https://www.wired.com/story/uyghur-internet-erased-china/
"Ekpar Asat, founder of one of the most popular Uyghur-language websites,
started his career as many tech entrepreneurs do: In 2007, he turned his
college project into a successful news site and forum called Bagdax.
On the wall of his office were pictures of his role models: Mark Zuckerberg,
Barack Obama, and Jack Ma. As a minor celebrity in the western Chinese region
of Xinjiang, Asat, also known as Mr. Bagdax, was invited to provincial
government events and to the offices of China’s tech giants. Even if the
platform had to adhere to China’s strict censorship rules—at one point, four
police officers were tasked with monitoring it—its base quickly grew to over
100,000 users.
In early 2016, however, Asat was swept up in a mass detention campaign,
alongside a reported 1 million members of Uyghur and other Turkic minorities,
after returning from an entrepreneur leadership program organized by the US
State Department.
Within a year, Bagdax and other popular Uyghur websites—such as Misranim,
Bozqir, and Ana Tuprak—permanently stopped updating. And they weren’t the only
ones. As Beijing’s crackdown in the Xinjiang region unfolded, the vast majority
of independent Uyghur-run websites ceased to exist, according to local tech
industry insiders and academics tracking the online Uyghur-language sphere.
“It’s like erasing the life work of thousands and thousands of people to build
something—a future for their own society,” says Darren Byler, assistant
professor of international studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and
an author of several books on China’s treatment of Uyghurs.
Many of the people behind the websites have also disappeared into China’s
detention camp system. Developers, computer scientists, and IT
experts—especially those working on Uyghur-language products—have been
detained, according to members of the minority living abroad."
Via
The RISKS Digest Volume 33 Issue 51
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/33/51#subj30
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
