#x

Xfce 4.16 Review – Keeping the Classic Desktop Legacy Alive #linux #opensource #xfce #xubuntu
▻https://www.debugpoint.com/2021/02/xfce-4-16-review

Oh, chouette, Francis Lalanne appelle à un coup d’État militaire contre Macron dans France Soir. Alors c’est grave et c’est taré, mais publier ça 15 jours après l’épisode du Capitole, ça serait pas loin de mériter un peu de respect. (Parce que c’est à ça qu’on les reconnaît.)

Francis Lalanne : « J’Appelle ! »
▻https://www.francesoir.fr/opinions-entretiens/francis-lalanne-appel

J’appelle les plus hauts dignitaires de l’armée française à venir au secours du peuple et à faire cesser le trouble social et politique dont souffrent depuis trop longtemps la Nation.
Pour ce faire, je demande aux plus grands responsables militaires français de procéder, au nom du peuple français, à la mise à pied des auteurs du Coup d’État.
Donc par voie de conséquence, de mettre fin à l’exercice du mandat de l’actuel président de la République.

Une fois les auteurs du coup d’État mis à pied, j’appelle l’Armée Française à les faire comparaître devant un tribunal constitué en Haute Cour, pour qu’ils aient à répondre du chef de haute trahison.
Je demande à L’Armée Française de prendre toutes mesures concernant les auteurs du coup d’État visant à faire respecter les décisions de Justice qui seront prononcées à leur endroit .

Le #rire du dominant

https://i2.wp.com/imagesociale.fr/wp-content/uploads/Gorce_LeMonde_Reperesfamiliaux_210119.jpg

#Xavier_Gorce a rendu un fier service au Monde en mettant fin de lui-même à la collaboration qui le liait depuis près de vingt ans au journal du soir. Le dessin de trop aura été celui où il se hasardait à se moquer des victimes d’inceste, publié sur la newsletter du quotidien, qui a provoqué la colère de nombreux lecteurs. Mais cela faisait déjà plusieurs années, notamment depuis la crise des Gilets jaunes, que le #mépris de #Gorce était devenu plus visible que son humour.

Il est significatif que ce soit sur la question des violences sexuelles que la satire ait trébuché. La vague de témoignages qui a suivi celui de Camille Kouchner a transformé la perception de l’inceste, qui apparaît désormais comme un problème de société effrayant et trop longtemps occulté. Prendre ce sujet à la légère, comme continuent de le faire quelques défenseurs anachroniques des droits du patriarcat, est devenu tout simplement insupportable.

En dépit de justifications laborieuses qui n’ont convaincu personne, l’embarras du dessinateur était perceptible. Il est donc regrettable de constater que le débat public à propos du dessin de presse soit devenu le théâtre d’une des pires pollutions intellectuelles, où s’empilent les sophismes les plus moisis sur le bon temps où l’on pouvait rire des victimes, la tyrannie de l’indignation, sans oublier la blague de la « cancel culture ». Legs de la crise des caricatures danoises de 2006, il est devenu impossible en France d’évoquer n’importe quel dessin sans plier le genou devant la mémoire des victimes des attentats de #Charlie. Les arguments brandis par Gorce lui-même constituent un festival de cette #caricature de débat sur les #caricatures, qui est devenu tout bonnement absurde – les soi-disant défenseurs de la liberté d’expression hurlant à la censure à la moindre critique.

Ce que démontre pourtant la passion qui anime cette posture faussement libertaire, c’est à quel point le rire peut être l’arme de l’imposition de la #norme, d’une rare #violence_sociale. Libérateur lorsqu’il représente la voix des faibles, il devient le plus effrayant instrument d’#oppression lorsqu’il leur impose le #silence. Au fil des ans, le dessin de Gorce était devenu emblématique de cette ricanante #raison_du_plus_fort. Que ses tristes #sarcasmes perdent un peu en visibilité est une bonne nouvelle.

►http://imagesociale.fr/9342

déjà signalé ici, je remets avec quelques tags en plus :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/897484

Voir aussi ce fil de discussion :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/887069

@karine4 et @cede, extrait :

Ce que démontre pourtant la passion qui anime cette posture faussement libertaire, c’est à quel point le rire peut être l’arme de l’imposition de la #norme, d’une rare #violence_sociale. Libérateur lorsqu’il représente la voix des faibles, il devient le plus effrayant instrument d’#oppression lorsqu’il leur impose le #silence.

Vaccination : faire appel à des cabinets de conseil étrangers est un choix humiliant et peu stratégique

Comment Marc : l’auteur est un vieux réac barbouzard, nonobstant la liste des exemples mentionnés est sidérante...

▻https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/politique/vaccination-faire-appel-a-des-cabinets-de-conseil-etrangers-est-un-choix-hu

Claims Antifa Embedded in Capitol Riots Come From a Deeply Unreliable Facial Recognition Company - Dave Gershgorn
▻https://onezero.medium.com/claims-antifa-embedded-in-capitol-riots-come-from-a-deeply-unreliabl

XRVision also has a track record of spreading conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden Congressman Matt Gaetz, a Republican from Florida, took to the House floor on Wednesday night to spread an increasingly popular conspiracy theory that the pro-Trump mobs that overtook the Capitol building were in fact aligned with antifa. The claim was based on an anonymous source in a story from the Washington Times, a conservative outlet that has repeatedly pushed conspiracy theories. The source was (...)

#biométrie #manipulation #facial #reconnaissance #vidéo-surveillance #extrême-droite #surveillance (...)

##XRVision

https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/1*NX9CSH2G3YaFwsir0eJG2w.jpeg

Joëlle Tolédano : « Si l’on ne fait que du droit face aux Gafa, on se fera balader »
▻https://www.lopinion.fr/edition/economie/joelle-toledano-si-l-on-ne-fait-que-droit-face-aux-gafa-on-se-fera-231882

Pour cette spécialiste de la régulation, « le cœur du problème réside dans la relation entre contenus, données personnelles et publicité ciblée » Joëlle Toledano est économiste et spécialiste de la régulation des marchés. Membre du collège de l’Autorité de régulation des communications électroniques et des postes (Arcep) de 2005 à 2011, elle est aujourd’hui professeure émérite associée à la chaire Gouvernance et régulation de Dauphine, et siège au board de plusieurs start-up du numérique. Votre dernier ouvrage (...)

#Alibaba #Baidu #Google #Tencent #Xiaomi #Facebook #Instagram #WhatsApp #algorithme #domination #BigData #législation #microtargeting #publicité (...)

##publicité ##FTC

https://www.lopinion.fr/sites/nb.com/files/styles/w_838/public/styles/paysage/public/images/2020/10/joelle_toledano_drfp.jpg

FANG and Faust : Reimagining Capitalism For a Stake in Our Data Profits
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-12-27/fang-and-faust-reimagining-capitalism-for-a-stake-in-our-data-profits

There’s a Faustian bargain to make from Covid-19 that could increase our ownership of the 21st century. From interest rates to fashion, pandemics in the past — like the Black Death in the 14th century — have left deep imprints on economic life. This time may be no different. In the aftermath of the coronavirus, governments can reimagine capitalism by giving all of us a stake in the most valuable byproduct of our day-to-day living : data. But make no mistake. It will still be a Faustian (...)

#FANG #Alibaba #Apple #Baidu #Google #MasterCard #Samsung #Tencent #Visa #Xiaomi #Amazon #Netflix #Paypal #Facebook #payement #consommation #consentement #domination #bénéfices #BHATX #BigData #COVID-19 #GAFAM #santé (...)

##santé ##[fr]Règlement_Général_sur_la_Protection_des_Données__RGPD_[en]General_Data_Protection_Regulation__GDPR_[nl]General_Data_Protection_Regulation__GDPR_ ##Jio

Il racconto dell’omicidio di #Agitu_Ideo_Gudeta evidenzia il razzismo democratico dei media italiani

L’imprenditrice #Agitu Ideo Gudeta è stata uccisa il 29 dicembre nella sua casa a #Frassilongo, in provincia di Trento. Da subito si è ipotizzato si trattasse dell’ennesimo femminicidio (72 donne dall’inizio del 2020), anche in ragione del fatto che in passato la donna era stata costretta a querelare un uomo per #stalking. In quell’occasione Gudeta aveva chiesto di considerare l’aggravante razziale, dato che l’uomo, un vicino di casa, la chiamava ripetutamente “negra”, ma il giudice aveva respinto la richiesta del suo avvocato. Il giorno successivo all’omicidio, il suo dipendente #Adams_Suleimani, – un uomo ghanese di 32 anni – ha confessato il crimine, aggravato dal fatto che l’ha violentata mentre era agonizzante. Il movente sarebbe un mancato pagamento.

Gudeta era nata ad Addis Abeba, in Etiopia, 42 anni fa. Non era più una “ragazza”, come hanno scritto alcune testate. La sua prima permanenza in Italia risale a quando aveva 18 anni, per studiare nella facoltà di Sociologia di Trento. Era poi tornata in Etiopia, ma nel 2010 l’instabilità del Paese l’ha costretta a tornare in Italia. Nello Stato africano si è interrotto solo pochi giorni fa il conflitto tra il Fronte di Liberazione del Tigré e il governo centrale etiope – i tigrini sono una minoranza nel Paese, ma hanno governato per oltre trent’anni senza far cessare gli scontri tra etnie – cha ha causato violazioni dei diritti umani, massacri di centinaia di civili e una grave crisi umanitaria.

https://thevision.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/rthtyhty-1200x753.jpg

Proprio le minacce dei miliziani del Fronte di Liberazione avevano spinto Agitu Ideo Gudeta a tornare in Italia. La donna aveva infatti denunciato le politiche di #land_grabbing, ossia l’accaparramento delle terre da parte di aziende o governi di altri Paesi senza il consenso delle comunità che le abitano o che le utilizzano per mantenersi. Per questo motivo il governo italiano le ha riconosciuto lo status di rifugiata. In Trentino, dove si era trasferita in pianta stabile, ha portato avanti il suo impegno per il rispetto della natura, avviando un allevamento di ovini di razza pezzata mochena, una specie autoctona a rischio estinzione, e recuperando alcuni ettari di terreni in stato di abbandono.

Il caseificio che aveva aperto rivelava già dal nome – La capra felice – il suo credo ambientalista e il suo antispecismo, ricevendo riconoscimenti da Slow Food e da Legambiente per l’impegno promosso con la sua azienda e il suo negozio. Agitu Ideo Gudeta era un nome noto nel movimento antirazzista italiano, ma oggi viene usata – persino dai Verdi – per presentare il Trentino come terra di accoglienza, in un tentativo di nascondere la xenofobia di cui era oggetto. Le origini della donna e del suo assassino stupratore sono sottolineate da tutti e precedono la narrazione della violenza, mettendola in secondo piano, salvo evidenziarla in relazione alla provenienza dell’omicida, che per una volta non è un italiano, né un compagno o un parente.

Alla “ragazza” è stata affibbiata in tutta fretta una narrazione comune a quella che caratterizza altre donne mediaticamente esposte, come le attiviste Greta Thunberg e Carola Rackete, la cooperante Aisha Romano o la giornalista Giovanna Botteri, basata su giudizi e attacchi basati perlopiù su fattori estetici. Razzismo, sessismo e classismo si mescolano in questa storia in cui la violenza – quella del vicino di casa, quella del suo assassino, quella del governo etiope – rischiano di rimanere sullo sfondo, in favore del Grande gioco dell’integrazione. A guidarlo è come sempre un trionfalismo tipico dei white saviour (secondo una definizione dello storico Teju Cole del 2012), come se esistesse un colonialismo rispettabile: insomma, in nome della tolleranza, noi italiani doc abbiamo concesso alla donna un riparo da un Paese povero, di una povertà che riteniamo irrimediabile. Usiamo ormai d’abitudine degli automatismi e un lessico che Giuseppe Faso ha definito razzismo democratico, in cui si oppongono acriticamente migranti meritevoli a migranti immeritevoli, un dualismo che sa vedere solo “risorse” o “minacce all’identità nazionale”.

