ResearchTargeted ThreatsDigital Transnational Repression

Xinjiang region, China

By
This country spotlight is part of the Citizen Lab’s research on digital transnational repression. Digital transnational repression arises when governments use digital technologies to surveil, intimidate and silence exiled dissidents and diaspora communities. It is part of the broader practice of transnational repression, which refers to states using methods such as harassment, coercion-by-proxy, kidnapping, and assassination attempts, in order to control dissent outside their territories. Further research by the Citizen Lab on this issue – including research reports, country spotlights, stories of digital transnational repression, video interviews, and academic articles – is available here .

Since 2014, the Chinese government has escalated its repression against Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region in northwestern China, which most Uyghurs prefer to call by its historical name East Turkestan. Experts estimate that under the pretext of fighting terrorism, extremism, and separatism, up to a million people were detained, many of them in camps that the government presents as centers for vocational training and anti-extremist education.

1 The entire region has been subjected to a comprehensive system of mass surveillance, mobility controls, arbitrary detention, forced labor, and forced sterilizations.
2 International human rights organizations have designated Beijing’s actions as crimes against humanity, whereas the U.S. and several other governments describe them as genocide.
3

China’s efforts extend also across borders as its authorities engage in a widespread campaign of transnational repression that targets individuals both on the basis of their ethnic identity and their activities. The Uyghur diaspora is distributed globally, stretching across almost 40 countries. A majority live in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, while communities in Europe, North America, and Australia are much smaller. The government uses its economic and political clout to get Uyghurs arrested, expelled, and returned from countries across the Middle East, North Africa, and Central and South East Asia.

4 Even countries previously considered safe havens for Uyghur emigrants, like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, have started cooperating with Chinese authorities. While Western democracies may provide greater safety against physical threats compared to countries closer to their homeland, Uyghurs living in these host countries are still exposed to the long arm of the Chinese state and extensively targeted.

China relies on physical assaults, punishment of family members, and digital threats to control and coerce Uyghurs worldwide.

5 A particularly widespread tactic to instill fear in the diaspora is the use of video calls and messages in which family members living in the Uyghur region are forced to describe their life as normal, urging their relatives abroad to return home or to refrain from advocacy against the Chinese government. Other diaspora members have received threatening phone calls from police officers in their hometowns.
6 Fear and mistrust of infiltrations are rampant as China has used diaspora members as informants.
7 Many are anxious for their relatives in Xinjiang or have cut ties to protect family members. Many also suffer from first and second hand trauma as a result of the violence that they or their loved-ones experienced.
8 Yet often it is the exposure to acts of transnational repression that pushes people into activism.
9

An explicit goal of China’s official security policy is to “monitor the movements, thoughts, daily activities, and associations of all Uyghurs who travel abroad and their families” in the attempt to control global information flows and public opinion.

10 Uyghurs living abroad who speak out about the suppression of their culture and community draw particular attention from Chinese state authorities, both to themselves and their families. Some of the Uyghur women we interviewed for this report described being harassed and threatened before giving statements at prestigious human rights platforms and organizations, such as the United Nations in Geneva.

Transnational repression against the Uyghur diaspora also extends into the digital sphere. Chinese authorities monitor social media content for participation in protests and other advocacy activities. They plant malware and tracking tools on community websites and social media profiles, hack into devices and social media accounts, and target diaspora communities with phishing campaigns, fake applications, and VPNs that compromise the data and privacy of users. Moreover, the Chinese state engages in aggressive propaganda and disinformation to distract from the human rights abuses in the Uyghur region and discredit the research and advocacy work shedding light on the situation.

11 A few of our Uyghur respondents working in journalism or human rights advocacy reported that each of their social media posts was swiftly followed by a wave of comments questioning their credibility. These tactics also involve the mobilization of community organizations in the Chinese diaspora that promote the government’s narrative on Xinjiang.
12

To control the message and suppress information regarding the camps, China also relies on gender-based digital transnational repression against women in the diaspora.

13 Officials of the foreign ministry and Xinjiang’s regional authorities have portrayed women who testified about their experiences in the detention centers as criminal and immoral.
14 Smear campaigns seek to taint the reputation of women activists and journalists. Human rights defenders we interviewed were framed for leading a ‘loose lifestyle’, which risks their standing among conservative sections of the diaspora. In traditional Uyghur Muslim culture women’s purity and virtue play an important role so that the sexual insults and abuse directed against activists can cause embarrassment and shame, intimidating and silencing the targeted women. A few respondents described how men in the Uyghur diaspora replicated this line of aggression, either because they were pressured to do so or because they felt provoked by the online presence of outspoken women.

