Under the watchful eye of the ever-present social media apps, without a single spy in the midst, Uyghurs, both in China and abroad, still live under constant Chinese surveillance.
A month ago, I received a mysterious email. Claiming to be from someone going by the name of “Free Eagle,” he offered me help with my research. He was neither willing to meet on video or phone nor to correspond via regular mail. He refused to divulge which country he lived in but simply promised to help me with my research on the dramatic rise in the death rate and suicide rate among the Uyghurs in China. Based on previous experience, I knew this was a trap.
My biggest surprise was not that Chinese spies were looking for me and had set a trap for me — I’ve gotten used to them — but I wondered how they had found out about my research in Turkey, which I conducted three months ago. I finally found the answer to this question after about a month of searching. I shared my findings with a recent social media engineering graduate who helped me understand what was really going on. He helped me realize that the insidious apps set out to track not only me but every Uyghur abroad are the same technology that captured millions of Uyghurs for so-called re-education and forced the rest to live like prisoners in their own homes and on the streets.
That’s right: China knows everything about Uyghurs because of the surveillance technology they developed, and our cell phones are full of Chinese social media apps. The technology hidden in our phones is spying on us. Due to our ignorance of communication technology, we have become the unwitting victims of the superpower’s ploys. The apps we use understand us better than we know ourselves. Now, China doesn’t need an army of spies to follow us, nor do they ask for any information from our parents in Uyghur land. Our phones are enough to do the job for them.
China knows everything about Uyghurs because of the surveillance technology they developed, and our cell phones are full of Chinese social media apps. The technology hidden in our phones is spying on us. Due to our ignorance of communication technology, we have become the unwitting victims of the superpower’s ploys. The apps we use understand us better than we know ourselves. Now, China doesn’t need an army of spies to follow us, nor do they ask for any information from our parents in Uyghur land. Our phones are enough to do the job for them.
Each Chinese app on our phones gives away our every move. Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok), AliExpress, TEMU, SHEIN, Alibaba, and WeChat are Beijing’s windows into our daily lives. The Chinese government is watching. All nine of the people I interviewed for my research in Turkey were using WeChat. Therefore, by inference, China knows all our associates and what we talk about. Beijing’s long-term intention has always been to control the minds, feelings, and behavior of Uyghurs.
Akin to an elaborate puppet theater, the Chinese government has also attempted to manipulate Uyghurs into turning against each other. Uyghurs have, in turn, been arrested or killed on a whim, paralyzed, injured, and mocked. The Chinese government has succeeded in its plan. Uyghurs in the homeland are being kept content with a huge variety of Chinese home-grown apps, and Uyghur exiles are using those same apps to stay in touch with their families. This has trapped us all, and we have played into their hands.
China has relied on advanced Western information technology to capture, monitor, and detain Uyghurs trapped in their homeland, classifying them as “trustworthy,” “average,” or “untrustworthy” according to the data they collect. This data includes a person’s identity going back three generations, their contact with foreign countries, whether or not they have a passport, their social and family relations, their religious affiliations, cultural and ideological inclinations, etc.
This innovative tool, commanding a giant database known as the Beijing-devised Integrated Joint Operating Platform (IJOP), can isolate, triangulate, and automatically distinguish between those who are trustworthy, average, and untrustworthy. According to Human Rights Watch, the IJOP is “one of the world’s most intrusive mass surveillance systems.” “It gathers information from (but not limited to) checkpoints on the street, gas stations, schools… pulls information from these facilities and monitors them for ‘unusual’ behavior that triggers alerts to the authorities.” (https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/05/01/interview-chinas-big-brother-app)
Beijing’s 2008 Olympics heralded a mass rollout of surveillance cameras throughout Urumqi, the capital of Uyghur homeland. Fearing protests in Urumqi as the Olympic Flame passed through, vast numbers of cameras were installed. The system to support them was rudimentary. When riots broke out in Urumqi on July 9, 2009, following the deaths of Uyghurs in a toy factory in Eastern China, surveillance worked well, recording participants who were easily identified.