Così il protagonismo di Agitu Ideo Gudeta viene improvvisamente premiato, trasformando lei in una migrante-eroina e il suo aguzzino nel solito stupratore non bianco, funzionale solo al “Prima gli italiani”. Ma parlare di Agitu Ideo Gudeta in termini di “integrazione” è un insulto alla sua memoria. Considerarla un simbolo in questo senso conferma che per molti una rifugiata sarà rifugiata per sempre e che una “migrante” non è altro che una migrante. La nostra stampa l’ha fatto, suggerendo di dividere gli immigrati in buoni e cattivi, decorosi e indecorosi, e trattando i lettori come se fossero tutti incapaci di accogliere riflessioni più approfondite.

Parallelamente però, un governo che come i precedenti accantona la proposta di legge sulla cittadinanza favorisce un racconto privo di sfumature, che rifiuta in nome di una supposta complessità non affrontabile nello sviscerare questo tema. Forse se avessimo una legge sulla cittadinanza al passo con i tempi, e non una serie di norme che escludono gli italiani di seconda generazione e i migranti, potremmo far finalmente progredire il ragionamento sulla cosiddetta convivenza e sulla coesione sociale ed esprimerci con termini più adeguati. Soprattutto chi è stato in piazza a gridare “Black Lives Matter”, “I can’t breathe” e “Say Their Names” oggi dovrebbe pretendere che la notizia di questo femminicidio venga data diversamente: in Trentino una donna di nome Agitu Ideo Gudeta è stata uccisa e violentata. Era diventata un’imprenditrice di successo nel settore caseario dopo essersi opposta alle politiche di land grabbing in Etiopia. Era un’attivista e un’ambientalista molto conosciuta. Mancherà alla sua comunità.

▻https://thevision.com/attualita/agitu-gudeta-razzismo

#féminicide #racisme #Italie #meurtre #femmes #intersectionnalité #viol #réfugiés #accaparement_des_terres #Trentin #éleveuse #élevage #Pezzata_Mòchena #chèvrerie #chèvres #La_capra_felice #xénophobie
#white_saviour #racisme_démocratique
–-

Le site web de la #fromagerie de Agitu Ideo Gudet :

http://www.lacaprafelice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/la-capra-felice-formaggio-logo.png https://i.imgur.com/hkfmVi8.png

–------------------

NB :
Grâce à une amie qui connaissait Agitu je viens de connaître une autre facette de cette histoire. Un drame dans le drame, dont je ne peux/veux pas parler ici.

Thessaloniki: Attack on the unaccompanied minor structure of the Church of Greece en

An attack on the accommodation structure for unaccompanied refugees that operates under the auspices of the Church of Greece took place last night, in #Oreokastro, Thessaloniki.

According to the structure’s attorney, Thodoris Karagiannis, strangers gathered outside the area with knives, sticks and iron bars, initially shouting “racist” as he described them and then tried to invade the place where the refugee children are being hosted.

Tomorrow, Monday, as stated by Mr. Karagiannis, an indictment will be filed with the competent prosecutor’s office. “ We must all protect minors against people who incite hatred and propaganda with a plan and are not afraid to use life-threatening violence against children aged 12-15,” he said.

▻https://www.en24news.com/2020/12/thessaloniki-attack-on-the-unaccompanied-minor-structure-of-the-church-of-
#racisme #xénophobie #anti-migrants #attaque_raciste #Grèce #Thessalonique #Salonique #anti-réfugiés #réfugiés #asile #migrations

Le #paria.
Expulsion, refoulement, ghettos, cités, misère, exclusion, prison, incarcération, déportation, racisme, islamophobie, violence policière, état d’urgence, déchéance, identité nationale

https://i2.wp.com/leparia.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/logo-nouveau-propre-3e-petit-format.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1#.jpg

Le paria est une association créée en 2017 qui a pour principe d’allier l’#action_militante et politique, le registre scientifique et la #création_artistique dans la lutte contre toutes les formes l’#exclusion, de #marginalisation et de #discrimination, notamment liées à l’origine, à la religion, aux #préjugés xénophobes et racistes.

▻https://leparia.fr

#action_politique #art_et_politique #racisme #xénophobie #journal

Covid-19 : Quand le ministre de l’Intérieur Espagnol défend les émigrés irréguliers accusés d’être des facteurs de propagation.
▻https://www.dakaractu.com/Covid-19-Quand-le-ministre-de-l-Interieur-Espagnol-defend-les-emigres-irr

https://www.dakaractu.com/photo/art/grande/52298503-39916207.jpg?v=1607895631

La récente ruée de candidats à l’émigration clandestine vers l’Espagne coïncidant avec l’arrivée de la seconde vague de contamination en Europe, a poussé certains citoyens à soupçonner ceux-ci d’être des vecteurs de la maladie à coronavirus. Le ministre de l’Intérieur Espagnol, Fernando Grande-Marlaska a défendu les immigrés qui arrivent en Espagne par voie maritime, pour dire qu’ils sont ‘’le groupe le plus sûr’’ en termes de coronavirus. Une situation qu’il explique par le fait que ‘’tous ces immigrés subissent le test de diagnostic moléculaire mettant en évidence la contraction d’un virus par une personne appelé Pcr. Et que tous ceux dont le test est positif sont mis en quarantaine, a révélé le site ‘’Abc Espagne’’.
Lequel a indiqué que ledit ministre a insisté sur le fait que les transferts vers d’autres zones de la péninsule pour lesquelles une autorisation a été donnée sont des cas « très sporadiques » qui affectent des personnes « susceptibles de bénéficier d’une protection internationale ».
M. Marlaska, selon ledit site d’information a été ce vendredi à Saint-Sébastien (une ville du Nord de l’Espagne), pour rendre compte du projet de la nouvelle prison de Guipúzcoa, a évoqué ainsi les récents mouvements d’immigrants des îles Canaries vers la péninsule. Une "urgence qui, selon lui, trouve son origine dans les problèmes socio-économiques causés par le coronavirus dans leurs pays d’origine. « Cela a été un élément déterminant, toutes les personnes » qui entrent en Espagne par voie maritime, que ce soit par les îles Canaries ou le détroit, « sont soumises à un RAP ». Ceux dont le test est positif et leurs contacts sont mis en quarantaine."Tout, pour garantir la santé de ceux qui viennent et de ceux d’entre nous qui sont ici", a-t-il souligné. En ce sens, il a veillé à ce que ce soit le groupe d’immigrants en situation irrégulière ‘’qui donne plus de sécurité, aujourd’hui’’ en termes épidémiologiques.
Le ministre de l’Intérieur a dénoncé, à son tour, que ‘’de certaines régions’’, il est prévu de lier l’immigré ‘’à la pandémie (…). J’appelle cela de la xénophobie’’, a dit Marlaska. Concernant les transferts vers la péninsule, ce dernier a souligné qu’ils sont ‘’sporadiques’’ et qu’ils ne concernent que des personnes ‘’vulnérables’’ et ‘’susceptibles de bénéficier d’une protection internationale. (…). Il n’y a pas de transfert vers la péninsule dans les conditions qui sont indiquées. Le nombre est très limité’’, a-t-il déclaré...

#Covid-19#migrant#migration#espagne#afrique#sante#contamination#xenophobie#stigmatisation#vulnerabilite#test#quarantaine

Polish academics protest ‘fundamentalist’ education minister

https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/d6c4a27cd22b4033b0e1b7a1dd871002/800.jpeg

Activists dressed as security guards climbed onto a balcony of a Polish Education Ministry building early Wednesday and hung a banner protesting the appointment of a new minister whom they consider to be a religious fundamentalist and a danger to the nation’s youth and universities.

Many university academics in Poland are protesting the conservative government’s appointment of #Przemyslaw_Czarnek, who has said that LGBT people aren’t equal to “normal people,” women were created to produce children and who has voiced support for corporal punishment.

The banner that two activists hung said “Boycott #Czarnek. Homophobe. Xenophobe. Fundamentalist.” Security guards removed it quickly, before the minister arrived at work, and a large contingent of police officers showed up to question the two activists.

Wearing orange security vests and hardhats, they used a long ladder to climb up to a balcony and hang the banner.

Rafal Suszek, an assistant professor of physics at Warsaw University who was one of the two, told a police officer who questioned him afterwards that he believed a man with Czarnek’s “backward views” shouldn’t be allowed to have such a position of authority.

Wearing a mask, Suszek added that Czarnek represents a “virus of hate” more dangerous than the coronavirus.

Suszek later told The Associated Press that he and his fellow activist were charged with the illegal hanging of banners and not adhering to social distancing rules.

Suszek is one of 2,700 professors and other academics to sign a petition vowing to #boycott Czarnek, a member of the ruling conservative party, Law and Justice, who was sworn in this week by President Andrzej Duda.

In his role, Czarnek will oversee the nation’s system of schools and universities. He was named in a recent government reshuffle, but was sworn in two weeks after the other ministers as he recovered from COVID-19.

Duda said that appointing Czarnek would help restore some ideological balance to academia, which he said has been dominated by left-wing views.

“In recent years, people trying to achieve higher ranks in scientific development ... have been brutally attacked for not having a worldview that is politically correct, that is, liberal-leftist,” Duda said. He said university life would be made richer by having people with opposing views confront each other.

The protesting academics, however, view Czarnek, who has also taken part in demonstrations organized by a far-right organization, the National Radical Camp, as an extremist and religious fundamentalist who risks damaging Poland’s educational system. They fear his hostility towards gays and lesbians means he won’t act to protect young sexual minorities, who sometimes suffer from depression and bullying, and that he could seek to suppress academic research into areas like gender studies.

“Before our eyes a symbolic rape of Polish education and science is taking place,” says the petition.

The academics’ petition calls on members of the academic community to boycott events that Czarnek takes part in and to refuse to participate in the work of any collegial bodies that could subvert humanistic values. However, they say they won’t take any steps that would hurt their institutions, such as not teaching their students.

During this year’s summer presidential campaign that culminated in Duda’s reelection to a second term, Czarnek, who worked on that campaign, drew controversy for language against LGBT people.

He said at the time: “Let’s protect ourselves against LGBT ideology and stop listening to idiocy about some human rights or some equality. These people are not equal to normal people.”

After those words, broadcast on TV, caused a huge uproar, he insisted they were taken out of context and he later clarified his view, saying: “LGBT people are people, and LGBT ideology is ideology.”

A professor of law at the Catholic University of Lublin, Czarnek had also called LGBT “deviants” and faced disciplinary proceedings at his university for his statements.

The 43-year-old father of two has argued that parents — under certain conditions — have the constitutional right to inflict corporal punishment on their children.

He has suggested that women’s key role is to have children and that they should start early.

In a lecture last year during a scholarly conference, he argued that modern society’s message that women can first pursue a career “and then maybe a child … leads to dire consequences.”

“The first child is not born at the age of 20-25, but at the age of 30. When the first child is born at the age of 30, how many of these children can be born? These are the consequences of explaining to a woman that she does not have to do what God has called her to do,” said Czarnek, whose own wife has a Ph.D. in biology and also teaches at his university.

▻https://apnews.com/article/andrzej-duda-poland-07763f38fc44826de54104eb1b4169c3

#éducation #ESR #Pologne #anti-LGBT #homophobie #université #xénophobie #liberté_académique #libertés_académiques #résistance #National_Radical_Camp #fondamentalisme_religieux #femmes #maternité #patriarcat #conservatisme

L’homme sans identité
▻https://laviedesidees.fr/Herve-Mazurel-Kaspar-obscur-enfant-nuit.html

À propos de : Hervé Mazurel, Kaspar l’obscur ou l’enfant de la nuit, La Découverte. Revenant sur l’énigme de Kaspar Hauser, l’historien Hervé Mazurel propose d’aborder ce cas quasi unique par le biais de la sensibilité. L’occasion d’une réflexion sur la #formation de la #conscience et la #socialisation.

#Philosophie #Histoire #enfance #prison #XIXe_siècle
▻https://laviedesidees.fr/IMG/pdf/20201202_kasparv4.pdf
▻https://laviedesidees.fr/IMG/docx/20201202_kasparv4.docx

Geneva Human Rights Talks

Les Geneva Human Rights Talks (GHRT) ouvriront la Semaine des droits humains en portant le regard sur différents aspects du respect de la dignité humaine : les données personnelles, le racisme institutionnel, la discrimination ethnique, et la question des prisonniers politiques.

Les récits et témoignages des quatre personnalités invitées lors de cet événement interactif illustreront différents combats qui nécessitent encore et toujours un engagement sans faille.

