China's High-Tech Persecution of Uighurs

In 1949, the newly formed communist government of China seized control of the northwest corner of the country now known as Xinjiang Province.  The province was home to a number of different ethnic groups, the largest of which are known as Uighurs (also spelled Uyghurs).  The Uighurs are a Turkic people with their own language and culture, and the majority of them are Muslims.  None of this sits well with the Chinese government, which began systematic attempts to convert Uighurs to conform to the language and ways of the Chinese-majority Han ethnicity, and the struggle continues to this day. 

Chilling details of how Beijing is using the latest high-tech surveillance methods to persecute Uighurs were reported in a recent article that appeared on the website of Wired.  In 2011, a new social-media app called WeChat took China by storm, and Uighurs seized upon it as a great new way to communicate among themselves, discussing everything from personal matters to politics and religion.  But in 2014, the Chinese government forced WeChat's owners to let them snoop on all WeChat messages, and soon after that, bad things started to happen to Uighurs who discussed sensitive issues such as Islam or Uighur separatist movements on WeChat.  In 2016, Uighur families who used WeChat incautiously were being checked on by police officers, sometimes daily.  For one family, it got so bad that they decided to emigrate to Turkey, and the father sent his wife and children ahead while he stayed behind to wait for his passport.  It never arrived, and instead he was arrested.

This is just one of thousands of cases in which Chinese officials have persecuted Uighurs.  Besides monitoring social media, the police are requiring Uighurs to provide voice and facial-recognition samples and even taking compulsory DNA samples.  Families are afraid to turn their lights on at home before dawn for fear the police will figure that they're praying, and haul them off to a re-education camp.  Yes, China is operating what amounts to massive prison camps for Uighurs, which the government claims are vocational training centers.  A diplomatic spokesman for Turkey contradicts these claims, saying that up to a million Uighurs have been detained in such camps against their will and subjected to torture and "political brainwashing."

Such actions are familiar to anyone with knowledge of China's Great Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 until Mao Zedong's death in 1976.  This nationwide convulsion paralyzed the country, led to millions of deaths, and subjected millions more to internal exile and forced self-confessions.  While such things are a fading memory to most citizens of China today, the surveillance state is not, and all it takes for someone to fall back into those bad old days is to manifest religious faith in actions such as gathering for worship or praying openly.  And political organizing against the will of the ruling government will land you in hot water too.

China's reach even extends beyond its borders to blight the lives of Uighurs who escape to Turkey and elsewhere.  For Uighurs remaining in China, even contacting an exiled Uighur relative or friend by phone can result in police investigations and arrest.  So leaving China usually means losing all contact with family and friends who remain behind, except for the rare hand-carried letter that can be smuggled back into the country by a friendly courier. 

The Chinese government seems to be motivated by fear rather than trust.  One reason for this may be that the long history of China is that of periods of peace enforced by central control, interrupted by brief spasms of popular revolt that depose the old guard and install a new one in its place.  The leaders of China seem above all determined not to let that happen to them, which explains their brutal response to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and their continued harrassment of ethnic and religious minorities.  In common with other totalitarian philosophies, they seem to think that if anybody, anywhere in China harbors thoughts or actions that fundamentally contradict the basic assumptions of dialectical materialism, the regime is in mortal danger and must suppress such thoughts or actions.   

In a well-informed article in the journal of religion and public life First Things, Thomas F. Farr, who heads an NGO called the Religious Freedom Institute, says that U. S. diplomacy toward China has been largely ineffective in its efforts to mitigate the suffering that religious and ethnic minorities endure there.  Farr recommends reminding Chinese government leaders of their self-interest in promoting a peaceful and prosperous society.  He suggests that we provide Chinese leaders with hard evidence that religious faith can produce individuals who are peaceful, productive, and a net asset to any country which harbors them.  So instead of persecution, arrests, and forced retraining, which are likely to inspire counter-movements and even terrorism, perhaps we can persuade the Chinese government to change its attitude toward minorities like the Uighurs and allow them to practice their faiths and preserve their cultures. 

That would be nice if we could make it happen, but so far it's just a policy idea.  Right now, the Chinese government seems to think more and more surveillance is the answer, and has invested billions in technology and hiring of police to the point that in some regions of Xinjiang, the only stable, reliable job you can get is to work for the police and spy on your neighbors.

In the U. S., such difficulties seem exotic and far away, and it's easy to forget that the same technology Beijing is using to control its Uighur population is available here.  I suppose it's better for megabytes of personal information about us to be in the control of private companies who have a good reason to behave themselves if they want to stay in business, rather than a government desperate to remain in control under any circumstances.  But the information is out there just the same, and the sad plight of the Uighurs in China reminds us that except for the traditions of freedom in the U. S., we might be in the same boat.

Sources:  Isobel Cockerell's article "Inside China's Massive Surveillance Operation" appeared on May 9, 2019 at https://www.wired.com/story/inside-chinas-massive-surveillance-operation/.  Thomas F. Farr's "Diplomacy and Persecution in China" appeared in the May 2019 issue of First Things, pp. 29-36.

What Are the Rules of Cyberwarfare?

