HRF report exposes China’s expanding surveillance and repression in Uyghur region

The Uyghur region in northwest China remains under strict oversight by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), even though it is labeled as “autonomous.”

Abundant in resources such as oil, gas, and cotton, it produces around 20% of the world’s cotton and acts as China’s link to Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. This area is also inhabited by approximately 12 million Uyghurs, who have a language and culture that is more closely related to Central Asian nations, as stated in a report by the Human Rights Foundation (HRF).

For many years, the CCP has endeavored to forcibly incorporate Uyghurs into Han Chinese culture through extensive surveillance, forced labor, torture, and detention camps, which the government refers to as “re-education centers,” according to HRF.

It has systematically sought to eradicate their language, religion, and livelihood while perpetrating beatings, enforced disappearances, targeted killings, sexual abuse, and forced sterilization aimed at diminishing the Uyghur population. The HRF report noted that the Chinese regime has constructed at least 380 detention facilities, marking the largest mass incarceration of an ethnic group since the Holocaust.

China has transformed the Uyghur Region into a surveillance state where every financial transaction is observed, and Uyghurs constantly face threats of financial censorship.

Rushan Abbas, Executive Director of Campaign for Uyghur, has dedicated years to advocating for the freedom of her community, the Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic group in the Uyghur Region of northwest China.

“The entire Uyghur Region is a surveillance state. Every space, every property, any amount of money in the bank, everything is being monitored. They know everything. Every Uyghur person has a mandatory spyware app installed on their phone,” Abbas stated.

In addition to surveillance, financial repression enables the CCP to freeze assets and exclude Uyghurs from economic involvement. According to the HRF report, banks are required to follow state directives without hesitation.

Confiscation is yet another method of control. Uyghur scholars, business leaders, and community figures have been imprisoned, with their properties being taken. Authoritarian regimes like the CCP are increasingly resorting to financial surveillance, confiscation, and repression to dominate and, more severely, erase the Uyghur population, as noted by the HRF report.