• #Protection_des_données personnelles, un combat inégal et perdu d’avance ? (En français)
Intervenant dans le documentaire The Great Hack de Netflix, #Paul_Olivier_Dehaye s’est distingué par son enquête sur la firme d’analyse de données #Cambridge_Analytica. Aujourd’hui, il est le fondateur de l’association #PersonalData.IO, œuvrant à rendre les #droits_à_la_protection_des_données effectifs et collectivement utiles.
–-> il parle notamment de #algocratie

• Le #racisme_institutionnel, défis de nos sociétés ? (En français), à partir de 1:22:15

https://i.imgur.com/EGweRau.png

#Rokhaya_Diallo est une journaliste française, autrice et réalisatrice reconnue pour son travail contre la discrimination raciale, de genre et religieuse. Elle a animé et co-écrit des émissions télévisées et a réalisé plusieurs documentaires. Elle est aussi active dans le domaine littéraire, s’exprimant à travers différentes créations. Elle est selon le New York Times « une des activistes anti-racistes les plus importantes en France ».

• Violation des droits de l’homme ou prévention du #séparatisme ? (In english)
#Jewher_Ilham est la fille d’#Ilham_Tohti, un professeur qui s’est investi dans la lutte contre les discriminations et violations commises envers les #ouïghours, minorité ethnique en #Chine. Jewher Ilham témoignera de l’arrestation de son père, de ses efforts constants pour le libérer et de son engagement à faire en sorte que les minorités voient leurs droits préservés en Chine. Elle parlera également des #camps_de_rééducation du #Xinjiang et de ses suggestions pour prévenir les violations des droits humains qui s’y déroulent.

• #Prisonniers_politiques, criminels ou témoins de violations cachées des #droits_humains ? (En français)
#Lakhdar_Boumediene était responsable humanitaire pour le Croissant-Rouge quand il a été emprisonné en 2002 à #Guantanamo pour des raisons politiques. En 2008, suite à sa demande, la Cour Suprême des États-Unis a reconnu le droit des détenus de Guantanamo de contester judiciairement la légalité de leur détention, indépendamment de leur nationalité. Il a ainsi été déclaré innocent et libéré en 2009. Depuis, il vit en France avec sa famille et il dénonce les traitements injustes et inhumains subis durant sa #détention ainsi que le phénomène des prisonniers politiques.

▻https://www.unige.ch/cite/evenements/semaine-des-droits-humains/sdh2020/geneva-humain-rights-talk

#vidéo

ping @karine4 @isskein

De Re Metallica 1556
▻https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5037683/f3.item.r=De%20re%20metallica

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/De_re_metallica_1556-006.png

Dans le livre le plus complet écrit à ce jour sur la métallurgie, le De Re Mettalica de 1556, le médecin et apothicaire Georgius Agricola résumait ainsi les griefs des opposants à l’exploitation minière :
« Une quantité considérable de bois est nécessaire à la construction des édifices et des machines, et à la réduction des minerais. La disparition des bois et des forêts entraîne celle des oiseaux et des bêtes qui, pour la plupart, fournissent à l’homme une nourriture riche et agréable. Les eaux des lavoirs à minerais empoisonnent fleuves et rivières et font périr ou chassent les poissons. Les habitants des régions minières, à cause de la dévastation des champs, des bois, des forêts, des rivières et des fleuves, éprouvent les plus grandes difficultés à vivre ; la destruction des bois oblige à employer d’autres matériaux plus chers pour la construction des bâtiments. Il est évident pour tous ces gens que les exploitations minières causent plus de détriments qu’elles ne procurent de bénéfices . »

Source : Fabian Scheidler, La fin de la mégamachine , coll. Anthropocène, Seuil, p. 172-173.

#extractivisme #extraction_minière #forêt #mines #XVIe_siècle #De_Re_Metallica

Le dialogue comme remède au « crétinisme digital » ? - Compétences numériques - Pédagogie - Académie de Poitiers
▻http://ww2.ac-poitiers.fr/competences-numeriques/spip.php?article192

http://ww2.ac-poitiers.fr/sites/competences-numeriques/IMG/siteon0.png

Réflexions partagées entre une enseignante curieuse et informée, invitée par le journaliste Xavier de la Porte sur France Inter le 10 novembre 2020, sur le thème Sommes-nous vraiment en train de fabriquer des “crétins digitaux" ?

Anne Cordier, auteure de "grandir connectés", est maîtresse de conférences en sciences de l’Information et de la communication à l’Université de Rouen. Elle a réalisé de nombreuses enquêtes de terrain auprès des publics jeunes, notamment au sein de l’école, sur leurs usages et pratiques numériques.

L’émission part d’un constat :
le discours sur les jeunes et les écrans est en train de changer. Alors qu’il y a quelques années, on vantait les compétences de ces digital natives - certes un peu accro à leurs écrans, mais tellement habiles à les manipuler - aujourd’hui, les discours sont souvent très alarmistes.

Malentendus sur la vraie vie

Anne Cordier décrit notamment ce que font les jeunes quand ils "scrollent", activité qui s’apparente au fait de "trainer ensemble", dans laquelle se jouent bien des relations et se construisent des compétences sociales.
Elle explique ce qu’elle observe de leurs manières de s’informer sur l’actualité, et du malentendu à ce sujet entre les générations.
Elle analyse également la question des transferts de compétence, et celle du plaisir apporté par la flânerie sur internet, qui permet des découvertes sans pression.

#Anne_Cordier #Xavier_de_La_Porte #Le_code_a_changé #Podcast

Le numéro 4 de la revue #Nunatak , Revue d’histoires, cultures et #luttes des #montagnes...

https://i.imgur.com/UgAKdEp.png https://i.imgur.com/mbq8b20.png

métaliste des numéros recensés sur seenthis :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/926433

Xosé Lois Romero & Aliboria - #Muiñeira_de_Ons
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW2SwOEwn-Q

#Xosé_Lois_Romero a une page wikipedia:
▻https://gl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xos%C3%A9_Lois_Romero

#Aliboria #chants_populaires #polyphonie #Galice #Espagne #chant #musique#chants_traditionnels #percussions #Muineira_de_Ons

CutyCapt - A Qt WebKit Web Page Rendering Capture Utility
▻http://cutycapt.sourceforge.net

Un utilitaire en ligne de commande pour faire des captures d’écran de sites web.

Pour l’utiliser sur un Linux sans interface graphique (= bot), utilise XVFB (X virtual framebuffer) :

Using CutyCapt without X server
You cannot use CutyCapt without an X server, but you can use e.g. Xvfb as light-weight server if you are not running an interactive graphical desktop environment. For example, you could use:

% xvfb-run --server-args="-screen 0, 1024x768x24" ./CutyCapt --url=... --out=...

Autre utilitaire similaire (python + JS) : ▻https://github.com/maaaaz/webscreenshot
(avec la même bidouille d’XVFB pour les OS sans GUI)

#capture_écran #screenshot #cutycapt #xvfb

MADE IN BELFAST .
A punk documentary from BUTTZ TV - YouTube
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RotDwQF1zFg

Buttz travels to Belfast to spend one mad weekend with original punk band “The Defects” & their mates, Stiff Little Fingers, XSLF, Buck Eejit, Some Outcasts, Steven VX, the legend who is Terri Hooley, and a cast of over 2,000 at the Ulster Hall. Join us on a tour of the City in a black cab, on a walking tour with Terri & backstage passes to the biggest gig in the City 2014.

#punk #musique #belfast #Irlande_du_Nord

De la définition de « migrant », par #François_Gemenne

« Un migrant, c’est quelqu’un qui refuse que sa vie et les #opportunités qui lui seront offertes soit déterminées par son seul #lieu_de_naissance. Il y a aujourd’hui une très grande injustice dans le monde qui est liée au lieu de naissance. »

►https://twitter.com/RomainVeys/status/1318087047136018433

François Gemenne interviewé par Romain Veys autour de son dernier livre « #On_a_tous_un_ami_noir »

https://seenthis.net/local/cache-vignettes/L438xH700/978221371277b404-1b990.jpg

#définition #migrations #migrant

ping @karine4 @isskein @reka

Le déguisement des trackers par Cname
▻https://www.laquadrature.net/2020/10/05/le-deguisement-des-trackers-par-cname

Aujourd’hui, nous allons vous expliquer comment marche, à quoi sert, et quelles sont les conséquences du « Cname Cloaking » ou « déguisement par Cname », une technique désormais utilisée par les sociétés de publicité, marketing et #Surveillance ou…

#Données_personnelles #Vie_privée_-_Données_personnelles

Open-source #satellite data to investigate #Xinjiang concentration camps

The second part of this series discusses techniques on how to analyse a dire human rights situation in and around Xinjiang’s re-education and detention facilities.

https://miro.medium.com/max/1296/1*8qd3E9aCvZ-UaGROG0G8NQ.png

A pressing need to investigate characteristics of Xinjiang’s detention camps

The story has been widely covered. Calls by human rights advocates to define China’s practices as ‘genocide’ grow louder. Hundreds of thousands of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslims detained in internment camps. Many still are.

“Inmates undergo months or years of indoctrination and interrogation aimed at transforming them into secular and loyal supporters of the party”, the New York Times wrote and published documents that unmistakably prove a dire human rights situation in the west of China.

First China denied the camps ever existed. Then the Chinese consulate doesn’t bother anymore to play a smoke and mirror game and admits: “Xinjiang has set up vocational education and training centres in order to root out extreme thoughts…”. Their purpose: ‘compulsory programs for terrorist criminals’.

Now, the language changed again. China’s President said the ‘strategy for governing Xinjiang in the new era is completely correct.’

Unacceptable (and unwise) of some to deny it. Social media commentators, some who are frequently quoted by large media organisations, keep casting doubt on the tragic story. Margaret_Kimberley tweeted — after an ITV news report emerged — “These are lies. There is no evidence of Uighur concentration camps. More hybrid war against China” (it received 2,000 likes).

While there is no room left to doubt that these camps do exist, there remains vast uncertainty whether investigative journalists and human rights advocates located all facilities spread out across the province.

Researchers/journalists who made it their beat to find them, like Nathan Ruser at Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), says “we don’t believe that we have found them all”, after posting 380 facilities online.

Germany’s chancellor last week said China’s President Xi offered delegates to send envoys to visit Xinjiang province [and camps] to see for themselves. Chances increase to see more of the so-called ‘show camps’ for a short period of time or as long as the visits take (the BBC encountered it when it visited last time). Xi also ensured that there will be an ‘ongoing human-rights dialogue’. But Ursula von der Leyen tweeted “a lot remains to be done .. in other chapters of our relations”.

Satelite investigations exposing more and more evidence. OSINT journalists rely on them. It’s one reason why some open-source intelligence journalism colleagues keep hearing rumours that some of the camps may have moved underground (e.g. detention in under-surface facilities) to hide from the spying eyes and scrutiny of satellite data analysts (we don’t have proof for this thesis but I encourage you to reach out if you have evidence).
Mounting number of facilities

The number of confirmed facilities steadily grew. A 2018 BBC investigation looked at 101 campsites, which got pinpointed via various media reports and academic research, the author says.

Most recently, Buzzfeed investigated 268 compounds, many from previous lists I worked on too. In February, the list of ‘confirmed re-education camps’, so lower-security sites, mainly for indoctrination purposes, was limited to mere 50 facilities. ‘Confirmed’ in this context means they have been validated by eye-witness reports. Back then, there were another 170 that had yet to be confirmed.

It is of vital importance to keep this investigation rolling. This means to forensically document the changes in these camps and to spend more time on characterizing each detail. ASPI just dropped a new list and we are going to work with that one instead of the original 50 we received (the list can be downloaded here and geodata that can be simply dragged and dropped into QGIS and Google Earth Pro, it is available here).

Finally, news broke via Reuters (and research by Adrian Zenz) that evidence of forced labour is mounting also in Tibet (we will look into this later, too).
List of ‘expanded camps’ extended

https://miro.medium.com/max/653/1*xUHRkdnAdU-1GUASLFIFFg.png

Earlier in the year US-based Uighure group ETNAM shared a list with around 50 confirmed sites. We and others scrutinised this list on increased activity on the ground via aggregated satellite remote sensing data (link). The list was shared as klm. file. It helped enormously with going through them one by one. All the coordinates as well as the Chinese names of the places are accessible via Google Earth Pro. Now that ASPI dropped a new list with coordinates and updated 2020 records, some of the work we have started can be extended and match.

