Fearing terrorist attack, authorities assign QR codes

These pots were submitted to
the local government to receive
QR codes. (Photo: ChinaAid)

ChinaAid

(Ili Kazakh, Xinjiang—April 12, 2018) Triggered by fears of attacks that mimic terrorism committed in the U.S., authorities in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Region of China’s northwestern Xinjiang issued a notice ordering that all knives and pressure cookers be turned into the police station to receive QR codes.

Such QR codes will enable authorities to trace all these items back to their owners, leaving its population vulnerable to persecution for something as trivial for failing to report a missing knife or pressure cooker that is later discovered by authorities. According to reports, so many residents turned in the requested items that almost every resident in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Region now has a QR code associated with them.

Allegedly, these measures are intended to avoid terrorist attacks that copy assaults carried out in the U.S. On Sept. 17, 2016, Manhattan police responded to an explosion, which occurred shortly after a man dropped an object into a trash can. Even though the exact type of explosion was undisclosed, cops found an unexploded pressure cooker that had been transformed into a bomb and taped and wired to a small device. Three years earlier, two bombs wounded 183 people and killed three at the Boston Marathon, and at least one of the bombs was a pressure cooker.

However, authorities often falsely accuses Xinjiang’s residents, who are mostly ethnic minority Muslims, of “extreme terrorism” for actions as common as wearing a burqa or growing a beard. These new regulations against common household items seem extreme, considering the fact that it is limited to Xinjiang minorities and there is not a history of pressure cooker attacks in the region. Though Xinjiang is often a region with great tension between minority residents and Communist authorities, the unrest is usually the result of the government’s suppression and restrictions against minority cultural expression, rather than acts of terror motivated by extremist beliefs.

Dilxat Raxit, the spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, said that the Chinese government regards Uyghurs—one of China’s 56 minorities and the people group that compose the majority of Xinjiang residents—as enemies of the country and distributes discriminating propaganda, issues regulations, and surveils them out of fear. “The government is eager to suppress its people with the excuse of anti-terrorism, but it is afraid that the coercive measures it employs will incite resistance from the people.”


ChinaAid exposes abuses, such as those suffered by people living in Xinjiang, in order to stand in solidarity with the persecuted and promote religious freedom, human rights, and rule of law.


ChinaAid Media Team
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Fearing terrorist attack, authorities assign QR codes

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