Do you acknowledge that the Chinese government has Uyghurs and others in concentration camps?” Response to Tapper at the Center for Countering Digital Hate
In response to Tapper’s question, “Do you acknowledge that the Chinese government has Uyghurs and others in concentration camps?” Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, said, “That’s not what I focus on.”
TikTok is a Chinese-owned platform that has come under intense scrutiny by US lawmakers and security experts as the social media app has grown exponentially more popular over the past several years. China has national security laws that could force ByteDance to give their customers’ data to the United States.
Security experts have said that the data could allow China to identify intelligence opportunities or to seek to influence Americans through disinformation campaigns.
“Look, I think there are many human rights violations that are happening in China and around the world,” Beckerman said. “I think these are very important. I’m not here to be the expert on human rights violations around the world.”
The Center for Countering Digital Hate found that it could take less than three minutes for a TikTok account to be used to see content related to suicide and more than five minutes to find a community promoting eating disorder content.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/20/business/tiktok-michael-beckerman-jake-tapper-uyghur-genocide/index.html
Xinjiang Police Files: How Many Families are There? How Many Children Live in China, and How Much Do They Want to Live?
Beckerman dismissed concerns raised by Tapper that some American parents may see that study and believe “the Chinese government may be trying to destroy our kids from within.” Beckerman nodded to the parental controls of the app and called the argument hypocritical.
“The same people that are complaining about employees in China and acts from China, and all these things … they are also suggesting that here in the US, we should apply Chinese-style media rules,” Beckerman said. “We have freedom of speech, among other things here in the United States.”
A smaller subset of this data — known as the Xinjiang Police Files — was published last May. More examination of the files revealed their full extent, revealing approximately 830,000 individuals across 11,477 documents and thousands of photographs.
It would be difficult to figure out why your entire family has been imprisoned, and for how long. The police also have your DNA, voice samples and iris scans on file — along with biometric data on your children, your family and your whole community.
For the first time, exiled Uyghurs were able to see official Chinese documents about the fate of their relatives, including why they were detained — and in some cases how they died. On seeing the files, some described a sense of empowerment; others felt guilt that their worst fears had been confirmed.
The Chinese government has always denied the legitimacy of the files, but they were recently derided by The Global Times as a ‘rumor monger’.
CNN: China’s response to allegations of torture and rape inside a Uyghur camp and the families in Xinjiang
Researchers think they have complete population data from two locations, one of which is Shufu county in Kashgar.
The Uyghur population is around 11 million and there are some four million other people from other Turkic ethnic minorities. The data probably represents the tip of the larger story.
CNN has sent a detailed request for a response from the Chinese government about the files and the families highlighted in the article but has not received a response.
After the first set of data was published in May, the Chinese government did not respond to specific questions about the files, but the Chinese embassy in Washington DC did issue a statement claiming Xinjiang residents lived a “safe, happy and fulfilling life,” which it said provided a “powerful response to all sorts of lies and disinformation on Xinjiang.”
Over the past four years, CNN has gathered testimonies from dozens of overseas Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, which included allegations of torture and rape inside the camp system. CNN also spoke to those abroad desperately seeking information about their loved ones.
It is very difficult for relatives to find this information. A sophisticated system of collective punishment threatens those in Xinjiang with detention if their families abroad even try to make a phone call.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/02/asia/china-police-data-leak-uyghur-families/
Observations of three Uyghur families in Xinjiang, China, with the help of the CNN/PRINT tool
The black hole is scariest, said Zenz. “And that’s part of why the Chinese state creates this black hole. It’s the most terrifying thing that can be done. That you don’t know whether a loved one is alive or dead.
Three Uyghur families were able to find official data for the first time with the help of the search tool.
For Mamatjan Juma, who lives just south of Washington DC in Virginia, the files provided “immense” information about his family, but also confirmed his worst fears — that they were found “guilty by association” with him.
