Human Rights Groups Call For Dahua Resignations / Terminations

4 human rights groups have published open letters to Dahua and Lorex calling on employees to resign, and partners - including ADI, Costco, and others - to terminate business relationships.

Inside this report, we examine the letters, why they focused on Dahua/Lorex, and the response from Dahua employees and partners.

Uyghurs: Dahua Harming "Millions", "Worked to Terrorize and Destroy the Uyghur People"

On December 9, 2022, Dahua and Lorex employees received a letter "to urge that you resign", and Dahua and Lorex partners received a nearly-identical letter "to urge that you terminate your business relationship with Dahua."

Several leading, global Uyghur advocacy organizations authored the two letters, including the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project (URAP), Uyghur American Association, and Campaign for Uyghurs.

The letters provide a blunt appraisal of Dahua's role in Xinjiang as "actively, knowingly harming the safety and well-being of millions."

As security industry professionals, we know you care about the safety and well-being of others. But Dahua is actively, knowingly harming the safety and well-being of millions.

...

A mountain of evidence shows that Dahua, in partnership with the Communist Party of China (CCP), has worked to terrorize and destroy the Uyghur people, and other ethnic and religious groups in China. Without Dahua’s technology and direct participation, the CCP could not have targeted Uyghurs at such staggering scale; the importance of Chinese surveillance companies like Dahua is recognized in multiple reports, including recently that of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

They specifically note how Dahua is not merely "a passive supplier" of technology. Among its activities in Xinjiang are nearly $1 billion USD of contracts for mass surveillance and police stations, which Dahua agreed to design, build, and operate directly for years into the future.

Dahua is not simply a passive supplier that ‘does not control how its technology is used', contrary to what you might have been told. As the CCP sketched its plan to destroy millions of lives, Dahua held the pen.

The authors speak poignantly to how their families, friends, neighbors and "even children" have suffered under Xinjiang's surveillance-powered campaign of atrocities:

The people we speak of are our mothers and fathers, our brothers and sisters, our nieces and nephews, our neighbors and our friends. Millions, even children, have been placed in concentration camps, where they have been tortured, raped, ‘reeducated’, sterilized, and are often never seen again. Even avoiding the camps offers no escape: The Uyghur homeland (Xinjiang) itself has become an open-air prison, with sophisticated mass surveillance governing every person’s every move. [emphasis added]

"Dahua's only response is to outright lie"

The letters also address Dahua's responses to investigations of its role in Xinjiang, including IPVM's October 2022 report showing - for the third time - that Dahua developed ethnicity-targeting technology, saying Dahua will not take accountability.

Instead of taking accountability, Dahua’s only response is to outright lie; we expect this includes privately to industry partners and its own employees. Just last month, an investigation found irrefutable evidence of Dahua’s Uyghur/ethnicity-targeting AI – a key tool used by police in China against Uyghurs, based on 2017 government guidance co-authored by Dahua – but Dahua only repeated its years-long lie that it has no such products.

IPVM Called for Dahua Resignations

The Uyghur Groups' letters come after IPVM previously called on Dahua employees to resign in October 2022, after we reported the latest evidence of Dahua's ethnicity-targeting technology.

Dahua and Partner Recipients

Recipients of the letter include Dahua executives Wayne Hurd, Tim Wang, Tim Shen, and Greg Cortina.

Various types of partners received the letter. This includes seven executives from major Dahua/Hikvision distributor ADI and its parent Resideo, including former Naval officer and ADI President Rob Aarnes. Numerous executives at big box stores that sell Dahua/Lorex including Costco and Sam's Club also received the letter.

Dahua Response

Dahua responded to IPVM's request for comment with a statement, below. The statement asserts that Dahua "is not owned or controlled by any government," however, the letters never raised this issue. In the statement, Dahua again repeated "our commitment to not develop or market products that target a specific group based on ethnicity," despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

We understand and respect the rights of some NGOs to express their opinions. But the fact is that Dahua is not owned or controlled by any government. We are a private-sector business that exists to serve our customers, employees and shareholders. As a private business, we operate in accordance with the laws of every country in which we operate, as well as our own ethics guidelines, which include a bedrock commitment to human rights. Like all technology companies, we recognize that we are limited in our ability to control how our end-user customers deploy our products, but we strive to reduce the risk of ours being used for unethical or illegal purposes. That includes our commitment to not develop or market products that target a specific group based on ethnicity, race or national origin. As a company, we are proud of how our team works together to serve our stakeholders and uphold these values and we are grateful for the great job they do every day.

Dahua/Lorex Ownership Status

Both Dahua and Lorex employees and partners received the letters. Recently, Dahua announced its intention to sell Lorex to a Taiwan company, Skywatch, however both Dahua and Skywatch have told IPVM the sale is not complete.