My apologies for another run-and-gun style post.
We mentioned in a previous roundup that Uighurbiz, an outspoken online community, was shut down, and that its owner, Ilham Tohti, dropped off the radar for a few days. A week ago, RFA posted an article about Tohti quoting anonymous sources "close to" Tohti saying he’s being closely monitored by the authories and has been told to remain silent. This likely is a backlash to some bold comments Tohti made about employment, discrimination, and XUAR Chairman Nur Bekri in an interview with RFA International after an academic trip to France.
Also from RFA, more details on the recently announced $440 million plan to demolish and renovate parts of Kashgar’s old city. This action is to be done allegedly do to earthquake hazard concerns and to "modernize" the area with electricity and water. An official at the Kashgar Cultural Relics office says the issue is already out of their hands; an official at the Kashgar Tourism Office vaguely and ominously states that "one of the city’s main tourist attractions" would also be "affected by the plan." My guess is the Id Kah mosque.
Researchers in Canada and the United Kingdom have published their research on Internet espionage conducted by the Chinese government. Of note to us is that part of their online counter-snooping lead them to servers in Xinjiang, which is apparently where intelligence units monitoring Tibetan independence groups are based. Huzzah for Xinjiang being China’s e-fort!
Finally, an LA Times article entitled "Clocks square off in China’s West" on the curious time zone issues present in Xinjiang, two time zones away from Beijing, yet officially on Beijing time. Now this isn’t news to most people familiar with Xinjiang, but the article is worth reading, argues Jeff Wasserstorm at The China Beat. As a China academic, Wasserstorm was expecting the usual "I can’t believe it’s not China" spiel by a not-so-deeply-embedded journalist, but was surprised instead to find an article with the right balance of journalistic curiosity, reliance on academic references, and historical/geographical context.
Comments 5
As for the research on Internet espionage, it was actually directed not only on Tibetan government in exile, NGOs and individuals living outside Tibet, but also on Uyghur NGOs and Uyghurs around the world. There is a discussion on this topic here: http://forum.uyghurlar.biz/index.php?showtopic=3008. The discussion itself is in Russian, however, you can see the quotes of the texts of such emails in English or in Uyghur (UKY) in this topic.
These crooks started sending out emails with keyloggers in April last year. They all followed the same pattern: the text was tailored to be in Uyghur or in English with the text regarding the Uyghur American Association or the World Uyghur Congress, “From:” email addresses were real ones, however, according to the tracing data in the email headers, they were faked, and those emails contained an attachment masked to be a legitimate one according to the text in the email, whereas the attachment according to virustotal.com contained trojans/keyloggers.
I understand that there was a specific and directed email harvesting on a specific list of Tibetan and Uyghur websites. Our website (not driven by politics, it’s an online Uyghur youth community) also managed to get into such a list, not really something to be proud of. We had some guesses on that discussion regarding the reasons of this espionage campaign. It’s interesting to see that some of the guesses have been confirmed by this report produced by Canadians.
Regards,
Posted 03 Apr 2009 at 3:03 pm ¶Rus.
Rus,
This is fascinating (although depressing) information. Occasionally, like in the article linked above, you see big media corporations just mention that China is spying both on other states and on individual dissidents. But it’s only by bypassing the media and listening to what the effective people themselves have to say (like at your community) can you see what kind of techniques are actually being used. I didn’t realize that elaborate “phishing” emails were being used to lure people into revealing their political persuasions to the government; might have to stop by your community and take a look. Thanks for the input.
Posted 03 Apr 2009 at 10:36 pm ¶It is so fustrating when i can only partially read Uyghur!!!!!
Posted 05 Apr 2009 at 12:28 am ¶Porfiriy,
you are more than welcome to check on our community :) Please take into account that 90% of topics there are in Russian, about 7-8% in Uyghur, and only a few percent in English. Though anyway there will always be people in our community glad to welcome you in either language.
Posted 09 Apr 2009 at 6:53 pm ¶Uighurbiz was a good source and blog for things happened in Xinjiang, actually it promoted understanding among Hans and other minorities. It is regretful to hear that site is closed down.
Posted 15 Apr 2009 at 1:50 pm ¶Post a Comment