Human Rights Abusing Chinese Surveillance Firm Blacklisted by Trump to be Promoted by UK

People walk by Chinese-made surveillance cameras installed along a street in Beijing, Thur
AP Photo/Andy Wong
Kurt Zindulka

The United Kingdom will promote a Chinese tech firm that is responsible for the mass security apparatus used to surveil minority groups in the western region of Xinjiang, China.

Following recent spats with the United States over Chinese involvement in the UK, Hikvision, a Chinese surveillance company, has been permitted by the Home Office to attend next month’s Security and Policing trade fair in Farnborough, England. The move flies in the face of judgements made by British allies, including the United States which blacklisted Hikvision in October for its human rights violations in China.

The fair will be held between March 3-5, hosted by the Home Office, who said the event will be used to strengthen “our strong security alliances around the world and for our international partners to understand and hear about the work we are doing to keep our country secure,” according to The Guardian.

Analysis reported by the newspaper found that nine of the 300 companies invited to the event have been accused of human rights abuses, including Hikvision.

Conservative MP Bob Seely urged the Home Office to rescind the invitation, saying: “We need to stop having an ethical bypass when it comes to China and hi-tech. If we are going to proclaim UK values and standards, we need at least the appearance of consistency.”

The move to invite Hikvision could increase the tension between the United States and the United Kingdom, which has recently become strained following Boris Johnson’s decision to allow Huawei to help build parts of the UK’s 5G network, a decision that was heavily criticised by the United States and other allies including Australia.

Hikvision was blacklisted by the United States Department of Commerce, alongside 28 other Chinese firms in October of last year, saying the company is “implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups” in Xinjiang province, sometimes referred to as Sinkiang or East Turkestan.

The company is one of the largest surveillance equipment firms in the world, valued at approximately $42 billion. In 2017 it was awarded at least five security contracts worth an estimated 1.85 billion yuan ($260 million) to install a “social prevention and control system” in Xinjiang comprising of tens of thousands of cameras.

A leaked document released by Deutsche Welles on Monday showed that China is using hi-tech surveillance equipment to monitor every move made by Uyghur people in the region. The document detailed 311 people who were detained for “reeducation” for committing offences such as growing a beard, fasting or applying for a passport.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has interned between one and three million Uyghur Muslim people in the western region of Xinjiang. China has long been accused by former prisoners of using torture, rape, forced sterilisation, and organ harvesting against minority peoples interned in the camps.

In an exclusive Breitbart London video, one Uyghur woman described the conditions in the camps, saying: “torture, lack of food, no hygiene, and people are forced to take unknown medicines, women are forced to be sterilised. There are women who have been there for over one year, they said they didn’t have periods, young women, because they are forced to take some unknown medication.”

“Widespread rape has been reported, naked searches every other day, so the women have to be stripped naked and they have to sit up in front of many officials… and that is very humiliating, it’s against the complete humanity in this 21st century [sic]” she added.

Kurt Zindulka / Breitbart News

Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka

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