Because we are most interested in the camps that got expanded (so buildings or features were added), we will concentrate on the list of facilities that were developed. It includes a list of 61 sites.

Why is the onus on expanded camps? In addition to the characteristics ASPI added as classifiers, the extended camps might tell us where the local administration invests and where forced labour in the firm of Uighur prisoners went. We added a few more details for each facility that we thought was worth looking at (see sheet above).
We will go through various ways to characterise/investigate facilities and their surroundings

First significant markers includes the size of the camps. That includes quantitative details such as the number of buildings on the premise and adjacent to it. We will go through how to compare them. There are the walls of camps that are usually quite straight-lined. Their height, which we will define and validate, and the walls’ thickness may tell us something about recent developments (e.g. how secure the sites are, or were meant to be).

Guard towners are also a quantifiable element. ASPI and others counted them. Because they can be seen from outside they may act as a signal to local residents. That is also likely the reason why those facilities that have some or all of their towers removed recently tend to locate closer to residential buildings (see my stats below).

https://miro.medium.com/max/512/1*v6ixLXEYbrl4zCnKaAPCAw.png

These changes are further revealing as they may tell us something about how the local government in various parts of the region varied in their response to international pressure (or not, by keeping them in place). ‘A lot [camps] had their security features removed in the second half of 2019’, Zenz explained. Some remained in place (important to add here, it remains doubtful that conditions improved inside of the camps, even if towers or security features were removed).

Zenz has an explanation for some of the changes: “On the same time they invited all these delegations and visitors, they released a lot of people. If you release a lot of people, you can afford to run with fewer security features. That can still be run like an internment camp, I’m sure”. We will look closer at what has changed ourselves.

Including those features above, there are a number of other aspects to take into account. We put them into the list below — each will be discussed separately:

What blue factory buildings in and around camps can tell us
What typical ‘prison features’ tell us
What cars in parking lots tell us about personnel working at the facilities during Covid-19
What walls can tell us
What guard towers can tell us
What sports facilities can tell us
What the shapes/types of buildings and location can tell us
What agricultural space (e.g. fields) around the camps can tell us
What potential crematory sites reveal
What Xinjiang’s export tell us
What population/urbanisation numbers tell us about internment and surveillance
What Baidu maps can tell us

Blue-roofed factory buildings

In satellite images, they are very pronounced with their blue coating. They may also heat up in the summer.

Most of them are factory buildings, has been reported. You can see them added in and around camp facilities, whether they are low or high security premises.

We can quantify them by counting them or via quantifying the space they take up. ASPIT decided to count them, though some buildings are smaller and other are massive. Google Earth has a polygon area measuring tool. A third option is to write a statistical model to calculate square meters factory floor space. If you are lazy you can consult a service that helps you with that via a visual detection algorithm — it calculates the area and records the number of blue roof buildings for a given satellite image.

One of the camps that expanded in the past two years is the tier 1 low-security re-education facility in Bugur in Bayingolu (41.808855284.3005783). It has a dense network of factory buildings nearby (around 23) and within its own walls there are eight. We used ASPI’s data to confirm this that noted: ‘considerable room for expansion’.

Let’s run the classification system over it and classify how much blue-roofed buildings that scatter around the camp can we count (importantly not all are factory spaces but many will be).

https://miro.medium.com/max/1512/1*Pi1we4crnM9hOjBubrznaQ.png

On the AI model: I downloaded the images with their highest resolution from Google Earth. To make the image a bit clearer for the model, I adjusted the brightness, upped the contrast and tinkered with the exposure. We can see the blue buildings, roughly in a radius of 1.5 to 2 miles (see image), account for about 1,464.9 m² (0.15ha). The number of little blue buildings expanded considerably since 2014 where they accounted for 1,022m2 (0.10 ha) — sadly we only have an image for 2014 and one for 2019.

Short intersection on the availability of images available in Google Earth:

Some of the important images to document the progression of these camps are missing. Some camps have a mere handful of publically available images (as in the case above). This is appalling and private satellite image companies need to be nudged to make more images public. Especially for the latest developments, this is urgently needed. Researchers noted down the latest dates for which images are available at the time of writing. Below we see them grouped by months, and then by facility category (tier 1 to 4).

https://miro.medium.com/max/512/1*LWaC4CiL5LohbjcuZ0jLcQ.png

What about bias to provide fewer updates on higher-security facilities? We don’t have much to go in here (there is no direct evidence that western satellite companies are being pressured into not publishing their images for camps on Google). Despite only a few camps that didn’t get updated at all over the past two years, we can see at the time of writing that Google and others hold more images for lower tier facilities (1 and 2) than for higher-security facilities (tier 3 and 4):

https://miro.medium.com/max/512/1*hQQ4X95OP1oSoPF4uW_TYQ.png

Continuing on the factories, another example is the facility in Maralbeshi County (39°49’7.84"N, 78°31’4.37"E). It was erected around 2017/2018. In Google Earth, you can see how the blue-roofed buildings surround the internment complex. Note, how the larger blue factory complexes to the left and right were there before the camp was erected.

In other words, the camp was planned and embedded into existing factory operation. It further corroborates a thesis that factory work by prisoners (in the form of forced labour), was part of a grander plan all along (though, to be certain, looking at satellite images alone does not suffice).

https://miro.medium.com/max/653/1*iRIkAc1mw2in6hhk_4-Ibg.png

Adrain Zenz thinks blue roof factories is something that warrants looking into in more detail. A bunch of these blue roof factory building were erected in 2018, especially in the second half. Zenz explains it’s important timing because the policy documents on forced labour, as explained in his post from last December, shows that a lot of this kind of policy was released in the first half or mid of 2018.

https://miro.medium.com/max/400/1*Yj8925e71uyzsMB81bgP1w.png

A recent Buzzfeed investigation did mention blue roofs but surprisingly didn’t pay more attention to the matter. The factories grow in importance as the forced labour of imprisoned groups is being increasingly ‘commercialised’.

ASPI’s data recorded the distance (measured in km I assume) between the 380 facilitates and the local/nearest industrial parks — where some of the forced labour could have moved to put to work. The data categorizes facilities in four areas of security (ranging from Tier 1= re-education camp to Tier 4= prison facility). Tear two and tier three camps tend to be located more closely to the industrial centre of the towns, the data suggests (see chart below):

https://miro.medium.com/max/653/1*lUk3xSMg4jMSi07vt7cszQ.png

Zenz adds: “what’s significant is the sudden increase of blue roof, single story, flat type factory buildings. It’s consistent with policy, and also release, the Karakax list also talks about people being released into forced labour. A lot of that took place in 2019.”

https://miro.medium.com/max/512/1*bTEIdmcu61qIYrwyxf_6qQ.png

The blue metal barracks found in Dabancheng shining light yellow in the sentinel IR images as they are being reflected. Low res Sentinel 2 data also suggests that these metal-like structures in the south of the Payzawat camp (Payzawat County, 39.538372, 76.713606) may also heat up in the summer. SWIR (short-wave infrared imagery) and NIR can be used for heat monitoring.

https://miro.medium.com/max/512/1*WkbVOpf9eVj4CNq_bVeGgg.png

Prisons features: camps that imprisoned people become more ‘secure’ not less:

Among the around 60 camps that have expanded recently, half of it are tier 3 or tier 4 facilities —detention centers and prisons with high security features.

While it is true that some camps removed some of the towers and other security features (labelled ‘desecuritisation’ by ASPI’s records), others increased theirs. Those happened to be facilities that are detention centres and prison. In the context that Chinese authorities moved prisoners to these more secure facilities with less transparency and harsher treatments, this is cause for concern.

https://miro.medium.com/max/512/1*fhMZ1VTeezyaWLYL_nM0hg.png

Let’s look at an example. From the list of expanded camps, there is the camps Yarkant Facility in the Kashgar prefecture (38.351531177.3055467). Since 2018, we saw a nearly 10,000 m2 large factory compound built (compare images from 5/8/2018 with 1/21/2018). Then, a year later, watch downers got added. There are now 8 towners. For such a small facility that’s quite conspicuous. The reason it’s a high-security prison facility.

https://miro.medium.com/max/1512/1*Qv09aAYjQmGlddqRFT0tNg.png

Newly built detention/prison facilities created between 2018 and 2020 are of special interest. Camps like the tier 3 (detention) camp of Sanji Facility (#3, 44.102764,86.9960751), a with several watchtowers and an external wall is important as we can follow the progression of each step of the building process with high-resolution images.

The location was probably chosen because of a lower-security area nearby, north of the facility (3/7/2018). Building must have started in the summer. A couple of months after the last shot (8/11/2018) the blue-roofed factory gets built-in the north-west of the camp (a reason to assume a direct relationship there) and within two weeks in August the main building takes shape. At the same time, the walls get erected and we can make out the layout of the facility with its heavy concrete structures.

https://miro.medium.com/max/442/1*jKT3pbiSfeFR0PB-si2cAw.png

We can see, those are fundamentally different from building built in other lower-security camps. Then two months later it’s almost completed.

The speed of building is noteworthy (better trackable if we had access to a more continuous stream of images). From the few images we have above and those from Sentinel 2, below, we can assume that it took the developers between three to four months in pure building time to pull it up — an astonishing pace. China is renowned for its fast building pace. For many other areas, such as coal plants and artificial island-building its cookie-cutter approach — where blueprints are being re-used over and over again - it permits building more quickly.

https://miro.medium.com/max/410/1*meBm__KxAgmioYuEevFAAQ.gif

Other who looked at the situation in Xinjiang reported that many Uighurs held in lower-tier facilities could have been moved/transferred to higher-tier prisons. In other words, despite some re-education camps have experienced ‘de-securitisation’, half of the camps that expanded are higher security facilities, so tier 3 (detention) or tier 4 (prison) camp facilities.

https://miro.medium.com/max/1512/1*skYQIttYb_bWGzv-NoMTAg.png

What parking lots tell us about the camps during Covid-19

I believe this topic has largely remained unexplored. Busy parking lots are one way to tell how many staff members are on site. Especially interesting it this for the recent month that were affected by coronavirus. We dont know much about the conditions inside of the facilities.

But with fewer staff members around (and fewer visitors allowed — previous reporting has revealed that detention centres have ‘small visitor centres’), the lives of inmates may have worsened. There was some reporting that Covid-19 cases spiralled in the province of Xinjiang and some expressed concern that cases could spread within camps. It’s possible, no doubt. With only a few cases in the whole region, though, the risk is lower.

Pandemic related fears may have affected the material and food supply. Sick imprisoned detainees may go without healthcare treatment for weeks or months. All these are assumptions for which we have little evidence. But the possibility alone raises concerns. If it is true that prisoners remained in the facilities during Covid, they could have suffered from the absence of staff and proper care.

From satellite images, it is hard to know — though there is some evidence from an eyewitness account shared by a historian, a Georgetown professor on his Medium page.

We might be able to tell how many temporary people were on sites (those that use their car to leave for the night). Counting vehicles at nearby car parks is one way.

At some facilities, we can clearly see the parking lot. An example is Ghulja City (43°58’37.52"N, 81° 8’18.98"E). It’s a fairly large car park. We can use Picterra system (there is a 10 day free trial version) to check the satellite images for May 23 — thought there isn’t much to count, the car park is empty.

Seven months earlier, on October 24th of 2019, we count around 120 cars (with some false positives, but that’s good enough for us). The algo gives you a count so you don’t have to count the red boxes one by one. Once trained, we can run it on subsequent images.

https://miro.medium.com/max/653/1*_P_Su-kq1qfm7WxykrAyQw.png

Let’s walk you through how to train and count the cars. I simplify here (a more complete tutorial can be found here and in their platform). First, we use one of the images to train the algorithm on the cars in the car park. Then we run it on the other pictures. It’s neat and simple (and quick if you don’t have time to run your own statistical model in python).

The number of vehicles dropped during the heights of Covid-19.

https://miro.medium.com/max/512/1*zgC3p6nBD-nmpwMn7_1_rQ.png

We could do this for other confirmed location such as the facility in Chochek City (Tǎchéng Shì, 46°43’3.79"N, 82°57’15.23"E) where car numbers dropped in April. We see this in many other facilities (for those that expanded).

