]

China 'at war with faith' says US ambassador at large

Hong Kong (CNN)US Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback has accused the Chinese Communist Party of being "at war with faith," and warned that its policies risk stoking extremism.

Speaking at the Foreign Correspondent's Club in Hong Kong on Friday, the ambassador, a former US senator, said in recent years there had been increasing discrimination against Catholics, Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists across China.

"What does the Chinese Communist Party have to fear from its faithful people? Why can't it trust its people with the Bible? Why can't Uyghur children be named Mohammad? Why can't the Tibetans choose and venerate their own religious leaders like they have for more than a thousand years?" Brownback said.

China was registered along with 10 other nations as a "countries of particular concern" by the US in December 2018 under the International Religious Freedom Act, due to "systematic, ongoing (and) egregious violations of religious freedom."

Brownback's speech joins a growing tide of international condemnation of Beijing following reports that more than a million Muslim majority Uyghur have been detained by authorities in massive camps in the western region of Xinjiang.

The Chinese government originally denied the existence of the camps but now says they are "vocational training centers" designed to combat Muslim extremism in the province.

But former detainees and human rights activists have offered a different story, one of mass re-education inside the camps, physical torture and death. One former inmate told CNN she saw nine of her fellow detainees die due to the hostile conditions.

Brownback said Friday the detentions of Uyghurs were "arbitrary" and based on their religious practices. "We need to call these camps what they are -- they're internment camps, created to wipe out the cultural and religious identity of minority communities," he said.

Contrary to China's claims, Brownback said the inmates are subject to "physical and psychological torture, intense political indoctrination and forced labor." Rather than solving an extremism crisis as China alleges, "they are creating one," Brownback said.

The US ambassador at large also raised concerns over the treatment of Tibetan Buddhists by Beijing as well as China's large Christian community, who have seen growing repression in the past year.

Brownback isn't alone in condemning the Xinjiang camps. In February, Turkey's Foreign Ministry prominently denounced the "torture and political brainwashing" in a statement, asking for the UN to intervene.

US Vice President Mike Pence said in October China was involved in "around-the-clock brainwashing" in the centers.

But despite the tough stance, some US lawmakers have claimed the Trump administration isn't doing enough to stop the abuses in Xinjiang. A bipartisan group of politicians wrote a letter to the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling for "meaningful action."

When asked by journalists, Brownback said the US administration didn't "discuss internal matters" about possible action against China over Xinjiang. He said his staff had requested access to the camps and be turned down.

But he said he didn't want to go to the camps just to "get a show," he wanted to be able to go inside and talk to the inmates freely.

"I get regularly now, every week, list of names of people that are held in prison in internment camps in Xinjiang from concerned family members. Dozens, hundreds of names from people who are seeking just to know what's happening with their relatives," he said.

[Double Edge]

The Americans are pushing the Uighur line more of late

Pompeo Calls on China to Stop 'Abhorrent' Practice of Interning Uighur Muslims | VOA | Mar 26 2019

[Double Edge]

Back to the topic at hand.

China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone

Just heard of this "social credit" system and its truly scary in terms of the way it can control people's lives.

The complicated truth about China's social credit system | Wired | Jan 21 2019

If the parents don't keep their scores up then the kid may not get a shot at a good school. For others low scores mean no access to fast train tickets.

Its taking the idea of a credit score and turning it into a social score. A defaulter not only cannot get loans but there are further consequences.

Way to fix a low score is to donate to charity, what charity it is used for isn't known.

Whoever controls this data is ripe for corruption.

[Freyr]

Things are so good in China that its business community invests billions in America and elsewhere where their money is safer.

[Oracle]

After locking up as many as a million people in camps in Xinjiang, Chinese authorities are destroying Uighur neighborhoods and purging the region's culture. They say they’re fighting terrorism. Their aim: to engineer a society loyal to Beijing. Photo illustration: Sharon Shi. Video: Clément Bürge

[Oracle]

China is 'a threat to the whole world and should be split up into 10 countries', says dissident writer
Dissident writer Liao Yiwu said it's better for mankind if China 'splits up'
Liao was jailed for his poem called 'Massacre' on the Tiananmen Square protests
He said he wants to return to his native Sichuan province when 'it's independent'

A dissident writer dubbed the 'Chinese Solzhenitsyn' said Friday that his homeland is a 'threat for the whole world'.

