by Valentin Popescu

China has in the recent past created internal and external mechanisms to further monitor and control Uyghur population in the Western province of Xinjiang. Internally, they have instituted a new system involving ‘managers’ who are responsible for monitoring Uyghur households, creating fake families from the Han Chinese majority. This feeds into the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission (PLAC) of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Externally, China has secured its flanks by increasing its clout in many international organizations, including the UN. Financial clout combined with institutional power has given China a range of options to monitor and check the activities of Uyghur worldwide. This is a new and unprecedented danger to the international world order as we know it.

Growing clout in international organisations

One aspect of China’s increasing presence in international organisations and growing political and economic clout is that it allows imposition of more stringent measures against its minority communities and Chinese dissidents. For instance, China has signed extradition treaties with 59 countries, of which 39 have been ratified. The PRC has misused the treaties to bring back Uyghur, Tibetan and other Chinese dissidents from overseas.

Furthermore, China has misused the Interpol’s Red Notice system. It has done this by issuing politically motivated notices that seek the arrest and extradition of Chinese dissidents and others. Reports indicate that in 2016 alone, China issued over 600 notices, while the figure was 500 in the previous year. China uses the Interpol system as a means, to bring back political dissidents from countries with which it does not have an extradition treaty. This political clearly violates Article 3 of the Interpol Constitution which “strictly forbids the organisation to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.”

Zumretay Arkin of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) stated at the 48th UNHRC Session that, in 2009 Cambodian authorities had deported 22 Uyghurs to China, whereas in 2017 the Egyptian government extradited 22 Uyghur students at the request of China, which led to their disappearance. Moreover, since 2015, 109 Uyghur in Thailand have been held in detention centers, but their whereabouts remain unknown. Uyghur are constantly living in fear of being extradited to China, not for having committed any crimes, but just for being Uyghur.

Trinity Mechanisms in Xinjiang

It is in this context that recent research sheds light on the mechanisms of policing and surveillance put in place in Xinjiang. Writing in The Sunday Morning Herald Eryk Bagshaw states that China has implemented a threepronged strategy for Xinjiang. This involves, firstly, the deployment of managers, responsible for at least ten Uyghur households. Next, fake families from the Han Chinese majority, whose job is to monitor Uyghur households and finally, CPLAC of the CPC which oversees the entire thing. Household ‘managers’ are trained in intelligence, propaganda, and re-education, while fake families are appointed to “show warmth” to their appointed Uyghur relatives, while watching their homes for any signs of religious or political subversion. The PLAC oversees this operation and is notified of every single “enemy movement” which includes having an unexpected visitor at home, driving a car that does not belong to them, receiving an overseas phone call, or using file-sharing apps such as Zapya.

China has introduced intensive community policing and targeting of users of the mobile app Zapya. The CPLAC has established 9,000 police sub-stations in Xinjiang to monitor each community. Some time ago, a Uyghur teenager Anayat Ablitz was detained by Chinese authorities for eight months after he used the file-sharing app, Zapya. This app allows people to share movies, music and other material that is censored by China’s great firewall. Another aspect is the constant surveillance of those outside detention. Lately, it is not just the police which has been involved in this process, but also local Han Chinese families and some Uyghur who have become part of the intelligence system in exchange for economic and political gain.

CPC’s New Faces in Xinjiang

Yao Ning, a 36-year-old Harvard-educated CPC Secretary of Maralbeshi county and Yang Fasen, is the youngest ministerial-level official in Xinjiang at the age of 50 are among the figures involved in implementing the new system in Xinjiang. The latter is reportedly so passionate about the CPC that he burst into a song about how short life is, while giving a propaganda lecture.Yao Ning was one of 103 officials to meet Chairman Xi Jinping on the eve of the CPC’s 100th Anniversary in July 2021. Yang Fasen has been recently promoted as Vice Governor of the region. Prior to this he was the Secretary responsible for Hotan prefecture where 52 detention facilities have been built.Hotan is also the region where thousands of bus drivers have been mobilised to preach to passengers and monitor any sign of dissent.

Increased detentions in Tibet and Xinjiang

Pertinently, both in the case of Tibet and Xinjiang the issue of increasing number of detentions has become a cause for concern in the world. For example, four independent UN Human Rights Experts and bodies have said the rising case of detained Tibetans is a “worrying pattern of arbitrary and incommunicado detentions, closed trials, and unknown charges and verdicts against Tibetan religious minority in China, some of them amounting to enforced disappearances”.

At the 48th Session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, Kai Mueller, Executive Director, International Campaign for Tibet, Germany, raised the issue of cases of arbitrary detentions and disappearance of Tibetans. The ongoing wave of arrests in the Kardze prefecture, in Sichuan province and crackdown by authorities on language rights and possession of images of the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama was raised by Mueller. He also raised concern over the detention of Rinchen Tsultrim, a Tibetan monk and Go Sherab Gyatso, eminent Tibetan writer and scholar, who had been sentenced for merely exercising their right to freedom of speech.

Dolkun Isa, President, WUC who spoke at the 48th UNHRC Session said, “The Uyghur and other Turkic people are being targeted for their unique ethnic and religious identity”. Notably, he observed that numerous international reports had raised the issue of crimes committed by China in Xinjiang, including those listed in UN treaty bodies and Special Procedures. These included, extra-judicial internment of millions of people, gender-based violence, separation of families, forced labour, eradication of cultural and religious practices, mass surveillance using high technology, and enforced disappearances.

China thus continues to bully its minorities not only within China, but all over the world. Xinjiang and Tibet have come in for special attention and the gross violation of human rights poses a great threat to the idea of freedom and democracy the world over. The international community must intensively engage with China to stop these abuses by China towards its own people, as well as towards global democracy and political system. China’s disregard for concerns of the international community need to be institutionalized and taken forward in every which way possible.

—-* The writer is a London based blogger with interest in South Asian and East Asian issues.