Thread by @BuzzFeedNews

You may have heard of China’s efforts to repress its Uighur minorities.

However, China has become far more aggressive in using its huge digital surveillance system to pressure minorities to spy on each other — and it can reach those minorities anywhere.

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The Uighurs, a Muslim minority group, make up half the population of Xinjiang. There, China built a sophisticated surveillance state.

Measures include DNA collection, iris scans, and cellphone surveillance, almost exclusively targeted at minority groups

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Hundreds of thousands of Uighurs have been sent to internment camps shrouded in secrecy over the past year. None have been formally charged with a crime. Many Uighurs fled while they could.

But if you’re Uighur, escaping China doesn’t mean you’ve escaped the surveillance state.

We interviewed 10 people in the exiled Uighur community who were targeted by Chinese state security after they moved overseas.

Their accounts, and evidence we reviewed, shed light on China’s methods of exerting pressure on exiles, and sowing distrust.

One man we spoke to, living in Istanbul, said his son went back Xinjiang to visit his mother. Then disappeared.

He was told by a handler that he had to provide information about the Uighur community in Turkey, including numbers, names, and information about their activities.

The operative told him he would be happy to keep sending him news of his family — he might even send him a photo or two. “When everything is done, if everything is going as well as we expect, then I can try to apply for a permit for you to call each other. Maybe once a month.”

Every person interviewed said state security operatives told them their families could be sent to, or would remain in, internment camps for “reeducation” if they did not comply with their demands.

Those demands include spying on behalf of China on Uighurs’ activities abroad. Here’s how one expert described China’s efforts:

State security operatives approaching Uighurs abroad for information on their communities has become so common that it has sowed a deep mistrust in these overseas communities, and a pervasive feeling of being watched.

As for the surveillance system that China has built, there is no escaping from such an advanced police state.

Even if you’re thousands of miles away.

buzzfeed.com/meghara/china-…