For most Uyghur respondents, online harassment and defamation only added to the stress caused by permanent worries about family members who had disappeared into the camps and the accumulated trauma of the unfolding genocide. The mental impacts were severe, in particular because threats often play on the diaspora’s fear for their relatives in their homeland. Yet, for these women, the decision to engage in advocacy for the Uyghur cause was irreversible and they were adamant in persisting. An activist based in the Netherlands told us how she could not eat and sleep as a result of the rumors, gossip, and threats that spread online against her and her family. “I would just sit up all night crying. And then I told myself that this is what China wants to see, they want to break me down, so I have to stay strong.”

  1. Jessica Batke (2019), “Where Did the One Million Figure for Detentions in Xinjiang’s Camps Come From?” ChinaFile (January 8) <https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/features/where-did-one-million-figure-detentions-xinjiangs-camps-come>.↩︎

  2. Darren Byler (2021), In the Camps: China’s High-Tech Penal Colony. (Columbia Global Reports).↩︎

  3. Human Rights Watch (2021), “Break Their Lineage, Break Their Roots: China’s Crimes Against Humanity Targeting Uyghurs and Other Turkic Muslims,” <https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/19/break-their-lineage-break-their-roots/chinas-crimes-against-humanity-targeting>; Lindsay Maizland (2022), “China’s Repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang,” Council on Foreign Relations <https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-xinjiang-uyghurs-muslims-repression-genocide-human-rights>.↩︎

  4. Lemon, Edward, Bradley Jardine, and Natalie Hall (2022), “Globalizing Minority Persecution: China’s Transnational Repression of the Uyghurs,” Globalizations 20(4).↩︎

  5. Bradley Jardine, Edward Lemon, and Natalie Hall (2021), “No Space Left to Run: China’s Transnational Repression of Uyghurs,” Uyghur Human Rights Project and Oxus Society for Central Assian Affairs <https://uhrp.org/report/no-space-left-to-run-chinas-transnational-repression-of-uyghurs/>.↩︎

  6. Amnesty International (2020), “Nowhere Feels Safe: Uyghur Tell of China-Led Intimidation Campaign Abroad,” <https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2020/02/china-uyghurs-abroad-living-in-fear/>.↩︎

  7. Shayma Bakht (2020), “China is Spying on Uighur Muslims in the UK,” Vice (May 15) <https://www.vice.com/en/article/china-surveillance-uighur-muslims-uk/>.↩︎

  8. Elise Anderson (2024), “Looking for Home Around the World: The Uyghur Diaspora and Its Needs,” Freedom House <https://freedomhouse.org/article/looking-home-around-world-uyghur-diaspora-and-its-needs>.↩︎

  9. Natalie Hall and Bradley Jardine (2021), “Your Family Will Suffer”: How China is Hacking, Surveilling, and Intimidating Uyghurs in Liberal Democracies,” Uyghur Human Rights Project and Oxus Society for Central Assian Affairs <https://uhrp.org/report/your-family-will-suffer-how-china-is-hacking-surveilling-and-intimidating-uyghurs-in-liberal-democracies/>.↩︎

  10. David Tobin and Nyrola Elimä (2023), “We Know You Better than You Know Yourself”: China’s Transnational Repression of the Uyghur Diaspora,” The University of Sheffield at 27 <https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/seas/research/we-know-you-better-you-know-yourself-chinas-transnational-repression-uyghur-diaspora>.↩︎

  11. Natalie Hall and Bradley Jardine (2021), “Your Family Will Suffer”: How China is Hacking, Surveilling, and Intimidating Uyghurs in Liberal Democracies,” Uyghur Human Rights Project and Oxus Society for Central Assian Affairs <https://uhrp.org/report/your-family-will-suffer-how-china-is-hacking-surveilling-and-intimidating-uyghurs-in-liberal-democracies/>.↩︎

  12. Lin Li and Dr James Leibold (2022), “Cultivating Friendly Forces: The Chinese Communist Party’s Influence Operations in the Xinjiang Diaspora,” Australian Strategic Policy Institute <https://www.aspi.org.au/report/cultivating-friendly-forces>.↩︎

  13. Edward Lemon and Bradley Jardine (2024), “We are Living in Fear”: Transnational Repression, Regime Type, and Double Precarity in the Uyghur Diaspora,” Diaspora 24(1).↩︎

  14. Radio Free Asia (2021), “China Smears Former Xinjiang Residents Who Testified About Abuses in the Region,” Radio Free Asia (April 13) <https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/smear-04132021191322.html>.↩︎