US Passes Uyghur Human Rights Law Condemning Mass Surveillance
The US government has passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, prominently criticizing the PRC government's "gross violations of human rights" and "mass surveillance" in Xinjiang.
The law may impact global video surveillance manufacturers through potential sanctions on companies and individuals along with human rights investigations.
In this post, we examine this legislation and its effects, including:
- Ceasing PRC "Mass Surveillance" Now Official US Policy
- "Senior" Chinese Officials Sanctioned; Could Hikvision Be Included?
- Report Mandates "List of Chinese Companies" Involved
- Hikvision/Dahua Impact: Mainly More Bad PR
- Other Manufacturers Potentially At Risk
Law Background
The act was signed by President Trump yesterday and is now official US law:
Co-author Marco Rubio (R-FL) tweeted he hoped it would "hold China accountable for grotesque human rights violations" against Uyghurs:
In response, the PRC Foreign Ministry said it "strongly deplores" the law:
China strongly deplores the US signing into law of the "Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020". We urge the US side to respect China's counter-terrorism and de-radicalization efforts, stop applying double standards on counter-terrorism issues, and stop using Xinjiang-related issues as a pretext to interfere in China's internal affairs.
Ceasing PRC "Mass Surveillance" Now Official US Policy
The law makes ceasing PRC "use of mass surveillance" in Xinjiang official US-China policy:
United States policy toward the People’s Republic of China should be explicitly linked with the situation in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, specifically as to whether [...] the use of mass surveillance and predictive policing to discriminate against and violate the human rights of members of specific ethnic groups has ceased and is not evident in other parts of China [emphasis added]
The law also calls out violations of religious freedom in Xinjiang, specifically the:
particularly severe restrictions of religious and cultural practice
Although the law doesn't mention Hikvision and Dahua, it's clear the two firms are part of the mass surveillance/religious freedom problem, having won over $1 billion in direct PRC government mass surveillance projects in Xinjiang. Examples of their Xinjiang work include:
- Hikvision's police facial recognition cameras for almost 1,000 mosques
- Hikvision's Uyghur-detecting camera
- Dahua's construction and operation of police stations
- Dahua's massive Xinjiang R&D center
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