China flags Uighurs as ‘extremist’ for having Quran, report says

Ethnic minority Muslims in China's Xinjiang are subject to heavy surveillance as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to eliminate cultural, linguistic and religious differences from the country's majority Han culture [File: Thomas Peter/Reuters]

Taipei, Taiwan – Chinese authorities monitor the phones of ethnic minority Uighurs for the presence of 50,000 known multimedia files that are used to flag what Beijing views as extremism with possession of the Quran enough to trigger a police interrogation, according to a forensic investigation by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

While the list of “violent and terrorist” content includes violent audio, video and images produced by armed groups such as ISIL (ISIS), it also includes material from organisations that promote the identity or self-determination of Uighurs, a mostly Muslim minority, in far-western Xinjiang.