Hotan City Facility #1 (37.1117019, 79.9711546) with 81 cars in the parking lot at the end of 2019 dropped to 10 during the height of the pandemic. Similar developments have been perceived at Hotan County Facility 1 (37.2420734 79.8595074), Ghulja Facility 1 (43.9756437 81.5009539) and a number of others.
Calculating rooms and capacity

How many people fit in a facility. If we take the example of the re-education camp in Chochek City ( 46°43’3.79"N, 82°57’15.23"E), we have high res Google images for the end of March and end of April of 2020. We can see the thin middle part is three stories high and in earlier images (Jul 18, 19) we can see the southern part is four stories high. In 2018, we got an image of the foundation when it was built. This provides enough detail to calculate that the facility has around 367 rooms — for the total t-shaped building with the arms.

https://miro.medium.com/max/221/1*fPdg5J77tRB5Pvsqhp5R1g.png https://miro.medium.com/max/221/1*Ynvczj4fJblMg1wM-6dn-A.png https://miro.medium.com/max/221/1*Efn3UW8tkdzU2q6lIeMriw.png

–—

https://miro.medium.com/max/401/1*SmSx-QVYcgNaAVTCqwm_Jg.png https://miro.medium.com/max/400/1*48Ub5y5Ooa1rJDN8hTmbBw.png

–—

https://miro.medium.com/max/653/1*z9n-OU2d2HysodN0lDzU1w.png

In the example above, we shouldn’t be too sure that alls detainees were kept in the facility during Covid. Some reports claim that some of the other lower security re-education centres kept people ‘only during the day for indoctrination classes’ (it’s certainly different for the high-security prison facility that is also on the premise of the Payzawat facility, see in the south, with their towers).

https://miro.medium.com/max/512/1*z9yFFfgxTkhd_wA_MQW3ig.png

Comparing camp sizes

The total size of the camps matters, especially when they get extended. Most of the camps have clear wall frames build around them. It’s one of the most important and simple characteristics. The wall frames makes it relatively easy to draw shapes in your geolocation system of choice (the sheer size of the walls, might be less ideal to gauge the number of prisoners).

Some have vast empty space in between might suggest that other faculty sections or factory buildings are due to be added. Some are cramped with building.

https://miro.medium.com/max/512/1*8CSiJWEQXRGunoGqiikppA.png

Tracing and calculating the area of wall frames in Google Earth for some of the largest camps, we get what we already knew:

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To emulate the work ASPI’s data was posted here. A number of track and trace tutorials for Google Earth (one here on measuring property space) are available on YouTube.
Staking out camp size:

The Qariqash County/قاراقاش ناھىيىسى‎ /墨玉县(Mòyù Xiàn, 37° 6’44.88"N, 79°38’32.71"E) sits in the South of the large stretch of desert.

We use the polygon tool in Google Earth to stake out the clearly marked walls. You usually end up with a rectangle. Under measurements (right-click on the item) you can see the perimeter is around 1.65 km and the area is roughly 16.7 hectares (0.17 square km).

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Now we can compare it with another one on the list, the camp in Aqsu City (41°11’27.12"N, 80°16’25.08"E). It’s markedly smaller, with a perimeter of 1.1km and only an area of 5.65 hectares. There are other ways to do this in QGIS, a geoinformation system more efficiently.
What can walls and towers tell us?

How tall are walls at some of the camps? The answer varies across the vast variety of facilities. Height may tell us something about who built the camp and the level of security. It’s unsurprising to find different heights at different camps built by different planners.

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Where we don’t have shades available, we can check the two images above and reference them with the people in the image and define the height this way. Another standard way to calculate height is using the shades by the walls and towers and calculate the height via Google Earth and SunCalc.

The shade of the southern wall in the satellite image from 03/19/2020 for the Dabancheng camp is around 7.62 meters long. The towers on the southern wall for those dates result in a height of around ~8meters.

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But the images in the Reuters shots look different. That’s why they were taken a year or two earlier. Satellite images from 4/22/2018 show clearly the octagonal shapes of the tower shades. If we calculate again, the shade of the tower is around 9 meters long, translating into around 14 meters in height.

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We do this for the wall as well. What we find is that, although the towers disappeared (though, some are still there, just not protruding so visibly), the only thing that really changed is the height of the walls — now around 13.5m tall, compared with 9.5m in 2018. The same towners, removed from one Dabancheng camp, then re-emerged half a kilometre south-east at the other newly built one (2019).

Why are we even bothering measuring height? On one hand we want to answer how security changed across the camps. Are walls getting higher? Do they change in their layout. It helps to classify the type of camps. The higher the walls, the more secure they probably were meant to be. Higher wall might mean higher chance that prisoners are held at facilities over night. It also may help to disprove claims by XJ denialists.

We can verify the Suncalc analysis with images. Cherchen County, for which we reviewed images for 12/14/19 shows roughly the same height. Explainer how to measure the height of an object from satellite image available here and here.

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The number of press images of the camps is limited. Most are by Reuters or AFP/Badung Police. It is this one here (37°14’29.78"N, 79°51’35.00"E). More local street footage, though not of camps, might be obtainable via Mapillary.

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Buildings shapes/outlines and location of camps

Let’s start with the location of the facilities first. ASPI recorded the type of security for its 380 odd facilities, and for many the distance to populated areas such as residential buildings. When local administration planned on where to place the facilities they might have taken into account how the neighbouring public should (or shouldn’t) perceived them. More secluded camps are more hidden from public scrutiny. Those near people’s homes or schools may be placed there to have the opposite effect.

What’s immediately apparent when running a few inferential statistics on the records is that the more secure detention centres tend to be kept further away from buzzing residential areas — meaning, further away than for instance Tier 1 re-education camps, which are often nestled between residential parts of cities, or occupying old schools.

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Agriculture/fields around the camps — investigating forced labour by detainees

Identifying agricultural fields near or around facilities may reveal some potential aspects of how forced labour in the camps were used in close vicinity.

Especially for secluded faculties, with not much else urban life going on (so reducing the possibility that other local farmers were involved in working the them), the chance increases that Uighurs detained were used.

One example is the facility near Yingye’ercun, in Gulja, with a 0.16km2 large campground (43°58’37.52"N, 81° 8’18.98"E). The farming area that was developed since 2018 (shortly after the multistorey buildings was built in the core of the facility) spans 1.7km2 and is clearly marked (which includes the facility itself, see in red below).

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In other words, once the camp was built the fields surrounding it got worked and developed— unlikely to be only a convenient coincident. The nearby factory complex was also extended.

Often it warrant also checking with Sentinel 2 images on EO browser. In this case, it’s useful because it allows us to visualise agricultural development via its invisible light remote sensing capabilities. Additional bands (which Google images lack) give access to the invisible spectrum and shows the agricultural expansion (here shown in red via the false colour composite, commonly used to assess plant density and health, “since plants reflect near-infrared and green light, while they absorb red”. Exposed ground are grey or tan, vegetation is red).
Image for post

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Another camp in this regard is the Maralbeshi Facility (#6) in Kashgar (39.7406222 78.0115086) with lots of fields surrounding it.

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Why is the forced labour aspect in Xinjiang’s agriculture so important in this debate? For one, it’s part of the human rights abuse that more and more governments and industry leaders recognise (such as Swedish company H&M, who profited from cotton supplies and other kinds within their supply chain). Some decided to cut ties with suppliers in the region. It may the answer for the short term. In the long run, western businesses much apply pressure to get suppliers on their own to dissuade local forced labour practices (see example on ads that emerged to sell Uighur forced labour online).

According to the ILO Forced Labour Convention from 1930, forced or compulsory labour is defined as ‘all work or service which is exacted from any person under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily’.
Sports grounds: (basketball and other sports courts)

Some found value in observing their development. BBC’s John Sudworth found that just before a press tour organised for his press teams two years ago the appearance of recreational areas altered. In some of the places they were taken to, satellite images and the internal security fencing — and what looked like watchtowers- where taken down shortly before the tours for journalists began. Specifically on sports grounds, they noticed that empty exercise yards have been transformed into sports facilities.

The reporters asked: if the journalists have been presented with mere ‘show camps’, what may this say about the places they were not taken to. Sport facilities are quite easy to spot from satellite. The BBC travelled to Kaxgar in the very east of the region, about 100km south of Kazakhstan’s border. Their footages shows how the camp put up courts shortly before the press trip. But they didn’t last long. We found evidence that these very courts disappeared again in early 2020 (see below).

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In one of the camps in Qariqash (37°15’32.54"N, 79°44’52.08"E) the sports facilities were made unavailable as recently as July. Now big brown sheets, what looks like blankets with knobs on them, cover them. Those have never appeared on satellite images before and extend to the soccer field in the north and the big parking lot next to the sports courts.

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I have mixed feelings about recreational activities. We must strongly doubt that they benefit people held for indoctrination. So are they only a smoke and mirror game to show the friendliness of re-educational camps? Or are they actually benefiting the imprisoned? It is hard to say. In recent time, they are more likely to be added than removed. In around 37 facilities on the ASPI list basketball courts, running tracks or other sports fields were noted to have been added or extended.

When we compare the average distance of residential building for these places (1.2km) with the average distance of all the places where we have a record on the distance to buildings (1.8km), we find the recreational activities might be used as an element to signal the locals that the facilities have those recreational features.

Dabancheng has one court in the western block and a number of other ones in the centre part. In the eastern wing, there is nothing. We haven’t got any further high res satellite images on Dabancheng (other than those until March 2020, that leaves only checking Sentinel 2 images or commercial images).

I am going to stop here. The analysis of recreational areas yielded rather little, for me and the folks at ASPI. “I don’t think the sports grounds mean much in the detention regime”, Nathan Ruser says. If you have more info do reach out or leave a comment.
Crematories

The New York Times followed the lead of findings (that emerged last year, also mentioned in the state.gov report) and check the extent of description of religious sites and burial grounds. In September, the team reported that ‘thousands of religious sites’, such as mosques, shrines and other sites were bulldozed or replaced.

As many burial grounds disappeared and people within camps families have never heard from again, the question of how Uighurs’ life proceeded became more pressing. Crematories may be one aspect. Some anecdotal evidence by a source spoke of a nascent growth of crematory sites in the areas near camps. This appears important in the context of how prisoners are treated in facilities and what happens if they die and at what rates.

High prevalence of tuberculosis in facilities worries insiders. TB is spread via droplets through the air by someone who is infected. It’s especially deadly when the immune system of those who caught it, can’t cope with it. With the conditions reported by some of the eyewitnesses, it is feasible that the hard conditions prisoners are being subjected to, could enhance the deadliness of TB.

The think tank which produced a previous list of facilities searched and found a handful of crematories (I don’t think they concluded the research and it continues, perhaps with your help of OSINT research).

The reason why crematories are of interest is that Uighur are Muslim, Muslims don’t burn the bodies of their dead. They bury them (creation is strictly forbidden). Seeing more crematories pop up might be a first clue on whether dead bodies from detention facilities are being burned. We have to stress here, we have to be extremely careful with drawing quick conclusions, the base of evidence is thin. One would need to check local statistics and cross-examine them with other data source.

We will concentrate only on the sites itself. The ‘unconfirmed sample of crematory’ consists of ten sites. These are listed below. Just a word of warning. Feel free to investigate them further — either via additional satellite footage or on-site visits. Nonetheless, these get us started. The first three are confirmed by eyewitness accounts or local records (as far as I was told, this is sadly only secondary research).

Cr_Gholja_01 (Existed, 44° 0’17.86"N, 81°13’40.43"E); Cr_Artush_01(Existed, 39°44’35.47"N, 76°12’7.49"E); Urumchi 2 Funeral Parlor (Existed, 43°54’55.20"N; 87°36’9.01"E)

Cri_Hotan01_(Suspected)
Cr_Artush_02 (Suspected)
Cr_Hotan_02(Suspected)
Cr_Urumqi_02 (Suspected)
Cr_Urumqi_01 (Suspected)
Cr_Urumqi_01(Suspected)
CrArtush_02 (Suspected)

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Now let’s take a look at the characteristics of the confirmed crematories. They have some distinctive shapes, including a rectangular architecture, walls or a treeline that fence the premises (framed in black). Where marked ‘burial grounds’, I was unable to confirm this but checked with a few other sites mentioned in the coverage that was exposed in 2019 and it looked similar (in short, more time needs to be spent on this).