Liao Yiwu, who was jailed for writing a poem called 'Massacre' about the Tiananmen Square protests, told AFP that it would be better for mankind if the economic superpower 'splits up'.

'My dream is that China splits up into 10 or so countries. Because China as it is today is a threat for the whole world,' he said as his latest book, 'Bullets and Opium', was published in France.

The book, which has been banned in China, recounts the stories of dozens of victims of the Tiananmen massacre, when troops killed thousands of pro-democracy protesters in Beijing in 1989.

The massacre, which is also known as the 'June Fourth Incident', is a major taboo in China.

Liao, who has been living in exile in Berlin since 2011, said, 'Returning to China is not a big concern for me. I would like to go back to my native Sichuan - when it's independent. Then I would be delighted to return.'

Liao, a poet and musician who also reported on the lives of the Chinese poor, was tortured in prison, according to human rights groups, and harassed by the police on his release.

He told AFP that he was 'very pessimistic' about his country under the increasing authoritarian rule of President Xi Jinping.

'Thirty years ago we thought we might develop towards democracy. Today it is all about making money.

'Every one of the Western countries which criticised China after the (Tiananmen) massacre fight with each other now to do business with the executioners even as they continue to arrest and kill people,' Liao added.

He poured scorn on the fact that Xi Jinping's daughter studied at Harvard along with the children of other Communist Party leaders. 'Even the leaders' mistresses are getting grants to study' at the US university, he claimed.

'Those who have scruples are marginalised while those who make money without criticising the party can do what they want,' said the 60-year-old.

But Liao insisted that Tiananmen is the major turning point in recent Chinese history.

'For me, as for all Chinese people, it was a cataclysmic moment,' he said.

'You cannot mention the massacre in China, it's taboo. My struggle is to make the truth of what happened known to as many people as I can.'

The writer said that three decades on 'we still don't know the exact number of victims'.

Human rights groups believe that between 2,600 and 3,000 people died after 200,000 soldiers were brought in to encircle the Chinese capital.

British diplomatic cables declassified in 2017 put initial estimates of the death toll at around 10,000.

'The Mothers of Tiananmen group have published 202 names but we know there was a lot more than that,' Liao added.

As for the young man standing in front of a tank, who became a symbol of the peaceful protest, 'we still don't know his name or his fate,' he added.

'The name Wang Weilin given to him by Western journalists was invented. We know nothing about him even though he is the symbol of the millions of people who opposed the tyranny of June 4,' the writer said.

Liao's book 'Testimonials' about his time in prison has been compared to the Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 'The Gulag Archipelago', and was praised by Chinese Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, who died in 2017 after spending years in prison.

Territorial issues are deeply sensitive in China and any suggestions that the country could be broken up are likely to stoke outrage.

Last year hotel chain Marriott was strongly criticised by Chinese authorities for listing Taiwan - along with Tibet and Hong Kong - as separate countries, all regions which Beijing claims under its authority.

In May, US clothing retailer Gap apologised to China over a T-shirt with a map showing the mainland but omitting Taiwan - self-ruled since 1949 - which Beijing considers a rebel province awaiting reunification.

[Double Edge]

Global Silence on China’s Gulag | Project Syndicate | Apr 08 2019

How does China get away with this shit ? if anybody says anything they could care less. So now nobody says anything ? why bother.

If nobody says anything then doing anything is out of the question

The last thing China needs right now is more enemies. Yet Xi has used his unbridled power to expand China’s global footprint and lay bare his imperial ambitions. His repression of Muslim minorities may or may not lead to international action against China. But it will almost certainly spawn a new generation of Islamist terrorists, compounding China’s internal-security challenges. China’s domestic security budget is already larger than its bloated defense budget, which makes it second only to the United States in terms of military spending. The Soviet Union once held the same position – until it collapsed.

A matter of time ?