Beijing not only harnessed the ubiquitous cameras placed in every corner of the city to root out protesters, but users of “QQ,” the Chinese version of Facebook, were identified as organizing protests. Users were arrested, but manually checking individuals — many of whom were anonymous — was time-consuming and inefficient. In subsequent surveys by the Chinese government following the riots, 600,000 Uyghurs could not be identified by traditional means. This provided the incentive for Beijing to ramp up surveillance and begin ID card checks in earnest. They needed to know who was where and what they were doing.
In 2012, every Uyghur was issued new magnetic-chipped ID cards. Uyghurs were required to swipe their IDs even to visit the next neighborhood or download apps. They had to swipe their ID wherever they went. They could now be documented boarding planes, filling their cars, getting on public transport, and traveling out of town. Increasing numbers of apps were developed.
In the fall of 2014, 200,000 government officials were mobilized to implement the “three-evils forces” to combat, according to Beijing, the “three evils” of separatism, religious extremism, and international terrorism. These had to be “combatted at all costs.” (https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-xinjiang-uyghurs-muslims-repression-genocide-human-rights) Green cards were issued exclusively to Uyghurs in every region, and their details were regularly collated and updated.
Uyghur ancestry was examined as far back as three generations; their houses were mapped, and every family relationship was cross-checked, even to the extent of probing who did what before and when they were caught. Looking back, we can see that every piece of information needed to turn the Uyghur region into an open prison was being collected before our very eyes. By the end of 2011, the social media platform WeChat was born, and other similar apps followed suit. They were all linked to SMS and phone numbers. Some apps contained religious material and lessons. Looking back, it was surprising that the apps were becoming so liberal. Beijing did not appear to be controlling the flow of information or dissent, and the sky seemed to be the limit. Uyghurs were rejoicing over their newfound freedoms and praising Allah for his gift.
Since 2014, mass arrests have been made based on the collection and categorization of information obtained from voicemail, WeChat accounts, and SMS messages. Uyghurs were not tracked down one by one or through home searches; it was enough to simply check their phones. The power of the database created to arrest Uyghurs has continued to grow since that time.
WeChat trails have been the “go-to” solution for the authorities hunting down “troublemakers.” By simply entering a couple of keywords, the names of former criminals, and three suspicious phone numbers already on their records, “suspects” can be identified easily.
IJOP played a crucial role during the mass arrests. It is a policing program based on big data analysis. It includes individuals’ phone numbers, driving licenses, bank accounts, ID cards, bus cards, electricity cards, gas cards, water cards, insurance, and medical cards, all combined to build a database. Beijing calls the app the “Integrated Joint Operations Platform” (IJOP), the driving force behind a giant ecosystem of social monitoring and control in the region.
The IJOP has emerged as the deadliest weapon against the Uyghur people, combining every piece of information held in government databases, calculating, analyzing, and making decisions in a few seconds. It constantly monitors and checks the status of every individual at every turn. No one in the Uyghur region can live without ID cards or telephones. They are trapped.
The assault on Uyghurs is unprecedented in the world, whereby an invisible mind has been given the task of probing the secrets of a national group without sending a single spy into its midst. It can instill terror into a nation and hollow out their souls without firing a single shot. Impersonal algorithms determine the degree of danger an individual might pose to society and what their fate will be. The giant database of innocent individuals continues to build incrementally as they live their lives, and at any minute, it might issue an order to detain a “suspect.” A human being is then alerted to make the phone call or knock on a door, but the IJOP has given the green light. The faceless algorithm has given the go-ahead. No feelings or emotions are involved; there is no flesh and blood in its sights — merely data.
Although the Chinese Communist Party invaded Uyghur land in October 1949, entered their communities, and seized their resources, they were unable to possess their souls, minds, and feelings. Despite hiring multitudes of spies and even ensuring that tens of thousands of Han Chinese learned their language, they could not invade their hearts or occupy their souls.