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What helped the researchers identify the confirmed ones? According to the source, the Chinese called them ‘burial management facilities’. It’s apparently a euphuism for ‘crematories’. The Chinese government bulldozed some burial grounds with the justification that they would take up too much space which was covered in the 2019 reporting.

The other aspect is whether relatives receive the body of loved ones that die in the camps. Salih Hudayar (now Prime Minister of the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile) says he had a relative who died in a facility (he don’t know whether in the camps or the prison) and his family was not able to have his body returned. He thinks that many other Uighurs have not had the body of a deceased family members returned to them. He assumes they are being cremated as no record exists of a burial site.

More crematories are only possible if you have employees who staff and run them. The Chinese government tried to find those employees online. “We assume they are being cremated because the government ran job ads and offering high salaries to work on these [crematory] sites”, he added.

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The suspected crematory facilities were then modelled upon the layout of the existing/confirmed ones — e.g. compared with buildings in and around the area. “We found a couple, but we are not 100% sure”, the source admits. Here OSINT journalists could become useful (let me know if you have intel on this matter to follow up with).

On the description in 2019: evidence surfaced that 45 Uighur cemeteries have been destroyed since 2014, including 30 in just the past two years (research was carried out by AFP and satellite imagery by Earthrise Alliance, here reported by the SCMP).
What population/urbanisation numbers tell us about internment

Salih Hudayar explained that what worries him is that population statistics don’t square. An often-cited figure of 7 million Uighurs in the province is much lower than the official estimates of the Uighur people.

The number often used is 12 million Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs. The number could be higher. Especially in the villages — Uighurs are allowed to have only three kids — some families have more than that and don’t register their offspring, as a result, many kids lack birth certificates. Other figures on the number of Uighur population is much taller (larger than twice of the 12 million figure, but remains hard to confirm that. The closes figure the Chinese government will have internally after the government’s extensive and invasive security and surveillance campaigns, in part to gain information regarding individuals’ religious adherence and practices).

The rising number of orphanages and kindergartens is also of interest. A satellite and local administrative data analysis should track them. The premise here: the more aggressive the detention of families are in XJ (moving Uighurs from low to higher security facilities), demand for places that house children increases. More orphanages and child-caring facilities could be revealed.
What can exports tell us about forced labour?

The type of exports of a region can help to figures out what to look for when it comes to forced labour. Increasingly, the international textile and fashion industry wakes up to reputational damage if supply chains incorporate Xinjiang forced labour. EU leaders held a meeting with China’s president Xi last week where Xi ‘rejected’ foreign [political] meddling in his nation’s affairs. But businesses have more leverage. Xinjiang is busy trading with foreign powers. The Chinese province accounted for a large part of the world’s supply in cotton. Exports amounted to $19.3bn according to export documents (export data for the west of China can be found in China’s official data stats, Stats.gov.cn, customs.gov.cn, or mofcom — this might be useful. Comparing what the government reports and what’s happening on the ground might reveal discrepancies, as it did before).

Exports (to Europe, across the silk road to the west) is directly connected at A busy train station connecting to the neighbouring country of Kazakstan in the northeast (the export route is called Ala Pass. A short promotional video here). Given the rebound of the Chinese economy, the shipments/trainloads must have increased in May after the effects of the pandemic subsided. What’s unclear is to what extent and whether that matches what the government said.

Satellite images might reveal discrepancies when train containers at the Dzungarian Gate (the Dzungarian Alatau mountain range along the border between Kazakhstan and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) are analysed. It’s the main connection between China and the west.

The main railway station in Xinjiang for the Alataw pass is the Alashankou railway station (situated here: 45°10′13″N 82°34′13″E). It’s the last resort for export containers before entering Kazakhstan.

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OSINT journalists may be able to gauge Xinjiang export traffic by counting the number of containers on rail tracks. It might be laborious effort, not sure if it yields anything.

More useful would it be to monitor the use of agriculture and factories in the nearby vicinity of camps, as shown before. Or perhaps they can be linked up.
Baidu maps: Checking what the Chinese tech companies are ‘hiding’:

The Chinese government may have little interest to showcase their human-rights violations which they deem as justified (Xi’s statement). Satellite images on Baidu Maps show maps that hide most of the facility. What to make of it? Google Earth lets you upload so-called ‘overlays’. If you stretch them to the right size you can compare the uploaded screenshot (we took from Baidu) with those present in Google Earth. For Tumshuq City/تۇمشۇق شەھىرى/图木舒克市(Túmùshūkè Shì) (39°54’40.02"N, 79° 1’26.09"E), see below.

Why is Baidu’s involvement increasing relevant? On one hand, it is important to see the connection between private sector companies and the government. Chinese satellites are able to update and provide high-resolution images to the maps on Baidu. But they don’t. We had a similar debate on Twitter, that some government used to press companies to blur our images. But because images are available on other platforms ‘unblurred’, the practice was largely discontinued (there are still examples but they are getting fewer). One reason is that if a blurred area appears, it signals others to be extra vigilant and look out for other images. Instead, what increasing happens is that companies with private satellite are ordered not to release them (read more about the debate here).

Baidu map’s decision to not show images on certain facilities have backfired. It can be reverse-engineered. Areas where images are unavailable became extra interesting. In this way Buzzfeed used Baidu Maps to their advantage. They located/confirmed some of the camps because of it. This way, they turned shortcoming into an opportunity. You may want to be quick in replicating this principle for other parts of the country where forced labour/detention camps are expected (e.g. Tibet). Such loopholes will usually be fixed swiftly.

Bit more on the tech. According to a 2019 report by Human Rights Watch, Baidu’s map function used in the IJOP app, a controversial system used by the police and the state that generates “a massive dataset of personal information, and of police behaviour and movements in Xinjiang (it is not known how the authorities plan to use such data): The IJOP app logs the police officer’s GPS locations and other identifying information when they submit information to the IJOP app. The IJOP app uses a map functionality by Baidu, a major Chinese technology company, for purposes including planning the shortest route for police vehicle and officers on foot, according to the app’s source code.
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What can the camps in Tibet tell us about the camps in Xinjiang?

Reuters reported just last week that forced labour expanded to Tibet (south of XJ). Reuter’s own reporting corroborated the findings obtained by Adrian Zenz. It would take another post to go into how to investigate the state of transferred Tibetan labourers. The quick and dirty check on the situation shows the merit of using satellite images to investigate grows as foreign journalists are being barred from areas, such as entering the Tibet region (foreign citizens are only permitted on government-approved tours). OSINT lessons from investigating XJ should be applied to Tibet too.

How does Xinjiang link to Tibet? The former Tibet Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo was chosen for the same job in Xinjiang in 2016 and headed the development of Xinjiang’s camp system, Reuters reported.

Mass incarceration started before Quanguo came onto the scene: A fanghuiju work team was dispatched to a village in Guma wherein 38 individuals were allegedly detained in a government campaign, in early 2016 — it’s true however that Party Secretary Quanguo, appointed in August 2016, who waged a ‘Strike Hard Campaign’ against violent activities and terrorism increased repression.

In an article last year, The Print used satellite images to prove that at least three Tibetan “re-education camps” are currently under construction. The author of the survey was Vinayak Bha, an ex-colonel retired from the Indian military intelligence unit.

Col Vinayak Bhat (@rajfortyseven on Twitter) found three camps in 2018/2019 and share them. One of them is the one in Botuocun (see below). Bha writes about Chinese military deployment dynamics. The temple of Tibetan Buddhism is a ‘concentration camp’ that is surrounded by high walls and guard towers and has the same structural design as a prison. It is feasible that China’s mass detention to spread to Tibetans. Methods will likely base on the model executed in XJ.

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The reports of the three camps emerged in 2019. “Small-scale versions of similar military-style training initiatives have existed in the region for over a decade, but construction of new facilities increased sharply in 2016, and recent policy documents call for more investment in such sites”, one report stated. Looking at the three sites, some of them are quite old but the one below is less than three years old.

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The allegation is that these facilities are now be used as detention centres for political indoctrination. “The detainees are allegedly used as forced labour in government factories and projects during the day time or as per shift timings”. It is something that rings true under the light of camps in Xinjiang but we lack evidence from the satellite images.

There is some evidence that additional factory buildings were added. For the facility above, buildings in the upper east wing, with red roofing was added recently. Their layout reminds us of the blue-roofed buildings in and scattered around Xinjiang facilities, which we also have present: “This architecture is bang on a XJ prison, [though] with a different style roof”, Ruser said.

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The prison layout from the older prison facility above — with its long and vertically arranged wings and the rippled features — is similar to prisons seen in Xinjian, such as the two portrayed below (one at Qariqash County at 37° 6’44.88"N, 79°38’32.71"E and the other facility in 39°25’54.60”N, 76° 3’20.59"E).
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Closing remarks:

There is a mountain of stuff not included here. This is a training post and not an investigation with full-rested conclusion. This post should encourage other open-source investigative journalists to look into the facilities, follow their own reporting and help monitor developments/details that others may have missed.

At present there are only a handful of OSINT journalists looking into it. Even fewer have the time to continuously keep this rolling, e.g. analysing the camps as other stories press them to move on.

We need more eyes on this. The alleged human right abuse must receive all the international scrutiny it can get. People like Shawn Zhang and others with Nathan Ruser and APSI) started the journey. Other journalists must continue and expand on it.

Also, the more open we are about sources and the analysis (hopefully) the fewer people might try to cast doubt on the existence of the camps (good thread here)

OSINT techniques used must master the skill to help others to replicate the findings, step by step. That’s the reason this post resulted more in a hands-on tutorial than an explanatory post. I encourage anyone to start looking into the human rights abuse (though, I must stress, be careful to draw quick conclusions. Instead, share what you see on satellite images with the community of serious journalists and OSINT investigators).

One last thought on commercial satellite imagery companies. It is crucial to get their support on this. For more than 100 camps mentioned in the latest update of the ASPI list (nearly 80 of them high-security detention facilities — classified as tier 3 or 4), we have no updated record of satellite images. This leaves researchers and journalists only to low-resolution devices, by Sentinel 2 images, or beg for images from Maxar or Planet Labs. That’s not good enough. Transparency requires companies inc to make those high-resolution images available, to anyone. Intelligence services should also consider making their high-resolution images available to the public for scrutiny, though, that unlikely to happen.

▻https://medium.com/@techjournalism/open-source-satellite-data-to-investigate-xinjiang-concentration-camps-2713c
#camps_de_concentration #architecture_forensique #images_satellitaires #rééducation #ré-éducation #camps_de_rééducation #Chine #droits_humains #droits_fondamentaux #Tibet

ping @reka @isskein @visionscarto

Xinjiang’s System of Militarized Vocational Training Comes to #Tibet

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Introduction and Summary

In 2019 and 2020, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) introduced new policies to promote the systematic, centralized, and large-scale training and transfer of “rural surplus laborers” to other parts of the TAR, as well as to other provinces of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In the first 7 months of 2020, the region had trained over half a million rural surplus laborers through this policy. This scheme encompasses Tibetans of all ages, covers the entire region, and is distinct from the coercive vocational training of secondary students and young adults reported by exile Tibetans (RFA, October 29, 2019).

The labor transfer policy mandates that pastoralists and farmers are to be subjected to centralized “military-style” (军旅式, junlüshi) vocational training, which aims to reform “backward thinking” and includes training in “work discipline,” law, and the Chinese language. Examples from the TAR’s Chamdo region indicate that the militarized training regimen is supervised by People’s Armed Police drill sergeants, and training photos published by state media show Tibetan trainees dressed in military fatigues (see accompanying images).

Poverty alleviation reports bluntly say that the state must “stop raising up lazy people.” Documents state that the “strict military-style management” of the vocational training process “strengthens [the Tibetans’] weak work discipline” and reforms their “backward thinking.” Tibetans are to be transformed from “[being] unwilling to move” to becoming willing to participate, a process that requires “diluting the negative influence of religion.” This is aided by a worrisome new scheme that “encourages” Tibetans to hand over their land and herds to government-run cooperatives, turning them into wage laborers.

An order-oriented, batch-style matching and training mechanism trains laborers based on company needs. Training, matching and delivery of workers to their work destination takes place in a centralized fashion. Recruitments rely, among other things, on village-based work teams, an intrusive social control mechanism pioneered in the TAR by Chen Quanguo (陈全国), and later used in Xinjiang to identify Uyghurs who should be sent to internment camps (China Brief, September 21, 2017). Key policy documents state that cadres who fail to achieve the mandated quotas are subject to “strict rewards and punishments” (严格奖惩措施, yange jiangcheng cuoshi). The goal of the scheme is to achieve Xi Jinping’s signature goal of eradicating absolute poverty by increasing rural disposable incomes. This means that Tibetan nomads and farmers must change their livelihoods so that they earn a measurable cash income, and can therefore be declared “poverty-free.”

