international education
campusreview.com.au
A suspected re-education camp in China’s
Xinjiang province. Photo: Greg Baker/AFP
Aiding repression?
Australian universities linked to
China’s ‘re-education’ camps.
By Wade Zaglas
T
he University of Technology Sydney
and Curtin University are reviewing
their research funding and approval
procedures over concerns that research
linked to the universities is being used to
help detect and detain ethnic minorities in
Xinjiang, China.
Human Rights Watch alleges artificial
intelligence and surveillance technologies
are being used by the Chinese government
to identify and detain Uyghurs and other
minority Muslim groups in so-called
‘re‑education camps’ in the region.
The scale of detainment is so large that it
has been compared with the Holocaust.
It was revealed recently on ABC TV’s
Four Corners program that UTS began a
review into its $10 million partnership with
Chinese military tech company CETC in
April. The company has developed an app
that Chinese security forces are allegedly
using to track and detain Muslim minority
groups in the region. The university signed
the deal with CETC in 2017 to create a
research centre, which included work on AI
and surveillance technologies.
The director of Human Rights Watch,
Elaine Pearson, said she welcomed UTS’s
internal review.
“I think no Australian university wants to
be collaborating with a Chinese company
that is basically building these tools of
repression in China,” she said.
“This is an app that has been designed
to gather basic information about Uyghurs
and other Muslims.
“We know that people have been sent
to political re-education camps on the
basis of information collected through
this application.”
While UTS is confident there is no link
between the CETC app and research
conducted at its centre, it is “deeply
concerned” by the alleged human rights
violations in Xinjiang and said its internal
review would be available within weeks.
“UTS at this stage has no plans for new
work with CETC and will assess the current
contractual agreements in light of the
review,” the university said.
Perth’s Curtin University is also reviewing
its research approval procedures after an
associate professor’s work was revealed
in the Four Corners program. Associate
Professor Wan-Quan Liu has been
conducting Chinese government-backed
research into how the faces of Uyghur
people could be better detected through
facial scanning – what other experts have
labelled “racial profiling”.
In a statement, Curtin said Liu was
solely focused on “technical advice to
the Chinese research team” and the
university “unequivocally condemns the
use of artificial intelligence, including facial
recognition technology, for any form
of ethnic profiling to negatively impact
and/or persecute any person or group”.
Human Rights Watch is calling on all
Australian universities to review their
research ties with Chinese government
institutions in the fields of AI and
surveillance.
“It’s no secret that China is using
facial recognition tools to racially profile
Uyghurs, and we know what happens as
a consequence of that racial profiling,”
Pearson said.
“I think there are real questions
about how those projects were allowed
to proceed.
“This should cause a rethink for all
Australian institutions, companies,
organisations, that are collaborating with
Chinese state institutions.”
Associate Professor James Leibold
from La Trobe University is an expert in
ethnic minority groups in China and is
urging Australian universities to sever
any links they have with the Chinese
Communist Party.
“Essentially ... we’re being complicit in
the human rights abuses that are occurring
in Xinjiang and in China more widely,” he
said in the Four Corners program.
“I think UTS and other universities here
in Australia that have connections with any
party state company, particularly in the
military or security sector, needs to end
those contracts, and to pull out of those
collaborative arrangements,” Leibold said. ■
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