Best of the Daily Brief: China and the US, July 5, 2023

Many religious folks keep sacred scriptures and such on their mobile phones. Sometimes it’s the text of a holy book. Sometimes it’s an audio or video of someone reading verses or preaching on their meaning.

I see this on public transportation often, and though I may grumble sometimes about people not wearing earphones, it’s all perfectly normal and harmless.

Try doing this in the Xinjiang region of China, however, and it’s another matter entirely. There the police may haul you in for interrogation and arrest just for having the Quran on your phone.

How do they know what’s on your phone? Well, this is China, after all…

Xinjiang police use automated mass surveillance systems that search people’s phones. A new HRW report analyzing leaked data has found that during a nine-month period in 2017-18, police conducted nearly 11 million searches of a total of 1.2 million mobile phones in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital city of 3.5 million residents.

Our forensic investigation also determined what police are looking for. The authorities keep a master list of 50,000 multimedia files they deem “violent and terrorist” to flag people for interrogation.

But the files the police are interested in go way beyond what any rational person might call “terrorism.” China’s counterterrorism law defines “terrorism” and “extremism” so vaguely it makes it easy for authorities to prosecute and jail people on the flimsiest of excuses.

HRW’s examination of the leaked data found more than 1,000 unique files on about 1,400 Urumqi residents’ phones that matched those on the police master list. More than half – 57 percent – appear to be common Islamic religious materials, including readings of the Quran.

The authorities’ high-tech efforts and their old-fashioned conflation of Islam with violent extremism are integral parts of China’s crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, targeting Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim residents.

The brutal intention is, as one Chinese religious affairs official put it: “Break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins.”