As the deputy director for the Uyghur service of US-funded news organization Radio Free Asia, Juma has been highlighting the situation in Xinjiang for 16 years. He left China for the US in 2003, after being selected for an academic fellowship with the Ford Foundation.
“They called me a wanted terrorist, to be deported back to China,” Juma said. “My relatives (are) also demonized because of me, and then (they’re) not described as human beings.”
Father Sister Brother Sister-in-law, adopted sister, and nephew. Merdan
Nurimangul Juma
Mehray Juma
Nuranem Juma
Nuramina Juma
Ayshe Eysajan
Iltebir Eysajan
Juma Kadir Abdukadir Juma
Ahmatjan Juma
Aymihri Abdukerim
Eysajan Juma
Nurnisagul Juma
Ayshem Abdulla
Mamatjan Juma
He described his younger brother, Eysajan Juma, as “jubilant, very gregarious,” a sociable and likable person who was loved deeply, despite making “a lot of mistakes.” But Juma could no longer see those familiar traits in his brother’s eyes.
“It was a very heartbreaking situation,” Juma said, through tears. “He was so proud of us, (but) we weren’t able to be with him at the time… It was very painful.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/02/asia/china-police-data-leak-uyghur-families/
The case of Ayup, a Uyghur jailer in the Xinjiang government: the case of her niece and nephew
Ayup, who ran a Uyghur language school in Kashgar, fled Xinjiang in August 2015 after spending time in jail as a political prisoner, where he told CNN he faced torture and gang rape.
He had been told that his brother and sister had been targeted, but he was the first to be told about it in the database.
Ayup said that the government document told him that it was his fault and that he was guilty and responsible.
Ayup said that his younger sister got arrested. “The reason is, she (is) accused of (being a) ‘double-faced government official,’ and she (was) blacklisted because of me.”
Uyghurs working in government jobs in Xinjiang while continuing to practice their cultural beliefs were often accused of being “two-faced,” Ayup said, categorized as “traitors, not 100% loyal to the government.”
When she first used the new search tool, Marhaba Yakub Salay, a Uyghur living in Adelaide, Australia, found police records for two relatives she did not expect: her young niece and nephew, who were aged just 15 and 12 when the files were made in 2017.
The nephew was put on the blacklist for being a suspicious partner in public security and terrorism cases.
Salay’s niece and nephew were suggested in the files to have traveled to at least one of 26 suspicious countries, which included Syria and Afghanistan. Salay said that was not true — they had only ever traveled outside China to go on holiday to Malaysia.
This is insane. this is terrible,” Salay said as she read through her nephew’s file. “He’s turning 18 in a couple of months’ time. Are they going to arrest him?”
Salay’s sister Mayila Yakufu — the mother of the children — was sentenced to 6.5 years in jail at the end of 2020, after she had spent several years in other camps.
The family of Salay and their parents have proof that Yakufu gave money to them so that they could buy a house in Australia. Mayila and Marhaba’s brother left Xinjiang in 1998, and later died in an accident in Australia in 2007 — but his ID card was still cited as a suspicious connection to the children.
Salay said they tried to connect my nephew with my brother who died fifteen years ago but the suspicion level was about my late brother. Two people have never met each other.
The extension of “guilt by association” to children reflects the paranoia which the Chinese state holds toward the Uyghur population, according to Zenz.
“The state considers the entire family to be tainted,” Zenz said. “And I think that’s consistent with how Xi Jinping and other officials (in) internal speeches have described Islam like a virus of the mind that infects people.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/02/asia/china-police-data-leak-uyghur-families/
Seeing a Uyghur in a Twistor’s Eye: Explanation of a Murder by a Whistler
As the families look through these files, their instinct is to search for logic and reasons for what happened to their loved ones. They find only confusion.
The idea of detaining Uyghurs and finding reasons later was explained to CNN in 2021 by a former police officer who was a whistle blower.