I know that it's such a pain to even try reading long articles online, and I notice there isn't many international posts here, but if any of you are serious readers, this really interesting (and scary), so I wanted to share it.
Surviving the Crackdown in Xinjiang
As mass detentions and surveillance dominate the lives of China’s Uyghurs and Kazakhs, a woman struggles to free herself.
By Raffi Khatchadourian
In 2005, the Chinese government began placing surveillance cameras throughout the country, in a plan called Project Skynet. After Xi Jinping came to power, China rolled out an enhanced version, Sharp Eyes, envisioned as a system of half a billion cameras that were “omnipresent, fully networked, always on and fully controllable.” In Beijing, virtually no corner went unobserved. The cameras were eventually paired with facial-recognition software, giving the authorities a staggering level of intrusiveness. At toilets in Beijing’s Temple of Heaven Park, facial scans insured that users could take no more than seventy centimetres of toilet paper at a time…
Xinjiang itself has become a laboratory for digital surveillance. By 2013, officials in Ürümqi had begun to affix QR codes to the exterior of homes, which security personnel could scan to obtain details about residents. On Chen Quanguo’s arrival, all cars were fitted with state-issued G.P.S. trackers. Every new cell-phone number had to be registered, and phones were routinely checked; authorities could harvest everything from photos to location data. Wi-Fi “sniffers” were installed to extract identifying data from computers and other devices. Chen also launched a program called Physicals for All, gathering biometric data—blood types, fingerprints, voiceprints, iris patterns—under the guise of medical care. Every Xinjiang resident between the ages of twelve and sixty-five was required to provide the state with a DNA sample..
Tens of thousands of security officers were given the ijop app and prodded to upload information to it. A forensic analysis of the software, commissioned by Human Rights Watch, revealed thirty-six “person types” that could trigger a problematic assessment. They included people who did not use a mobile phone, who used the back door instead of the front, or who consumed an “unusual” amount of electricity. Even an “abnormal” beard might be cause for concern. Socializing too little was suspicious, and so was maintaining relationships that were deemed “complex.” The platform treated untrustworthiness like a contagion: if a person seemed insufficiently loyal, her family was also likely infected…
The detainees were forbidden to sit on their beds during the day, though after lunch they were made to lie down, with eyes shut, for a compulsory nap. At 10 p.m., they were ordered to sleep, but the lights in their cells were never turned off, and they were not allowed to cover their eyes with a blanket or a towel. (The younger women volunteered to take the top bunks, to shield the older ones from the light.) If anyone spoke, everyone in the room would be punished with an ear-splitting reprimand from a blown-out loudspeaker. Any nighttime request to use the bathroom was treated with contempt, and eventually the women stopped asking. Dispirited, uncomfortable, often verbally abused, they masked their pain, because displays of sadness were also punished. “You are not allowed to cry here,” the guards had told them. School taught them how to turn from the cameras, hide their faces, and quietly cry themselves to sleep.
For the whole article:
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/12/surviving-the-crackdown-in-xinjiang