[Double Edge]

China is 'a threat to the whole world and should be split up into 10 countries', says dissident writer
Dissident writer Liao Yiwu said it's better for mankind if China 'splits up'
Liao was jailed for his poem called 'Massacre' on the Tiananmen Square protests
He said he wants to return to his native Sichuan province when 'it's independent'
[ATTACH]47536[/ATTACH]

Well there are some either very brave or completely crazy people in that country : D

People: Nobody can stop them!

Tank Man: I am Nobody.

[Double Edge]

Anniversary of Jun 4 means veteran China watchers recounting their experiences on the ground as events unfolded.

[Double Edge]

China is leading the way and very few are saying anything. I like how he picks up common points from around the world.

Civilisationalism: Ignoring early warning signs at one’s peril | TWMES | Jun 03 2019

By James M. Dorsey

A controversy about a University of British Columbia invitation to a Chinese advocate of forced re-education and assimilation of ethnic minorities highlights the risks involved in ignoring early stage civilisationalism, the emerging system of principles of governance underwriting a new world order that defines states in civilizational rather than national terms and legitimizes violations of human rights.

While the invitation sparked opposition that raised freedom of speech issues, it also spotlighted the consequences of US, European and Muslim failure to recognize initial indications that China was moving away from its long-standing policy of promoting inter-communal harmony by preserving minority cultures and ensuring that they benefitted from economic growth.

The erosion of China’s long-standing policy has consequences far beyond the boundaries of Tibet and China’s troubled north-western province of Xinjiang that is home to its Turkic Muslim population. It legitimizes repression of minority rights across the globe raising the spectre of inter-communal strife in societies that have long sought to foster variations of multi-culturalism and social harmony.

Calls for a rethink of China’s ethnic policy emerged in 2012 after two men set themselves on fire outside Tibetan Buddhism’s holiest temple in the center of Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. The International Campaign for Tibet, an advocacy group, last year published the names of 155 Tibetans who have self-immolated since 2009.

Back in 2012, military officials, businessmen, intellectuals, netizens, and dissidents asserted that the self-immolations attested to a failure of policy in what was a public debate of a long secretive and sensitive topic.

The debate was fuelled by concerns that China’s official recognition of 56 different nationalities resident within its borders risked it becoming another example of the post-Communist break-up of states such as the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.

It was also informed by a series of incidents in Xinjiang and other parts of China, including inter-communal violence in 2004 between Han Chinese and Hui Muslims, widely viewed as China’s most integrated Muslim community, that left some 150 people dead.

It was in that environment that Hu Angang, an economist and founding director of Tsinghua University’s Center for China Studies, one of China’s most influential think tanks, urged the government to adopt an imposed melting pot approach that would create a “collective civic culture and identity.” It was an invitation extended to Mr. Angang that sparked controversy at the University of British Colombia.

Mr. Hu’s policy recommendations, articulated in a widely published article co-authored in 2011 by fellow researcher Hu Lianhe, a pioneer of terrorism studies in China who has since become a senior official of the Chinese communist party’s United Front Work department in Xinjiang, appear to have provided a template or at least a framework for China’s brutal crackdown on Turkic Muslims.

Xinjiang serves as a prime example of the risks of failing to respond to civilisationalism’s early warning signs.

Up to one million people are believed to have been detained in re-education camps dubbed “'vocational education' and employment training centres” by the government where inmates are taught Mandarin, allegedly forced to violate Muslim dietary and religious practices, and browbeaten with the notion that Xi Jinping thought, the precepts of China’s president, supersede Islamic teaching.

Messrs. Hu warned that regional ethnic elites and interests enabled by China’s acceptance of what amounted to minority rights could lead to separatism on the country’s strategic frontiers. They suggested that the central committee of the Communist party had recognized this by pushing in 2010 for “ethnic contact, exchange and blending.”

To achieve that, the two men advocated removing ethnicity from all official documents; demographic policies that would water down geographic concentration of ethnic minorities and ensure a ‘proper’ population mix; emphasis on the use of Mandarin as the national language; promotion of China as the prime identity of minorities; and taking steps to counter religious extremism.

