Tag Archive for: ‘detention’

Server hack yields harrowing images of life inside Chinese detention camps

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Server hack yields harrowing images of life inside Chinese detention camps

A hack on police servers in China’s Xinjiang region has yielded thousands of graphic images and videos of Uighur detainees suffering in detention camps in one of the starkest accounts yet of the ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by the country’s persecution of ethnic minorities.

The images are accompanied by training manuals, detailed police work rosters, and instructions for guarding the camps. Using a euphemism to describe inmates, one document states: “If students do not respond to warning shots and continue to try to escape, the armed police shoot to kill,” the BBC reported. Images show one prisoner in an iron torture device known as a tiger chair, which immobilizes the arms. Der Spiegel, one of the other outlets that published the tranch of hacked photos and documents, said it confirmed their authenticity in part by analyzing GPS data included in some of the images.

“The material is unprecedented on several levels,” Dr. Adrian Zenz, director and senior fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, who obtained the files and shared them with news outlets, wrote on Twitter. His thread provided a broad overview of the leaked materials that included “high-level speeches, implicating top leadership and containing blunt language,” “camp security instructions, far more detailed than China Cables [that] describe heavily armed strike units with battlefield assault rifles,” and other evidence of Uighur oppression at the hands of the Chinese government.

Most of the images and documents are available on a dedicated site. Contents include the images of 2,884 detainees, training images and Powerpoint documents for security drills, and speeches and directives from top government officials…

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Inside China’s secret Uyghur detention system

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Rahile Omer looks into the camera, her angular face expressionless. Her eyes hold the only hint of emotion.

She has been flagged by China’s sweeping surveillance system in Xinjiang province. It monitors Uyghurs, the Muslim ethnic group, and other minority groups for “micro-clues” that officials deem suspicious. Rahile has been deemed a “Type 12 person,” someone connected to an existing police case.

She is 14 years old.

In Rahile’s case, the flag was triggered by a family connection, according to police records; her mother was serving six years in prison for allegedly disturbing “the social order” after authorities accused her of following a puritanical form of Islam and engaging in extremist religious practices. The girl’s father, also labeled a “Type 12 person,” had already been sent to a “reeducation” camp after being detained in 2017.

Now, Rahile’s mug shot is captured by an official’s digital camera. Her name and supposed infractions are logged in a spreadsheet along with those of thousands of other people. And Rahile, too, will be sent to a camp that outside experts say is essentially a prison.

The photo and details of Rahile Omer’s case are among thousands of secret files that were obtained from computer systems of two local police agencies in China, according to a U.S.-based China researcher, Adrian Zenz.

Zenz, a well-known expert on China’s treatment of the Uyghurs, says a hacker extracted the files and gave them to him. Zenz then launched an extensive effort to authenticate the records and provided them to an international media consortium, including USA TODAY. Journalists independently reviewed the massive trove of records and verified portions of the contents, which experts say offer an unprecedented look inside China’s detention and internment of Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities.

Zenz published a peer-reviewed research paper on his findings Tuesday, along with a website that discloses thousands of photos and other evidence.

The files include more than 5,000 photos of what appear to be Uyghur people taken at police facilities – essentially mug shots. Zenz concluded thousands of those people were held in detention at the time the…

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Uganda Security Forces Ordered To Stop Detention Of Losing Presidential Candidate : NPR

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Soldiers patrol outside presidential challenger Bobi Wine’s home in Magere, Kampala, Uganda, Jan. 16, after President Yoweri Museveni was declared the winner of the election.

Nicholas Bamulanzeki/AP


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Nicholas Bamulanzeki/AP

Soldiers patrol outside presidential challenger Bobi Wine’s home in Magere, Kampala, Uganda, Jan. 16, after President Yoweri Museveni was declared the winner of the election.

Nicholas Bamulanzeki/AP

A Uganda judge has ordered state security forces, who have kept the losing presidential candidate Bobi Wine detained in his home since mid-January, to stop surrounding Wine’s residence.

Wine, 38, a popular singer whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, was the main opposition candidate in the Jan. 14 presidential election. President Yoweri Museveni was reelected to a sixth term, winning 58% of the vote to Wine’s 34%, according to election officials. Wine disputes the results.

Uganda Election: President Yoweri Museveni Declared Winner As Bobi Wine Alleges Fraud

The court ruled that Wine’s effective house arrest was not in accordance with the law and that if the government wants him detained it should charge him with a crime, The Associated Press reports from the Ugandan capital, Kampala.

The AP says Museveni’s government has not yet responded to the court order and it’s not clear whether it will obey the ruling. Officials surrounded Wine’s house on Election Day and said he could not leave without a military escort, because he posed a threat to public order.

Museveni, who at 76 is twice Wine’s age, has been president for 35 years. Uganda has never had a peaceful transfer of power since the former colony gained independence from Great Britain in 1962.

NPR East Africa correspondent Eyder Peralta reported from Uganda that in the lead-up to the election…

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Chinese air passenger’s refusal to stow phone earns her 5 days ‘detention’

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With U.S. aviation officials poised to lift their longstanding ban on cellphone use in commercial airliners, such is most decidedly not the case in China.

From a website with which I was previously unfamiliar called ChinaSMACK:

Beijing Times report — While on a flight from Changchun to Beijing, Yu X used her mobile phone to make calls multiple times. Not only did she ignore flight attendants who asked her to stop, she also exhibited a nasty attitude refusing to turn off her phone. After the plane landed, she was summoned to the police station. At present, Yu X has been given an administrative punishment of 5 days detention by the airport police.

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Network World Paul McNamara