Xinjiang Authorities Label Readings from Quran ‘Harmful’
Police in the Xinjiang region of China rely on a master list of 50,000 multimedia files they deem “violent and terrorist” to flag Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim residents for interrogation, Human Rights Watch said today.
A Human Rights Watch forensic investigation into the metadata of this list found that during 9 months from 2017 to 2018, 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. Xinjiang’s automated police mass surveillance systems enabled this phone search.
“The Chinese government’s abusive use of surveillance technology in Xinjiang means that Uyghurs who simply store the Quran on their phone may trigger a police interrogation,” said Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch. “Concerned governments should identify the technology companies involved in this mass surveillance and social control industry and take appropriate action to end their involvement.”
Human Rights Watch has repeatedly raised concerns about China’s approach to countering acts it calls “terrorism” and “extremism.” China’s counterterrorism law defines “terrorism” and “extremism” in an overly broad and vague manner that facilitates prosecutions, deprivation of liberty, and other restrictions for acts that do not intend to cause death or serious physical harm for political, religious, or ideological aims.
The Human Rights Watch searches found a total over 1,000 unique files on about 1,400 Urumqi residents’ phones that matched those on the police master list. The analysis of these matched files revealed that over half of them – 57 percent – appear to be common Islamic religious materials, including readings of every surah (chapter) of the Quran, the central religious text of Islam.
The list is part of a large database (52GB) of over 1,600 data tables from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region leaked to the United States media organization the Intercept in 2019. The Intercept reported that Urumqi police conducted surveillance and arrests from 2015 to 2019 based on texts of police reports that were part of this database.
The master list of multimedia files that Human Rights Watch examined is located in a different part of the same database and has not been previously reported on or analyzed. Some of the numbers in this reporting have been rounded up so that the authorities cannot identify the source of the leak.
The analysis of the metadata of this master list reveals photo, audio, and video files that contain violent content, but also other material that has no evident connection to violence. The media files contain materials that:
- Are violent or gruesome, including content depicting beheadings or forms of torture that appear to have been carried out by armed groups such as Mexican and other drug cartels, Chechen fighters, or the Islamic State (ISIS);
- Involve foreign organizations, including the East Turkistan Independence Movement, which the Chinese government labels a separatist group; the World Uyghur Congress, a group run by Uyghur exiles; and a Uyghur-language broadcasts by Radio Free Asia, a US government-funded media outlet;
- Contain pro-democracy audiovisual content such as the “Gate of Heavenly Peace,” a documentary about the Chinese government’s Tiananmen Square massacre of student-led protests in 1989;
- Mention the names of cities in Syria, including documentaries about Syrian history and two 2015 episodes of a popular Chinese-language travel show, “On the Road” (侣行), that include references to the Syrian conflict;
- Contain common Islamic religious content, including Quran readings and wedding songs.
- Human Rights Watch also found another related list in the database that has the same MD5 hashes – the unique signature of these files. This list apparently contains the search result of the Jingwang Weishi app, a surveillance application. The search results spanned 9 months between 2017 and 2018. This data shows the app surreptitiously conducted nearly 11 million searches involving a total of 1.2 million phones and found a cumulative total of 11,000 matches of over 1,000 different files on 1,400 phones.The Human Rights Watch analysis of the file names and the police’s own labeling, or coding, of the approximately 1,000 files found that:
- 57 percent of the 1,000 files are common religious materials, including readings of every chapter (surah) of the Quran.
- Nearly 9 percent of the matched files include violent content, including crimes committed by members of the Islamic State (ISIS);
- 4 percent of the matched files include calls for violence, for example by urging “jihad;”
- 28 percent of the matched files cannot be identified based on the available information alone (for example, the file name and police labels).
Human Rights Watch further analyzed those 1,400 phones that were flagged by police:
- Nearly 42 percent of phones contained violent or gruesome material;
- 12 percent of phones contained common Islamic religious material;
- 6 percent of phones contained files that are overtly political, such as an anthem to “East Turkistan” – the name some Turkic Muslims use to refer to the region that the Chinese government calls “Xinjiang” – videos about the Syrian war, and pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong;
- 4 percent of phones contained files that call for violence, such as “jihad;”
- 48 percent of phones contained files that Human Rights Watch could not identify.
International law obligates governments to define criminal offenses precisely and to respect the rights to freedom of expression and thought, including holding views considered offensive. Criminalizing mere possession of material deemed extremist even if the accused has no intent to use it to cause harm to others is a particularly severe threat to freedom of belief, privacy, and expression. These rights are guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China has signed but not ratified.
The United Nations Human Rights Council should urgently establish an independent, international investigation into grave rights violations and the suppression of fundamental freedoms in Xinjiang by the Chinese government against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, Human Rights Watch said. An unprecedented number of UN independent human rights experts and hundreds of nongovernmental organizations from around the world have recommended such action.
“The Chinese government outrageously yet dangerously conflates Islam with violent extremism to justify its abhorrent abuses against Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang,” Wang said. “The UN Human Rights Council should take long overdue action by investigating Chinese government abuses in Xinjiang and beyond.”