We are now well into the era of cyberwarfare—the use of computers and computer networks in military, terrorist, and diplomatic conflicts.  But to judge by the recent tiff between President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, neither the U. S. nor Russia has figured out exactly how to use these new weapons, or how to defend against them effectively.

Last July, Wikileaks unleashed a flood of embarrassing emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee, leading to the resignation of that organization's chairwoman Debbie Wassermann Schultz and undoubtedly influencing the Presidential selection process, though to what degree it is impossible to say.  In December, the CIA announced that they were confident that Russian hackers were responsible for stealing the emails and giving them to Wikileaks.  And on Dec. 23, President Obama announced that he was retaliating for the hacks by sending home 35 Russian diplomats and taking other actions against the Russian diplomatic corps in the U. S.  After initial talk by Russian officials of retaliation against the retaliation, Russian President Vladimir Putin surprised many by saying he would suspend any actions against U. S. diplomats in Russia, at least until the Trump administration takes office. 

Retaliation against diplomats has been around ever since there have been diplomats.  Over the decades, countries have developed traditional ways of treating official representatives from foreign lands with policies such as diplomatic immunity from routine prosecution, the suspension of normal customs inspection for diplomatic materials, special diplomatic zones around embassies, and other perks.  But one reason for all these special privileges is that they can be revoked at any time. 

This writer is old enough to recall some of the many times that the old Soviet Union (USSR) engaged in these kinds of games with the U. S. on any pretext or sometimes no pretext at all.  It was all part of the Cold War chess game, and watched closely for indications that the Soviets might be wanting to warm up the war a little.  Everyone agrees that sending a diplomat packing is a lot better than throwing bombs, so while tensions are raised by such incidents, it's usually a sign that serious conflicts are not in the immediate offing.

Still, there are a couple of notable and disturbing aspects of the DNC hacks and their consequences.  One concerns the identity of the hackers, and the other concerns what constitutes a truly effective response to such attacks.

It took nearly six months for the CIA to be confident enough to announce publicly that Russians were in fact responsible.  In that aspect, hacking and other hard-to-trace cyberattacks resemble terrorism, in that the identity of the terrorists responsible for a given attack is usually not immediately known, and may not ever be discovered.  Although good detective and investigative work often uncovers the perpetrators eventually, the delay between the attack and the discovery of who did it allows for uncertainty to dominate the situation, leading to general confusion, controversy, and other problems that are usually exactly what the attacker wants to achieve in the enemy camp.  It's possible that the CIA made its announcement when it did not because it took all that long to figure out who did it, but for other diplomatic or political reasons.  Still, it's hard to fight back against an enemy if you don't know who he is.

Identifying the source of a cyberattack is only the first step in an effective response.  As in conventional warfare, one doesn't want to overreact, but on the other hand, just letting an enemy get away with anything isn't good either.  An important factor in these not-yet-open-warfare conflicts is how the public perceives them.  Both the U. S. and the Russian presidents do everything with an eye to their constituents, so things done in secret which have secret effects are not that useful.  Instead of using the hacked emails for their own purposes, whoever hacked them (probably the Russians) gave them maximum publicity, and to the extent that the DNC was hampered in its operations, the attack was a success. 

What's new and disturbing about this particular incident is that it represents a significant intrusion into the domestic electoral process by a foreign power which overtly favored a particular candidate—one who will take office on Jan. 20, barring unforeseen circumstances.  What makes the situation worse is that the President-elect does not seem to be all that troubled about it.  Four years in office is a long time, though, and it's likely that Trump and Putin will at some point fail to agree on something, after which it's anyone's guess what will happen.

Part of what makes it so hard to defend against cyberattacks is the global nature of the Internet environment—Moscow or Paris or Adelaide is just as close to my Internet connection as the neighbor down the street.  Traditional military defenses were geographically fixed and you could draw contours of safety within them—here, you have to be concerned about ground attacks, there you are subject to air bombings, and way back behind the front lines, there was almost nothing to worry about.  But cyberattacks can go anywhere there's an Internet connection, and the targets are often only as well-defended as the private organizations and their IT people can make them.  As we know, these defenses range from the almost impregnable to the nearly nonexistent, and so many attractive cyber-targets are almost defenseless against a concerted attack by well-resourced agents of a foreign power.

It's not clear that the best defense is a good offense either, especially when it's not immediately clear who is doing the attacking.  And when many thefts of data are not discovered until months or years after the damage is done, it's even harder to mount an effective response.

It looks like international cyberwarfare will muddle along in this confused state unless and until such a major attack occurs that we get serious about some sort of national defense policy against foreign cyberwarfare.  There are serious concerns being voiced these days about the hacking of power grids and other vital infrastructure systems such as air-traffic control and the domestic Internet itself.  Our best defense for these systems right now is that nobody has a strong reason to attack them, but that could change at any time.  And if it does, I just hope we're ready for what comes afterwards.

Sources:  I referred to a report on President Obama's retaliatory actions against Russia carried by CNN on Dec. 29 at http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/29/politics/russia-sanctions-announced-by-white-house/, and also a report on Putin's non-response at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russia-plans-retaliation-and-serious-discomfortoverus-hacking-sanctions/2016/12/30/4efd3650-ce12-11e6-85cd-e66532e35a44_story.html.