Nation Profile
THOUGHT LEADERS
World’s Largest Prison? China’s tech-authoritarianism and the persecution of the Uyghurs
C
an you imagine a society,” Nurey Turkel asks, “where everywhere you go, you are under the camera, where the mobile device you’re carrying is essentially a tracking and listening device?”
In a recent episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek sat down with Uyghur American human rights advocate Nury Turkel, vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Turkel’s new book, “No Escape: The True Story of China’s Genocide of the Uyghurs,” is a chilling look into China’s techno-autocracy and what can result when a communist regime runs unchecked for decades. Researchers estimate that the Chinese regime has detained more than 1 million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities in the far west region of Xinjiang, in a campaign that the U.S. government and other Western parliaments have designated a genocide. JAN JEKIELEK: In “No
Escape,” you describe a man being interrogated and this technocratic regime that’s 52 I N S I G H T June 10–16, 2022
working to use the information that he passed on. NUREY TURKEL: That in-
dividual, who had committed no crimes, had a foreign contact and was picked up by Chinese security. They relied on his travel history, foreign contacts, and even some social contacts to create this massive database involving him. The machine they used was spitting out names generated with the help of something called the integrated joint operating platform, or IJOP. MR . JEKIELEK: Altogeth-
er, Chinese security generated a database of 20,000 contacts—people who were one or two steps away from him. Not only that, they actually went after most of them. MR . TURKEL: In a 10-day
period in 2017, Chinese security put out arrest warrants for more than 20,000 people. The police were able to locate about 17,000. Their lives were shattered. No one asked what
“This regime is afraid of its own population. How can such a government be normalized?”
Nury Turkel, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
