China Keeping Records on Muslims

China Keeping Records on Muslims
Short Title	China Collects and Analyzes Personal Information on Muslims in Order to Identify Unpatriotic Behavior
Location	China
Date	February 2020
Solove Harm	Surveillance, Exclusion, Decisional Interference, Aggregation
Information	Identifying, Behavioral, Family, Social Network, Knowledge and Belief, Professional
Threat Actors	Chinese government
Individuals
Affected	Chinese Muslims
High Risk Groups	Religious Minority, Ethnic Minority
Tangible Harms	Anxiety, Changed Behavior, Incarceration, Loss of Knowledge

China was found to be collecting and analyzing large amount of personal information on Chinese Muslims Uyghurs in order to identify who's behavior is potentially unpatriotic.

Description

China’s vast western region of Xinjiang has for centuries been home to a large population of predominantly Muslim ethnic groups, the largest of which is the Uyghur.

In 2019 Chinese government appeared to have a strategic campaign to strip Muslim-majority Uyghurs of their cultural and religious identity and suppress behavior considered to be unpatriotic.

Hundreds of government reports that were collected on people in order to target potential extremists, have been leaked to journalists by a patchwork of exiled Uyghur activists. These documents reveal records that the government collects in order to surveil cultural and religious identities of people.

One woman told the media she couldn’t sleep or eat for days after she read the detailed records the Chinese government had been keeping on her entire family. They had no way of knowing about these records, so it can be seen as Exclusion.

In this document there was also information about this woman’s sister, who appeared to be in detention center for “violation of family planning policy”. China’s two-child policy is an example of Decisional Interference.

The leaked document appears to be a compilation of 667 records and in total they represent 311 individuals who were sent to detention centers.

The leaked evaluations contain detailed reports on each of the detained residents and their families, including not only their national ID numbers and occupations, but descriptions of their neighbors and rigorous assessments of their daily religious activity, as well as their jobs, their religious activity, their trustworthiness and their level of cooperation with the authorities.

These elements are referred to in the document as the Three Circles -- family, social and religious associations. Based on these evaluations, each record also contains an official judgment on whether the detainee should be allowed to leave their camp. This is an example of Aggregation

Sources

https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/02/asia/xinjiang-china-karakax-document-intl-hnk/