But that changed in 2014; only technology, in the end, has managed to penetrate the Uyghurs’ minds. The voice recognition and machine translation of Uyghur have been developed. The state set out to understand the Uyghur language, know the people’s hearts, and eavesdrop on their daily conversations. That is why the Chinese government arrested up to 3 million Uyghurs from 2014 to 2019. It was not human police who put them in prison, nor interrogators who did their job, nor prosecutors and judges who spent their time on them. It was an algorithm on a supercomputer that compiled all their data and marked them out as “dangerous.”
It’s safe to say that today, China has achieved its long-term dream of separating Uyghurs from their land, identity, culture, religion, and language. We have reached the stage where they know better than we do what we are thinking, what we are doing, and where we are going.
The Chinese state wanted to know which Uyghurs were suffering from what kinds of ailments and what medicines they took. When they went to the doctor, the government was curious how they would react, for example, to a diagnosis of high blood pressure or cancer. Clutching a phone, anxiously poised to open an app, the palm-sized brick in an individual’s hand is equipped with the technology that will update the state on demand.
When a Uyghur comes home from work at night, she opens WeChat for the last time. She checks what she might have missed and goes to bed. She might not be able to remember every detail of the day — how often she was angry or happy, which song she liked, which channel she followed, which man she talked to, or how many suspect videos she downloaded — but with WeChat as her constant companion, and her last recourse before going to sleep, she is unknowingly reporting back to the state, to the e-commerce giants, and to the app creators, giving a blow-by-blow account of her day. Her preferences are tracked from dawn to dusk by her chosen apps, and recommendations are tailor-made for her to wake up to in the morning.
Let me be even clearer. Someone finishes her meal, relaxes on the couch, phone in hand, and opens Douyin, another name for the TikTok app. She listens to Uyghur singer Abdullah’s new release, “Black Soil.” Instantly, the mind behind the screen starts to record; it notes the listener’s love of Abdullah’s song describing separation, particularly the parting of fathers and sons. The person cries when the song says, “Who thought I’d be apart forever?”
Once government-installed facial recognition captures her face, it would immediately know that she had lost her father, perhaps in a so-called “re-education camp” or through his arrest. And so, her monitoring begins in earnest. The app and the media company behind it will start sending her break-up songs, and her screen will be filled with sad songs by Abdullah. She will inevitably also be flagged as one of those people who are emotionally unstable and prone to trouble. Then, she will be categorized as “untrustworthy” and sent to a re-education camp.
Let me take another example. Wherever a Uyghur is in the world — whether in Istanbul, Paris, or the Uyghur region itself — they might download a PDF book from Alibaba, open it on their smartphone, and start to read. If the monitoring remains turned on, it will record where the person cries, where they laugh, and which lines they read over and over again. It matches them with the information stored on their phone and keeps a record of all their telephone contacts.
Should their choice of literature match that of a former political prisoner, a dangerous terrorist, or an ex-prisoner like me, this will be noted. These automatic notes accumulate after several months and condemn them to one of the three categories all Uyghurs fall into: a “trustworthy” person, an “average” person, or an “untrustworthy” person. If the unfortunate individual happens to live in the capital, Urumqi, they will be hounded out and caught.
The power of the apps in people’s hands has started to replace the age-old customs, traditions, and religious beliefs that have sustained Uyghur culture for thousands of years. But now they are more afraid of the apps on their phones than they used to be of God. There are many reasons for this. Uyghur society used to be run according to a system of shared morality and an accepted set of beliefs and behavior. People worried about what others thought about them.
People checked in with neighbors, friends, and their children, ensuring that common standards of decency and morality were maintained. Since the roundups and imprisonments began, public opinion has lost some of its power. People started drifting away from God, from religion, and from their own identity under the ever-watchful eye of street-level cameras and wiretapping devices placed in neighborhoods. Words that have been used for centuries are now disappearing from common usage for fear of the consequences. “Asalam-alaykum,” “God bless you,” and “Praise God,” greetings frequently used in the past, are now allied with extremist ideology and avoided in public. Words such as “faith,” “belief,” “heaven,” “honor,” and “freedom” have all but disappeared.