This draconian scheme shows a disturbing number of close similarities to the system of coercive vocational training and labor transfer established in Xinjiang. The fact that Tibet and Xinjiang share many of the same social control and securitization mechanisms—in each case introduced under administrations directed by Chen Quanguo—renders the adaptation of one region’s scheme to the other particularly straightforward.

Historical Context

As early as 2005, the TAR had a small-scale rural surplus labor training and employment initiative for pastoralists and farmers in Lhasa (Sina, May 13, 2005). The 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010) then specified that this type of training and labor transfer was to be conducted throughout the TAR (PRC Government, February 8, 2006). From 2012, the Chamdo region initiated a “military-style training for surplus labor force transfer for pastoral and agricultural regions” (农牧区富余劳动力转移就业军旅式培训, nongmuqu fuyu laodongli zhuanyi jiuye junlüshi peixun) (Tibet’s Chamdo, October 8, 2014). Chamdo’s scheme was formally established in the region’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), with the goal of training 65,000 laborers (including urban unemployed persons) during that time (Chamdo Government, December 29, 2015).

By 2016, Chamdo had established 45 related vocational training bases (TAR Government, November 17, 2016). Starting in 2016, the TAR’s Shannan region likewise implemented vocational training with “semi-military-style management” (半军事化管理, ban junshihua guanli) (Tibet Shannan Net, April 5, 2017). Several different sources indicate that Chamdo’s military-style training management was conducted by People’s Armed Police drill sergeants.[1]

Policies of the 2019-2020 Militarized Vocational Training and Labor Transfer Action Plan

In March 2019, the TAR issued the 2019-2020 Farmer and Pastoralist Training and Labor Transfer Action Plan (西藏自治区2019-2020年农牧民培训和转移就业行动方案, Xizang Zizhiqu 2019-2020 Nian Nongmumin Peixun he Zhuanyi Jiuye Xingdong Fang’an) which mandates the “vigorous promotion of military-style…[vocational] training,” adopting the model pioneered in Chamdo and mandating it throughout the region. [2] The vocational training process must include “work discipline, Chinese language and work ethics,” aiming to “enhance laborers’ sense of discipline to comply with national laws and regulations and work unit rules and regulations.”

Surplus labor training is to follow the “order-oriented” (订单定向式, dingdan dingxiangshi) or “need-driven” (以需定培, yi xu dingpei) method, [3] whereby the job is arranged first, and the training is based on the pre-arranged job placement. In 2020, at least 40 percent of job placements were to follow this method, with this share mandated to exceed 60 percent by the year 2024 (see [2], also below). Companies that employ a minimum number of laborers can obtain financial rewards of up to 500,000 renminbi ($73,900 U.S. dollars). Local labor brokers receive 300 ($44) or 500 ($74) renminbi per arranged labor transfer, depending whether it is within the TAR or without. [4] Detailed quotas not only mandate how many surplus laborers each county must train, but also how many are to be trained in each vocational specialty (Ngari Government, July 31, 2019).

The similarities to Xinjiang’s coercive training scheme are abundant: both schemes have the same target group (“rural surplus laborers”—农牧区富余劳动者, nongmuqu fuyu laodongzhe); a high-powered focus on mobilizing a “reticent” minority group to change their traditional livelihood mode; employ military drill and military-style training management to produce discipline and obedience; emphasize the need to “transform” laborers’ thinking and identity, and to reform their “backwardness;” teach law and Chinese; aim to weaken the perceived negative influence of religion; prescribe detailed quotas; and put great pressure on officials to achieve program goals. [5]

https://jamestown.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Tibet-Labor-Training.png

Labor Transfers to Other Provinces in 2020

In 2020, the TAR introduced a related region-wide labor transfer policy that established mechanisms and target quotas for the transfer of trained rural surplus laborers both within (55,000) and without (5,000) the TAR (TAR Human Resources Department, July 17). The terminology is akin to that used in relation to Xinjiang’s labor transfers, employing phrases such as: “supra-regional employment transfer” (跨区域转移就业, kuaquyu zhuanyi jiuye) and “labor export” (劳务输出, laowu shuchu). Both the 2019-2020 Training and Labor Transfer Action Plan and the TAR’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) only mention transfers outside the TAR in passing, without outlining a detailed related policy or the use of terminology akin to that found in related documents from Xinjiang. [6]

In the first 7 months of 2020, the TAR trained 543,000 rural surplus laborers, accomplishing 90.5% of its annual goal by July. Of these, 49,900 were transferred to other parts of the TAR, and 3,109 to other parts of China (TAR Government, August 12). Each region is assigned a transfer quota. By the end of 2020, this transfer scheme must cover the entire TAR.

Specific examples of such labor transfers identified by the author to other regions within the TAR include job placements in road construction, cleaning, mining, cooking and driving. [7] Transfers to labor placements outside the TAR include employment at the COFCO Group, China’s largest state-owned food-processing company (Hebei News, September 18, 2020).

The central terminology employed for the labor transfer process is identical with language used in Xinjiang: “unified matching, unified organizing, unified management, unified sending off” (统一对接、统一组织、统一管理、统一输送 / tongyi duijie, tongyi zuzhi, tongyi guanli, tongyi shusong). [8] Workers are transferred to their destination in a centralized, “group-style” (组团式, zutuanshi), “point-to-point” (点对点, dianduidian) fashion. The policy document sets group sizes at 30 persons, divided into subgroups of 10, both to be headed by (sub-)group leaders (TAR Human Resources Department, July 17). In one instance, this transport method was described as “nanny-style point-to-point service” (“点对点”“保姆式”服务 / “dianduidian” “baomu shi” fuwu) (Chinatibet.net, June 21). As in Xinjiang, these labor transfers to other provinces are arranged and supported through the Mutual Pairing Assistance [or “assist Tibet” (援藏, Yuan Zang)] mechanism, albeit not exclusively. [9] The transferred laborers’ “left-behind” children, wives and elderly family members are to receive the state’s “loving care.” [10]

Again, the similarities to Xinjiang’s inter-provincial transfer scheme are significant: unified processing, batch-style transfers, strong government involvement, financial incentives for middlemen and for participating companies, and state-mandated quotas. However, for the TAR’s labor transfer scheme, there is so far no evidence of accompanying cadres or security personnel, of cadres stationed in factories, or of workers being kept in closed, securitized environments at their final work destination. It is possible that the transfer of Tibetan laborers is not as securitized as that of Uyghur workers. There is also currently no evidence of TAR labor training and transfer schemes being linked to extrajudicial internment. The full range of TAR vocational training and job assignment mechanisms can take various forms and has a range of focus groups; not all of them involve centralized transfers or the military-style training and transfer of nomads and farmers.

The Coercive Nature of the Labor Training and Transfer System

Even so, there are clear elements of coercion during recruitment, training and job matching, as well as a centralized and strongly state-administered and supervised transfer process. While some documents assert that the scheme is predicated on voluntary participation, the overall evidence indicates the systemic presence of numerous coercive elements.

As in Xinjiang, TAR government documents make it clear that poverty alleviation is a “battlefield,” with such work to be organized under a military-like “command” structure (脱贫攻坚指挥部, tuopin gongjian zhihuibu) (TAR Government, October 29, 2019; Xinhua, October 7, 2018). In mid-2019, the battle against poverty in the TAR was said to have “entered the decisive phase,” given the goal to eradicate absolute poverty by the end of 2020 (Tibet.cn, June 11, 2019). Since poverty is measured by income levels, and labor transfer is the primary means to increase incomes—and hence to “lift” people out of poverty—the pressure for local governments to round up poor populations and feed them into the scheme is extremely high.

The Training and Labor Transfer Action Plan cited above establishes strict administrative procedures, and mandates the establishment of dedicated work groups as well as the involvement of top leadership cadres, to “ensure that the target tasks are completed on schedule” (see [2]). Each administrative level is to pass on the “pressure [to achieve the targets] to the next [lower] level.” Local government units are to “establish a task progress list [and] those who lag behind their work schedule… are to be reported and to be held accountable according to regulations.” The version adopted by the region governed under Shannan City is even more draconian: training and labor transfer achievements are directly weighed in cadres’ annual assessment scores, complemented by a system of “strict rewards and punishments.” [11] Specific threats of “strict rewards and punishments” in relation to achieving labor training and transfer targets are also found elsewhere, such as in official reports from the region governed under Ngari City, which mandate “weekly, monthly and quarterly” reporting mechanisms (TAR Government, December 18, 2018).

As with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, overcoming Tibetans’ resistance to labor transfer is an integral part of the entire mechanism. Documents state that the “strict military-style management” of the vocational training process causes the “masses to comply with discipline,” “continuously strengthens their patriotic awareness,” and reforms their “backward thinking.” [12] This may also involve the presence of local cadres to “make the training discipline stricter.” [13]

Because the military-style vocational training process produces discipline and transforms “backward employment views,” it is said to “promote labor transfer.” [14] Rural laborers are to be transformed from “[being] unwilling to move” to becoming willing to participate, a process that requires “diluting the negative influence of religion,” which is said to induce passivity (TAR Commerce Department, June 10). The poverty alleviation and training process is therefore coupled with an all-out propaganda effort that aims to use “thought education” to “educate and guide the unemployed to change their closed, conservative and traditional employment mindset” (Tibet’s Chamdo, July 8, 2016). [15] One document notes that the poverty alleviation and labor transfer process is part of an effort to “stop raising up lazy people” (TAR Government, December 18, 2018).

A 2018 account from Chamdo of post-training follow-up shows the tight procedures employed by the authorities:

Strictly follow up and ask for effectiveness. Before the end of each training course, trainees are required to fill in the “Employment Willingness Questionnaire.” Establish a database…to grasp the employment…status of trainees after the training. For those who cannot be employed in time after training, follow up and visit regularly, and actively recommend employment…. [16]

These “strict” follow-up procedures are increasingly unnecessary, because the mandated “order-oriented” process means that locals are matched with future jobs prior to the training.

“Grid Management” and the “Double-Linked Household” System

Coercive elements play an important role during the recruitment process. Village-based work teams, an intrusive social control mechanism pioneered by Chen Quanguo, go from door to door to “help transform the thinking and views of poor households.” [17] The descriptions of these processes, and the extensive government resources invested to ensure their operation, overlap to a high degree with those that are commonly practiced in Xinjiang (The China Quarterly, July 12, 2019). As is the case in Xinjiang, poverty-alleviation work in the TAR is tightly linked to social control mechanisms and key aspects of the security apparatus. To quote one government document, “By combining grid management and the ‘double-linked household’ management model, [we must] organize, educate, and guide the people to participate and to support the fine-grained poverty alleviation … work.” [18]

Grid management (网格化管理, wanggehua guanli) is a highly intrusive social control mechanism, through which neighborhoods and communities are subdivided into smaller units of surveillance and control. Besides dedicated administrative and security staff, this turns substantial numbers of locals into “volunteers,” enhancing the surveillance powers of the state. [19] Grid management later became the backbone of social control and surveillance in Xinjiang. For poverty alleviation, it involves detailed databases that list every single person “in poverty,” along with indicators and countermeasures, and may include a “combat visualization” (图表化作战, tubiaohua zuozhan) feature whereby progress in the “war on poverty” is visualized through maps and charts (TAR Government, November 10, 2016). Purang County in Ngari spent 1.58 million renminbi ($233,588 dollars) on a “Smart Poverty Alleviation Big Data Management Platform,” which can display poverty alleviation progress on a large screen in real time (TAR Government, February 20, 2019).

Similarly, the “double-linked household” (双联户, shuang lian hu) system corrals regular citizens into the state’s extensive surveillance apparatus by making sets of 10 “double-linked” households report on each other. Between 2012 and 2016, the TAR established 81,140 double-linked household entities, covering over three million residents, and therefore virtually the region’s entire population (South China Morning Post, December 12, 2016). An August 2020 article on poverty alleviation in Ngari notes that it was the head of a “double-linked” household unit who led his “entire village” to hand over their grassland and herds to a local husbandry cooperative (Hunan Government, August 20).

