High-Tech Surveillance for Religious Persecution: Technology Enabled and Facilitated Uyghur Genocide in China
![handle is hein.journals/ndalro97 and id is 308 raw text is: HIGH-TECH SURVEILLANCE FOR RELIGIOUS
PERSECUTION: TECHNOLOGY ENABLED AND
FACILITATED UYGHUR GENOCIDE IN CHINA
Nury Turkel*
When Chinese President Xi Jinping looks at the society around him,
he sees plenty of potential threats to his power. History, civic
engagement, activists, and most relevant to Xi, religion, all have the
capacity to energize large masses of people in pursuit of goals counter
to the Chinese Communist Party's power and legitimacy. Xi has
developed a succinct strategy' towards any potential institution that
could detract from his own singular authority-that is, to coopt what
could be useful to his own power and destroy the rest.2
Xi and his predecessors have long employed a dual-track strategy
towards religion. Historically, (Chinese Communist Party) CCP leaders
have selectively welcomed3 the rise of traditional Chinese Buddhism
and folk religions when they can be used as sources of positive
promotion for the socialist regime. However, at any inclination that
followers of these faiths might organize into a bloc with political
© 2022 Nury Turkel. Individuals and nonprofit institutions may reproduce and
distribute copies of this Essay in any format at or below cost, for educational purposes, so
long as each copy identifies the author, provides a citation to the Notre Dame Law Review
Reflection, and includes this provision in the copyright notice.
* Vice Chair, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Commissioner
Turkel also serves as a Senior Fellow with the Hudson Institute, Chairman of the Board for
the Uyghur Human Rights Project, which he co-founded in 2003. He received an M.A. in
International Relations and a J.D. from American University. In 2021, Notre Dame Law
School's Religious Liberty Initiative awarded him the first Notre Dame Prize for Religious
Liberty.
1 See Xi Stresses Sinicization and Regulation of Religious Activities, BLOOMBERG (Dec. 4,
2021), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-04/xi-stresses-sinicization-
and-regulation-of-religious-activities [https://perma.cc/TL7N-K8KQ].
2 Nathan Ruser, James Leibold, Kelsey Munro, & Tilla Hoja, CULTURAL ERASURE: TRACING
THE DESTRUCTIONS OF UYGHURAND ISLAMIC SPACES IN XINJIANG 35 (2020).
3 Eleanor Albert & Lindsay Maizland, Religion in China, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELS. (Sep.
25, 2020), https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/religion-china#chapter-title-0-3 [https:/
/perma.cc/9MZK-3E9D].
310](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/ndalro97&div=24&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
High-Tech Surveillance for Religious Persecution: Technology Enabled and Facilitated Uyghur Genocide in China
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most