How a search engine offers distressing information to foreign Uyghurs
Last May, a cache of leaked files and photos from official databases hacked in China’s northwest Xinjiang region shed new light on Beijing’s human rights abuses against the region’s Uighur minority.
Footage showing teenagers and elderly women among those held in the internment camps offered dire insights into the Chinese government’s brutal persecution of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities.
The files were obtained by an anonymous source who hacked into police computers and leaked them to Adrian Zenz, director of China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in the United States.
On February 10, Zenz and his team revealed the full extent of the leaked files, which included information on approximately 830,000 individuals and thousands of images.
In addition to the new revelations, Zenz also introduced a new search tool that allows Uighurs in the diaspora to enter their family members’ Chinese ID, number or their names in Chinese spelling, to look up relevant information about them.
“This is information that the Chinese government has refused to make public, and now that it’s leaked to us, we’re letting the Uighurs search it like it’s on a Xinjiang police computer,” Zenz told DW. “It’s like an imperfect window into the Xinjiang police file system.”
Source: DW
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