Converting Property to Shares Through Government Cooperatives

A particularly troubling aspect of the Training and Labor Transfer Action Plan is the directive to promote a “poverty alleviation industry” (扶贫产业, fupin chanye) scheme by which local nomads and farmers are asked to hand over their land and herds to large-scale, state-run cooperatives (农牧民专业合作社, nongmumin zhuanye hezuoshe). [20] In that way, “nomads become shareholders” as they convert their usage rights into shares. This scheme, which harks back to the forced collectivization era of the 1950s, increases the disposable incomes of nomads and farmers through share dividends and by turning them into wage laborers. They are then either employed by these cooperatives or are now “free” to participate in the wider labor transfer scheme. [21] In Nagqu, this is referred to as the “one township one cooperative, one village one cooperative ” (“一乡一社”“一村一合” / “yixiang yishe” “yicun yihe”) scheme, indicating its universal coverage. [22] One account describes the land transfer as prodding Tibetans to “put down the whip, walk out of the pasture, and enter the [labor] market” (People.cn, July 27, 2020).

Clearly, such a radical transformation of traditional livelihoods is not achieved without overcoming local resistance. A government report from Shuanghu County (Nagqu) in July 2020 notes that:

In the early stages, … most herders were not enthusiastic about participating. [Then], the county government…organized…county-level cadres to deeply penetrate township and village households, convening village meetings to mobilize people, insisted on transforming the [prevailing attitude of] “I am wanted to get rid of poverty” to “I want to get rid of poverty” as the starting point for the formation of a cooperative… [and] comprehensively promoted the policy… Presently… the participation rate of registered poor herders is at 100 percent, [that] of other herders at 97 percent. [23]

Importantly, the phrase “transforming [attitudes of] ‘I am wanted to get rid of poverty’ to ‘I want to get rid of poverty’” is found in this exact form in accounts of poverty alleviation through labor transfer in Xinjiang. [24]

Given that this scheme severs the long-standing connection between Tibetans and their traditional livelihood bases, its explicit inclusion in the militarized vocational training and labor transfer policy context is of great concern.

https://jamestown.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Chamdo-School-ground-768x381.png https://jamestown.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Chamdo-Overhead-combined.png

Militarized Vocational Training: Examining a Training Base in Chamdo

The Chamdo Golden Sunshine Vocational Training School (昌都市金色阳光职业培训学校, Changdushi Jinse Yangguang Zhiye Peixun Xuexiao) operates a vocational training base within Chamdo’s Vocational and Technical School, located in Eluo Town, Karuo District. The facility conducts “military-style training” (军旅式培训, junlüshi peixun) of rural surplus laborers for the purpose of achieving labor transfer; photos of the complex show a rudimentary facility with rural Tibetan trainees of various ages, mostly dressed in military fatigues. [25]

Satellite imagery (see accompanying images) shows that after a smaller initial setup in 2016, [26] the facility was expanded in the year 2018 to its current state. [27] The compound is fully enclosed, surrounded by a tall perimeter wall and fence, and bisected by a tall internal wire mesh fence that separates the three main northern buildings from the three main southern ones (building numbers 4 and 5 and parts of the surrounding wall are shown in the accompanying Figure 4). The internal fence might be used to separate dormitories from teaching and administrative buildings. Independent experts in satellite analysis contacted by the author estimated the height of the internal fence at approximately 3 meters. The neighboring vocational school does not feature any such security measures.

Conclusions

In both Xinjiang and Tibet, state-mandated poverty alleviation consists of a top-down scheme that extends the government’s social control deep into family units. The state’s preferred method to increase the disposable incomes of rural surplus laborers in these restive minority regions is through vocational training and labor transfer. Both regions have by now implemented a comprehensive scheme that relies heavily on centralized administrative mechanisms; quota fulfilment; job matching prior to training; and a militarized training process that involves thought transformation, patriotic and legal education, and Chinese language teaching.

Important differences remain between Beijing’s approaches in Xinjiang and Tibet. Presently, there is no evidence that the TAR’s scheme is linked to extrajudicial internment, and aspects of its labor transfer mechanisms are potentially less coercive. However, in a system where the transition between securitization and poverty alleviation is seamless, there is no telling where coercion stops and where genuinely voluntary local agency begins. While some Tibetans may voluntarily participate in some or all aspects of the scheme, and while their incomes may indeed increase as a result, the systemic presence of clear indicators of coercion and indoctrination, coupled with profound and potentially permanent change in modes of livelihood, is highly problematic. In the context of Beijing’s increasingly assimilatory ethnic minority policy, it is likely that these policies will promote a long-term loss of linguistic, cultural and spiritual heritage.

Adrian Zenz is a Senior Fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Washington, D.C. (non-resident), and supervises PhD students at the European School of Culture and Theology, Korntal, Germany. His research focus is on China’s ethnic policy, public recruitment in Tibet and Xinjiang, Beijing’s internment campaign in Xinjiang, and China’s domestic security budgets. Dr. Zenz is the author of Tibetanness under Threat and co-editor of Mapping Amdo: Dynamics of Change. He has played a leading role in the analysis of leaked Chinese government documents, to include the “China Cables” and the “Karakax List.” Dr. Zenz is an advisor to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, and a frequent contributor to the international media.

Notes

[1] See for example ▻https://archive.is/wip/4ItV6 or ▻http://archive.is/RVJRK. State media articles from September 2020 indicate that this type of training is ongoing ▻https://archive.is/e1XqL.

[2] Chinese: 大力推广军旅式…培训 (dali tuiguang junlüshi…peixun). See ▻https://bit.ly/3mmiQk7 (pp.12-17). See local implementation documents of this directive from Shannan City (►https://bit.ly/32uVlO5, pp.15-24), Xigatse (▻https://archive.is/7oJ7p) and Ngari (▻https://archive.is/wip/R3Mpw).

[3] See also ▻https://archive.is/wip/eQMGa.

[4] Provided that the person was employed for at least 6 months in a given year. Source: ►https://archive.is/KE1Vd.

[5] See the author’s main work on this in section 6 of: “Beyond the Camps: Beijing’s Long-Term Scheme of Coercive Labor, Poverty Alleviation and Social Control in Xinjiang,” Journal of Political Risk (Vol. 7, No. 12), December 2019. ►https://www.jpolrisk.com/beyond-the-camps-beijings-long-term-scheme-of-coercive-labor-poverty-allev.

[6] See ▻https://archive.is/wip/Dyapm.

[7] See ►https://archive.is/wip/XiZfl, ►https://archive.is/RdnvS, ►https://archive.is/w1kfx, ▻https://archive.is/wip/NehA6, ▻https://archive.is/wip/KMaUo, ►https://archive.is/wip/XiZfl, ►https://archive.is/RdnvS, ►https://archive.is/w1kfx.

[8] See ►https://archive.is/KE1Vd and ►https://archive.is/wip/8afPF.

[9] See ►https://archive.is/KE1Vd and ►https://archive.is/wip/8afPF.

[10] See ►https://archive.is/KE1Vd.

[11] See ►https://bit.ly/32uVlO5, p.24.

[12] See ▻https://archive.is/wip/fN9hz and ▻https://archive.is/NYMwi, compare ▻https://archive.is/wip/iiF7h and ▻http://archive.is/Nh7tT.

[13] See ▻https://archive.is/wip/kQVnX. A state media account of Tibetan waiters at a tourism-oriented restaurant in Xiexong Township (Chamdo) notes that these are all from “poverty-alleviation households,” and have all gone through “centralized, military-style training.” Consequently, per this account, they have developed a “service attitude of being willing to suffer [or: work hard]”, as is evident from their “vigorous pace and their [constant] shuttling back and forth” as they serve their customers. ▻https://archive.is/wip/Nfxnx (account from 2016); compare ▻https://archive.is/wip/dTLku.

[14] See ▻https://archive.is/wip/faIeL and ▻https://archive.is/wip/18CXh.

[15] See ▻https://archive.is/iiF7h.

[16] See ▻https://archive.is/wip/ETmNe

[17] See ▻https://archive.is/wip/iEV7P, see also e.g. ▻https://archive.is/wip/1p6lV.

[18] See ▻https://archive.is/e45fJ.

[19] See ▻https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/china-quarterly/article/securitizing-xinjiang-police-recruitment-informal-policing-and-ethnic-minority-cooptation/FEEC613414AA33A0353949F9B791E733 and ▻https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/03/20/china-alarming-new-surveillance-security-tibet.

[20] E.g. ▻https://archive.is/R3Mpw. This scheme was also mentioned in the TAR’s 13th 5-Year-Plan (2016-2020) (▻https://archive.is/wip/S3buo). See also similar accounts, e.g. ▻https://archive.is/IJUyl.

[21] Note e.g. the sequence of the description of these cooperatives followed by an account of labor transfer (▻https://archive.is/gIw3f).

[22] See ▻https://archive.is/wip/gIw3f or ▻https://archive.is/wip/z5Tor or ▻https://archive.is/wip/PR7lh.

[23] See ▻https://archive.is/wip/85zXB.

[24] See the author’s related work on this in section 2.2 of: “Beyond the Camps: Beijing’s Long-Term Scheme of Coercive Labor, Poverty Alleviation and Social Control in Xinjiang,” Journal of Political Risk (Vol. 7, No. 12), December 2019. ►https://www.jpolrisk.com/beyond-the-camps-beijings-long-term-scheme-of-coercive-labor-poverty-allev.

[25] Located as part of the 昌都市卡若区俄洛镇昌都市职业技术学校 campus. See ►https://bit.ly/2Rr6Ekc; compare ▻https://archive.is/wip/uUTCp and ▻https://archive.is/wip/lKnbe.

[26] See ▻https://archive.is/wip/WZsvQ.

[27] Coordinates: 31.187035, 97.091817. Website: ►https://bit.ly/2Rr6Ekc. The timeframe for construction is indicated by historical satellite imagery and by the year 2018 featured on a red banner on the bottom-most photo of the website.

▻https://jamestown.org/program/jamestown-early-warning-brief-xinjiangs-system-of-militarized-vocational-

#Chine #transfert_de_population #déplacement #rural_surplus_laborers #formaation_professionnelle #armée #travail #agriculture #discipline #discipline_de_travail #Chamdo #préjugés #terres #salariés #travailleurs_salariés #Chen_Quanguo #Xinjiang #Oïghours #camps #pauvreté #contrôle_social #pastoralisme #Farmer_and_Pastoralist_Training_and_Labor_Transfer_Action_Plan #minorités #obédience #discipline #identité #langue #religion #COFCO_Group #mots #terminologie #vocabulaire #Mutual_Pairing_Assistance #pauvreté #Shannan_City #Ngari_City #surveillance #poverty_alleviation #coopératives #salaire #Nagqu #Chamdo_Golden_Sunshine_Vocational_Training_School #Eluo_Town

Foreigners not as wanted as before in Singapore - Asia Times
▻https://asiatimes.com/2020/09/foreigners-not-as-wanted-as-before-in-singapore

https://i0.wp.com/asiatimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Screen-Shot-2563-09-18-at-6.10.27-PM-e1600427916975.png?fit=1200%2C751&ssl=1

Singapore’s success as a global business hub has hinged on its openness to global capital and labor flows, a formula that is under unprecedented strain in the Covid-19 era. The pandemic has put a spotlight on low-wage migrant workers often employed in the construction sector who account for around 95% of the city-state’s recorded 57,500 infections. Issues related to rising immigration and skilled foreign labor have, on the other hand, stoked a polarizing debate and stirred exclusionary sentiments, particularly toward professional migrants from India who some critics and netizens view as being overrepresented in well-paid sectors such as information technology and banking. “Attitudes towards middle-class migrants are similar to global sentiments under these pandemic conditions and are characterized by heightened xenophobia in many cases, seeing migrants as competing for scarce jobs and resources with citizens,” said Laavanya Kathiravelu, a sociologist at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.
Opposition parties notably increased their vote share at the polls after pressing the PAP on immigration and foreign worker issues on the campaign trail. At the first session of Parliament since the polls, Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh called for anti-discrimination laws to punish companies that discriminate against hiring Singaporean workers.
Prior to that, in August, the government said it would raise the minimum monthly

#Covid-19#migrant#migration#singapour#economie#sante#immigration#xenophonie#travailleurmigrant