The Most Advanced Police State in Xinjiang: Interview with Megha Rajagopalan

Megha Rajagopalan stood on the podium at last week’s Oslo Freedom Forum and asked the audience a simple question, “Does the rest of the world care enough to act on this?”She was referring to the crackdown on millions of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities by Chinese authorities in Xinjiang, the area in Central Asia currently controlled by China as a frontier “autonomous region.”

Her article, titled “This Is What A 21st-Century Police State Really Looks Like,” helped expose to the world how China has made a surveillance state of Xinjiang, using cutting-edge technologies such as facial recognition and surveillance drones to police, incarcerate and abuse civilians. It won her recognition at the 2018 Human Rights Press Awards, but was also speculated to be connected to Beijing refusing to renew her visa. Up until then, she was Buzzfeed’s China Bureau Chief, and had been working as a journalist in China since 2012.

Finding an in-depth story in China

Megha began reporting about China while studying journalism. She’d never thought to be based overseas, but instead was aspiring to become a metro section reporter. On a whim in her senior year, she applied for a scholarship in Hong Kong, and really “caught the bug” for China and international reporting there.

“I was just super fascinated by how journalism is done in China, and how it’s done in such a completely different context from the US. There is this really interesting dynamic around Hong Kong journalists and journalists from other parts of Asia.”

This bug led to an internship with Time Magazine’s Asia office, a Fulbright fellowship in China and a spot on Reuter’s training program. She eventually became Buzzfeed News’ China Bureau Chief, covering a vast country like China with limited resources.

“We don’t have a big staff in China like some of the wires or your New York Times or Wall Street Journal do…But I also have this benefit that I’m not expected to cover, every single story, so instead we try to find a niche where we can really dominate and do in-depth reporting, and bring something that other publications aren’t necessarily doing, while still competing on the big important stories.

“During my time there, I focus a lot on the issue of digital surveillance. I was doing stories on that before it became as big of a subject as it is now.”

One of the world’s most urgent human rights crises

For Megha, this particular issue that became her “niche”, is not really niche at all, but until recently, the crackdown in Xinjiang was somewhat buried. Her article resonated so strongly with the international community, it took Megha by surprise at first.

“I personally happen to think that the crisis in Xinjiang is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, story that is happening in China right now—one of the world’s most urgent human rights crises. It took the international media probably until this year to figure that out.

“I think, because of the scale of the crisis, the fact that it involves mass internment camps, and also because of the presence of this intense surveillance technology, it’s something that’s become of international significance.”

Despite previous reports from various news outlets about the situation in Xinjiang, Megha’s reporting helped turn the rest of the world’s attention to the issue. She did so through the prism of technology – something she thought her readers would connect to even if they haven’t heard of Xinjiang before.

“In early 2017, we started to hear reports that things in Xinjiang were getting significantly worse. Just really deteriorating. And I started to read things about surveillance technology, and so I sort of made up my mind. I want us to have a lengthier piece on it. Yeah, there’s been some reporting but none of it had really zeroed in on the surveillance aspect.”

The reports read like something straight out of George Orwell’s 1984. But instead of a novel, they detail actual lived experiences. The dystopian future is no longer just speculation; artificial intelligence and facial-recognition are employed to keep tabs on even the most everyday of activities, like a ban on naming children “Mohammed,” growing a beard, or refusal to watch state television.

Human Rights Watch reports that authorities in Xinjiang are collecting DNA samples and fingerprints of millions of people. Children have been taken away from their families, and according to reports, at least 500,000 people have been held in detention.

Kashgar, Xinjiang, in 2015 (by Laika ac, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Megha, who has been in and out of Xinjiang since 2009, describes the anxiety she and others felt from the density of policing as more intense than what she had ever felt while she was in North Korea and Myanmar.

“I was just blown away. I was really really stunned by how bad things have gotten. When you go to Kashgar you can see it is not normal. There are bars on the shop windows, ambient sounds of police sirens…There’s no street culture or in the way that used to be there.

“If you go to a checkpoint in Xinjiang, you’ll see that people’s cell phones are being checked, either placed into machines or a police officer manually scrolling through everyone’s phones. One of the things they’re looking for is banned apps.”

Banned apps include message encryption and VPN apps that could allow information to be securely transmitted out of Xinjiang. The popular messaging service WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, was the latest to be blocked in China in October last year, due to intensified censorship.

The Chinese authorities have also taken full advantage of Xinjiang’s remoteness, keeping civilians in the dark. The internet there is unreliable, and many people don’t know about data protection or encryption to use it.

Risks reporting in Xinjiang

As such, and with a general distrust of technology, Megha says having in-depth conversations with locals was extremely difficult. “You could tell they want to talk to you because you’re a foreign national.” But the fear and technological drawbacks are too great for most.

There were other challenges too. Megha was no stranger to the harassment she received from authorities during her investigation. She casually mentions the possibility of detainment and the frequent run-ins she has had with local police while working in areas they didn’t want her to go to. Her main challenge, though, was ensuring the safety of others.

“My biggest concern was how not to get other people into trouble. We’ve heard stories before, you know; there were a group of foreign reporters who went and their driver was sent to re-education camp. Stuff like that happens.

“I did an interview with someone who was in a restaurant that was sort of near one of the reeducation camps, and we ended up taking a walk outside because I think he was afraid that his shop was being listened-in on.”

Kashgar may seem remote to some, but its Big Brother situation is a blaring warning to societies elsewhere about a possible, darker future. Many people are aware that this kind of technology is out there, and with that comes anxiety. What would happen if it becomes more widely used? What would become of our information? Would our own governments follow suit? This is the notion Megha wants people the world over to seriously consider, that Xinjiang is a lens looking into ways technology could be used to devastate civil liberties and human rights.

“There’s not a lot to stop other governments from doing exactly what the Chinese government has done.” Megha says.

“Do we care enough?”

The Chinese ministry’s unexplained declination of her visa extension may have resulted in her leaving China, but she is determined to continue to report on state surveillance issues in China and elsewhere. In her new role, now based in the Middle East, she remains committed to her focus on technology and human rights.

As a speaker for this year’s Oslo Freedom Forum and at the Forum’s inaugural event in Taipei, Megha is travelling across regions of the world to raise our understanding of how technology can affect us, and for us to question ourselves whether that is the technological reality we want. You can see Megha’s full talk from Taipei’s Oslo Freedom Forum here:

The final question Megha asks, and the millions of Uighurs in Xinjiang need answered is “do we care enough?” It was only this week that members of Congress in the US are urging for sanctions against China despite groundbreaking reports like Megha’s from over a year ago. In the meantime, China continues to vehemently deny any form of ethnic cleansing against the Uighur people.

Xinjiang’s state surveillance issue paves two very stark routes for every government and society to decide upon, that is; do we use technology to support freedom, or tyranny? Which world do we want to invest in, and where do we draw the line where these two meet?

As part of our coverage of the 2018 Oslo Freedom Forum in Taipei:

• Read here for more on Taiwan’s role in being a tech game changer in the fight for human rights.
• Our interview with Cambodian opposition leader Mu Sochua and Russian rights activist Vladimir Kara-Murza is coming soon.

(Follow Megha Rajagopalan here: @meghara. Feature photo courtesy of Megha Rajagopalan.)