8 minute read
World’s Larg est Prison?
THOUGHT LEADERS
World’s Largest Prison?
China’s tech-authoritarianism and the persecution of the Uyghurs
Can 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 working to use the information that he passed on.
NUREY TURKEL: That individual, 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: Altogether, 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
Nury Turkel,
vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
crime they had committed or what might happen to them in the future. The lives of those people are meaningless to the Chinese architects of today’s nightmare.
This tech-authoritarianism first started with a personal data collection that included voice samples, iris samples, and DNA samples. They created a massive database starting in 2012, involving people using WeChat, communicating, traveling, passport applications, all around the world. And because of IJOP, some Uyghurs made a conscious decision to delete from their devices foreign contacts, their children, even in some instances their spouses, in order to avoid being caught up in this network. Thousands of Uyghurs to this day cannot have normal contact because of IJOP.
This regime is afraid of its own population. How can such a government be normalized?
MR. JEKIELEK: How is it that you came to the United States?
MR. TURKEL: Getting a passport was the most difficult part, especially if you’re part of another group and not a mainstream Chinese citizen. The other challenging aspect was financial. As I point out in the book, my parents gave me their life savings to send me to America for my education.
MR. JEKIELEK: I guess at that time you weren’t really on their radar. The Uyghur nightmare essentially started with two things. One was the Tiananmen Square massacre, when the Chinese military killed thousands of students demanding democratic freedom. The other major event was the end of the Cold War, which involved several Central Asian countries with historical and cultural ties to the Uyghur people. That made the Chinese ratchet up their propaganda against Uyghurs.
I said to myself: “There’s no future for me in this country. There may not be even gainful employment for me as a member of an oppressed ethnic group in China.” That brought me to the United States in 1995.
The Artux City Vocational Skills Education Training Service Center, believed to be a reeducation camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained, north of Kashgar, Xinjiang region, China, on June 2, 2019.
MR. JEKIELEK: So for over 20 years, you’ve been advocating for the rights of the Uyghur people?
MR. TURKEL: And others who have been persecuted in similar fashion. mention the year 2016 many times in “No Escape.” The man who “pacified” Tibet was basically shifted to Xinjiang to do the same to the Uyghurs. That was a significant change.
MR. TURKEL: Absolutely. Chen Quanguo has a military background. He did an “amazing job” on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Tibet. We know now that he was the one who installed all the surveillance apparatus there. Because of his effort and “success” in squelching Tibetan resentment, he got promoted in August 2016.
When he was moved to Urumqi from Lhasa, he brought his own security detail, as reported by The New Yorker last year.
Leaked documents show that Chinese leader Xi Jinping essentially said, “Show no mercy.” So Chen told his officials, “Everyone should be rounded up.” Unlike in the United States or other liberal democracies, there’s no policy debate in China. If a supreme leader or his henchman says a few words, that becomes policy.
MR. JEKIELEK: In “No Escape,” you write: “Whenever Zumrat met someone she trusted in the streets, there was a little ritual each person would go through before exchanging tidbits of gossip. First, they would roll their eyes up, or to the left or right to indicate where the nearest surveillance camera was mounted, and then talk briefly, scratching their noses or mouths so that the words could not be deciphered by lipreading. As in other totalitarian states, paranoia became the watchword for survival, only more so, because China could use its cutting-edge artificial intelligence and high-tech monitoring to peer into the most private recesses of people’s lives.”
MR. TURKEL: Cameras are ubiquitous. The police can stop you and check your mobile device for problematic content.
That includes pictures, text messages, and call history.
Can you imagine a society where everywhere you go, you are under the camera, where the mobile device you’re carrying is essentially a tracking and listening device? Can you imagine going through checkpoints every day, subjecting yourself to daily humiliation, simply because you happen to be Uyghur?
U.S. State Department official Dan Nadel said that China has created an open air prison for the Uyghur people. I think that’s an accurate description.
And this surveillance is metastasizing. China has exported the same techniques to over 80 countries. That should concern those of us who care about freedom and the health of democracy.
MR. JEKIELEK: You document that rape as a tool of punishment and transformation is common in the prisons and camps.
MR. TURKEL: Sexual violence against Uyghur women was one way the Chinese government treated this vulnerable population. About a year ago, the Chinese Embassy in Washington tweeted, “We’re liberating Uyghur women from being baby-making machines.” That was horrifying.
They think the drugs they’re giving to Uyghur women, the forced sterilizations, and the gang rapes are liberating them. Just let that sink in.
Tursunay Ziyawudun, who was on the news, was gang raped in prison. I was sitting in a public hearing in May 2021, organized by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and I could not hold back my tears while I was listening to her.
MR. JEKIELEK: I’ve seen it described as the perfect police state.
MR. TURKEL: Today, in China, people live in a kind of combination of North Korea and the United States. It’s like a North Korean police state because there’s no freedom. You must believe what the state says and be unwilling to criticize the state, the CCP. The Chinese, as you know, spend more money on domestic security than on national defense. Why would they do that? Why are they so fearful of their own population?
The United States aspect has a lot to do with materialistic satisfaction and desire: big cars, big homes, vacations in Western Europe, and having a successful business. There is this handful of people who are picked by the CCP and who can send their children overseas to good schools, spend time on a European vacation, and own multiple homes. They’re not willing to disturb that luxury. So the CCP created this strange lifestyle where people can have a taste of North Korea and the United States at the same time.
And the American people need to wake up. This regime we are dealing with is controlled by a communist party. Their domestic and foreign policies, their economic and societal policies all are set by the Communist Party.
MR. JEKIELEK: Recently, your brother was viciously attacked in Fairfax County, Virginia. In The Epoch Times, we have a long piece by Anders Corr [“Attack on Senior US Official’s Brother May Have China Link”] about it. It’s certainly consistent with the way that the CCP goes after those Chinese in other nations that it views as enemies.
MR. TURKEL: That’s precisely why I named my book “No Escape.” The Chinese leadership still thinks they own me and others, even though we have nothing to do with them as far as our rights and citizenship are concerned. My brother’s attacker belongs to a group that has spent countless hours on social media, maligning and bullying Uyghur activists. It’s a Uyghur group, which makes it even more disturbing. Here we have Uyghur activists who are fighting to stop the genocide, yet a group of radical online activists are trashing them.
They picked my brother to victimize, and this is happening in the United States of America.
We should not have to worry about some foreign government intimidating us in a free country.
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