China’s recent efforts to study the DNA of their country’s ethnic minorities has garnered a lot of criticism. A growing backlash among the scientific community stating that Beijing could use the information in order to spy on and oppress its people. China is currently attempting to harness bleeding edge technology in order to track minority groups in an effort to “suppress terrorism”. This abuse of power has been most predominant in the region of Xinjiang, an area in western China where more than one million muslims have been locked up in internment camps.
Chinese officials have collected blood samples from Uighurs and other Muslim groups to build new tracking tools. Chinese companies have been developing facial recognition technology which can tell when a person is Uighur or not. Sadly the Chinese have been getting help from western sources, often unknowingly. Taking the results of high profile journals and papers and using this information to add credibility to their findings and provide additional funding.
It remains doubtful that the Chinese have actually received permission from the people they’re extracting and testing DNA from. This fact, combined with the lack of moral reasoning behind the studies has started a global movement towards redacting scientific journals and papers relating to these Muslim groups. If scientists are publishing information which is helping the Chinese harm Muslim’s, either knowingly or unknowingly, then the information should be redacted from public view.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/business/china-dna-science-surveillance.html