Parents are now too afraid to interact normally in Uyghur or to instill the Uyghur spirit in their children under the watchful eye of the ever-present apps. No one has to tell Uyghur children to speak Chinese now because three years of high-tech surveillance have normalized the practice. House searches, daily arrests, and police visits in Urumqi, Karamay, and Ili, so prevalent from 2017, stopped after 2022. Oppressive surveillance has eased off. There is little need for it now.
Self-censorship built up during the terror of the past six years has caused people to become suspicious of each other and withdraw not only from their culture but also from relationships. China is achieving its goal of controlling the Uyghur spirit. Beijing, which has total control of the media, can tell what kind of food a Uyghur likes, what medicine he takes, what kind of furniture he has in his bedroom, what kind of people he makes friends with, and what movies he watches. Based on the above information, Beijing can tell what type of girl he will marry, what kind of job he will quickly find, and what type of hospital he will go to for a particular kind of illness. The Uyghur homeland was used as a Petri dish for technology that was eventually destined to be rolled out throughout the whole country and across the world.
Surveillance techniques in their multifaceted forms were set up across the Uyghur region in 2014, using data trawled from every citizen to create what amounts to a digital prison. The technology that trapped millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in Northwest China was then applied to Han Chinese citizens during the Coronavirus pandemic, keeping them prisoners in their own homes for months on end. Now, that same technology is being applied to Uyghurs abroad.
Exiled Uyghurs are now increasingly reluctant to attend community gatherings and protests, and many overseas Uyghur language schools for expatriate children are closing. Why would this be? Everyone can now be spied on via the apps on their phones.
I personally refuse to use Chinese apps, but my friend who calls me has them all downloaded on his phone. Those I interviewed for my research, despite having the relevant apps for our interview on their phones, had our messages mysteriously deleted after our conversations. Beijing is well aware that even though we refuse to use its apps, we are mostly ignorant of its monitoring tactics. We fail to deeply understand its manipulation of us and are clueless about how to protect ourselves from the apps downloaded by our friends on their phones.
Chinese-brand phones, WeChat, and Douyin (TikTok) alone are not the sole culprits. Every single app we install on our phones for business, study, worship, and travel — including apps hijacked by the Chinese government — is watching us. I could cite many examples of apps we unwittingly use in our daily lives that send information directly back to our homeland. Chinese-to-Arabic and Chinese-to-English dictionaries, Quran apps for Chinese, Arabic, and native language learning, and Uyghur-to-Chinese automatic translation apps are all more efficient than any espionage network on the ground spying for Beijing.
Spies might forget and make mistakes, but the spy installed on the phone will never forget. Their services are free. A phone connection to the internet is all that is needed, and Beijing stands safely at a distance, far from accusations of interference. Beijing has learned much during its six-year offensive against the Uyghurs. We have been arrested and imprisoned both openly and secretly; some have been released and are living broken lives of suspicion and fear, others are still in jail, and some have disappeared altogether. Still, some have been forced to turn against their countrymen, rewarded for their efforts by freedom for their family members and peaceful lives. During these six years of hidden, silent, constant surveillance, we in the diaspora know only too well our vulnerabilities.
The Chinese government knows we cannot live without our brothers and sisters and that we will do anything to get together with them. Beijing offers us opportunities to meet, opportunities to communicate, apps to download, and subtly entices us to meet up with those we miss so deeply. The result of all this is that we become silent, lost, and inwardly adapted to oppression. We would do anything to celebrate the birthday of a loved one, to hear a mother’s voice, and to see a father’s smiling face. Who could bear never hearing their voices or seeing them again? Indeed, our bodies are free to walk abroad, but our souls are still enslaved to China.