James Leibold, a China scholar, who raised alarm bells early on and focused attention on Messrs. Hu’s analysis and the Chinese debate, lamented at the time that “few in the West…seem to be listening.”

Mr. Leibold echoed his warning six years later when Mr. Lianhe last August stepped for the first time onto the international stage to defend the Chinese crackdown at a meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

“The emergence of Hu Lianhe portends a significant shift in both the institutional and policy direction emanating out of Beijing, and suggests that what is happening in Xinjiang is the leading edge of a new, more coercive ethnic policy under Xi Jinping’s ‘New Era’ of Chinese power, one that seeks to accelerate the political and cultural transformation of non-Han ethnic minorities,” Mr. Leibold said.

Describing Mr. Lianhe as an influential party official and intellectual, Mr. Leibold suggested China was acting in Xinjiang and Tibet on the official’s assertion in 2010 that “stability is about liberating man, standardizing man, developing man and establishing the desired working social order.” Mr. Lianhe advocated adopting his approach across the country.

In Xinjiang, standardization translates into government announcements that local officials are visiting Uyghur homes during this year’s fasting month of Ramadan to ensure that they are not observing the religious commandment.

"We must take effective action to end the gossiping about high level Party organs; finding fault, feigning compliance, and praising in public while singing a different tune in private or when alcohol is on the table", Mr. Leibold quoted a confidential memo written by local officials in Xinjiang as saying.

In hard-line remarks to this weekend’s Shangri-La Asian Security Dialogue in Singapore, Chinese defense minister Wei Fenghe, wearing a military uniform with a chest full of ribbons, asserted that “the policy in Xinjiang is absolutely right because over the past two years there is no single terrorist attack in Xinjiang.

The living standards of the local people have improved. The number of tourists to Xinjiang is over 150 million people…. The average GDP of people in Xinjiang is 7,500 US dollars… Xinjiang has carried out vocational education and training centres to ensure that there are no terrorist attacks, to help these people deradicalize and help these people have some skills. Then they can better reintegrate into society. Isn’t that a good thing?” General Wei asked.

It is good thing on the assumption that economic progress can ultimately and sustainably trump cultural and/or ethnic aspirations and that it justifies a policy that critics have dubbed cultural genocide by in the words of Mr. Leibold abolishing “non-Han cultural, linguistic and religious practices” and eroding social trust.

The policy’s success depends on the sustainable Uyghur internalization through re-education and repression of religious and cultural practices as a survival strategy or out of fear.

General Wei’s defense of the policy notwithstanding, renowned China scholar Yitzhak Shichor concluded in a recent study that the defense minister's People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has so far refrained from involvement in maintaining internal security in Xinjiang, making it the responsibility of para-military forces.

“That could change if the civilian police force and PAP fail in their mission,” Mr. Shichor quoted former US army and military intelligence China expert Dennis J. Blasko as saying. Mr. Blasko was referring to the People’s Armed Police by its acronym PAP.

General Wei and Mr. Hu’s Xinjiang’s statements are but the most extreme example of civilizationalist politics that have globally given rise to Islamophobia; Hindu nationalism; rising anti-Semitism; jihadist massacres of minorities including Christians and Yazidis, lax attitudes towards white supremacism and efforts by some leaders to recreate ethnically and/or religiously homogeneous societies.

Civilisationalists’ deemphasizing of human, women’s and minority rights means reduced likelihood that incidents of radicalization and ethnic and religious conflict can be pre-empted. The risk of conflict and societal strife are enhanced by increased obsession with migration that erases escaping to safer harbours as an option.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture.

[Oracle]

Well there are some either very brave or completely crazy people in that country : D

People: Nobody can stop them!

Tank Man: I am Nobody.

That was good.

[Double Edge]

That was good.

What if the guy was just stoned, had a case of the munchies, headed off to the shop and on his way back he sees this.

He's telling them clear off waving his shopping bags : D

[Oracle]

What if the guy was just stoned, had a case of the munchies, headed off to the shop and on his way back he sees this.

He's telling them clear off waving his shopping bags : D

Haha.