A Chinese security camera company has been advertising ethnicity recognition features to British and other European customers, even while it faces a ban on UK operations over allegations of involvement in ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang. In a brochure published on its website, Hikvision advertised a range of features that it said it could provide in collaboration with the UK startup FaiceTech. These included using facial recognition for retail security, border control, and anti-money laundering checks for retail banking. The brochure also advertised “Optional Demographic Profiling Facial analysis algorithms”, including “gender,…
Tag: Uyghurs
Uyghurs in Istanbul Seek Justice for Urumqi Fire Victims
Mohammad Mehmet Ali lost his mother and four siblings in an apartment fire on Nov. 24 in China. Since then, he has been protesting China’s response to the incident. In an interview with VOA, he accused authorities of not putting out the fire, which spread in a building occupied mostly by Uyghurs, a Turkic minority ethnic group. VOA’s Umut Colak has filed this story from Istanbul, narrated by Bezhan Hamdard. Camera: Umut Colak VOA
China’s Deliberate Neglect Cause of Death of My Aunt and Her Four Children: Uyghur Relative
WASHINGTON — Heyrinsahan Abdurahman is a 48-year-old Uyghur mother of seven children. As a single mother for the past five years, she lived with her four of her children at her flat on the 19th floor of a high-rise apartment building in the downtown Tianshan District in Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang in northwest China. When a fire broke out on the 15th floor on November 24, Abdurahman and her children, 13-year-old Shahide, 11-year-old Imran, 9-year-old Abdurahman and 5-year-old Nahdiye, were not able to escape and died, according to…
French regulator called on to withdraw licence allowing CGTN to broadcast from London
France’s media regulator is under pressure to withdraw a licence that allows the Chinese state broadcaster to beam its programmes across Europe from a studio in west London. Ofcom revoked the organisation’s licence to transmit in the UK last year but the China Global Television Network (CGTN) was able to continue broadcasting following authorisation from the French authority. The Chinese network has produced English-language programmes, including those presented by a former BBC Wales Today presenter, from its European hub in Chiswick since 2018. When Ofcom revoked its UK licence, CGTN…
Evidence grows of forced labour and slavery in production of solar panels, wind turbines
The Australian clean energy industry has warned of growing evidence linking renewable energy supply chains to modern slavery, and urged companies and governments to act to eliminate it. A report by the Clean Energy Council, representing renewable energy companies and solar installers, has called for more local renewable energy production and manufacturing and a “certificate of origin” scheme to counter concerns about slave labour in mineral extraction and manufacturing in China, Africa and South America. Released on Tuesday, the paper said slavery in all supply chains was a global problem.…
Covid lockdown protests break out in western China after deadly fire
Protests have broken out in China’s far western Xinjiang region, with crowds shouting at hazmat-suited guards after a deadly fire triggered anger over their prolonged Covid-19 lockdown as nationwide infections set another record. Crowds chanted “End the lockdown“, pumping their fists in the air as they walked down a street, according to videos circulated on Chinese social media on Friday night. Reuters verified the footage was published from the Xinjiang capital, Urumqi. Videos showed people in a plaza singing China’s national anthem with its lyric “Rise up, those who refuse…
Uyghurs urge Albanese government not to ignore human rights amid diplomatic thaw with China
Uyghur community members are urging the Albanese government not to sideline human rights in Australia’s diplomatic reset with China – and are disappointed to have failed to secure a meeting with the foreign minister, Penny Wong. The Germany-based president of the World Uyghur Congress, Dolkun Isa, is among a delegation that has visited Canberra this week for meetings with about 30 politicians from all sides of politics, including the opposition leader, Peter Dutton. The delegation has urged Australia to join the US and several European countries in declaring that genocide…
China human rights activist Drew Pavlou escorted from Parliament House, but federal police won’t say why
Liberal senator James Paterson said he was “concerned” that activist Drew Pavlou was escorted from Parliament House by federal police yesterday after the pair had met, but the AFP and the parliament won’t say why he was asked to leave the building. Police officers told Pavlou he was considered an “active protester”, while sitting in a public cafe in Parliament House drinking a coffee, and that “higher ups” had said they wanted him to leave the building. “An Australian federal police team interrupted me while I was quietly having lunch…
Major funds exposed to companies allegedly engaged in Uyghur repression in China
Many of the world’s largest asset managers and state pension funds are passively investing in companies that have allegedly engaged in the repression of Uyghur Muslims in China, according to a new report. The report, by UK-based group Hong Kong Watch and the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University, found that three major stock indexes provided by MSCI include at least 13 companies that have allegedly used forced labour or been involved in the construction of the surveillance state in China’s Xinjiang region. In recent years,…
China using influencers to whitewash human rights abuses, report finds
The Chinese Communist party is using social media influencers from troubled regions like Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia to whitewash human rights abuses through an increasingly sophisticated propaganda campaign, a report has claimed. The report published on Thursday by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), described the videos by “frontier influencers” as a growing part of Beijing’s “propaganda arsenal”. Under the increasingly authoritarian rule of Xi Jinping, the CCP’s oppression of ethnic minorities has worsened, with major crackdowns in Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia. Global condemnation has mounted, with a…