![]() ![]() ![]() “Whatever they asked us to do, we had to obey.” Hatiwaji, 54, who is now living in exile in France. In another instance, she said, health workers worked from morning until night to prick the fingers of the 250 detainees who were locked up in a camp in Karamay, a city in northern Xinjiang. Hatiwaji said the police had also scanned her face and irises and recorded her voice. Gulbahar Hatiwaji, a Uyghur who was detained in Xinjiang from 2017 to 2019, said her blood was collected about five to six times while she was in detention. But they can also be abused by the police for surveillance, human rights activists say. The issue, which affects a variety of high-tech industries, has become increasingly tense as relations between Washington and Beijing have grown frostier over human rights and other concerns.ĭNA sequencers can be used to advance Covid-19 and cancer research and to exonerate prisoners. The deals highlight how difficult it is for Washington to control the ways in which American technology is exploited by authoritarian governments that may use it for repression and surveillance. In 2019, Thermo Fisher announced it would stop selling to Xinjiang after undertaking “fact-specific assessments.” At that time, the company had come under scrutiny after reports that Chinese officials were collecting DNA samples and other biometric data from millions of Uyghurs, many of whom said they had no choice but to comply. Promega did not respond to queries on what procedures they have in place to ensure their products do not end up with the Xinjiang police. ![]() Thermo Fisher said the distributors and the users on the documents reviewed by the Times are not listed in its system. The statement said it uses a network of authorized distributors who have agreed to comply with that process. In a statement, Thermo Fisher said it has a “multi-level purchasing process” designed to prevent sales and shipments of human identification products to the Xinjiang authorities. Still, experts say the fact that the Xinjiang police continue to acquire and use U.S.-made DNA equipment raises questions about the companies’ diligence regarding where their products end up. It is not clear how the Chinese firms acquired the equipment, and the documents do not show that either American company made direct sales to any of the Chinese firms. The sales are happening through Chinese firms that buy the products and resell them to the police in Xinjiang. And in 2020, Washington warned that companies selling biometric technology and other products to Xinjiang should be aware of the “reputational, economic and legal risks.”īut Chinese government procurement documents and contracts reviewed by The New York Times show that goods made by two American companies - Thermo Fisher and Promega - have continued to flow to the region, where a million or more residents, mostly Muslim Uyghurs, have been incarcerated in internment camps. In 2019, the Trump administration banned the sale of American goods to most law enforcement agencies in Xinjiang unless the companies received a license. government has tried to prevent the sale of DNA sequencers, test kits and other products made by American firms to the police in Xinjiang for years, amid concerns raised by scientists and human rights groups that the authorities could use the tools to build systems to track people. government that the sale of such technologies could be used to enable human rights abuses in the region. The police in the Chinese region of Xinjiang are still buying hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of American DNA equipment despite warnings from the U.S. ![]()
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