The Chinese Communist government has been testing an artificial intelligence (AI) emotion-detection camera system on Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, according to a bombshell report from the BBC.
A software engineer who claimed to have installed this facial and emotion detection system in police stations in the province home to 12 million ethnic minority Uyghurs said, “The Chinese government use Uyghurs as test subjects for various experiments just like rats are used in laboratories.”
“We placed the emotion detection camera 3m from the subject. It is similar to a lie detector but far more advanced technology,” the anonymous engineer explained, describing the use of the systems in police stations in Xinjiang. He then went on to describe the “restraint chairs” installed in police stations throughout China.
“Your wrists are locked in place by metal restraints, and [the] same applies to your ankles.”
The engineer explained that the system “is trained to detect and analyze even minute changes in facial expressions and skin pores,” with the underlying software creating “a pie chart, with the red segment representing a negative or anxious state of mind.”
According to this engineer, the software was designed to be used for “pre-judgement without any credible evidence.”
The BBC reported that the Chinese embassy in the United Kingdom did not respond to questions regarding the emotion detection system, but said, “The political, economic, and social rights and freedom of religious belief in all ethnic groups in Xinjiang are fully guaranteed.”
“People live in harmony regardless of their ethnic backgrounds and enjoy a stable and peaceful life with no restriction to personal freedom,” the embassy added.
The China director of Human Rights Watch, Sophie Richardson, nevertheless reportedly described the material as “shocking.”
“It’s not just that people are being reduced to a pie chart, it’s people who are in highly coercive circumstances, under enormous pressure, being understandably nervous and that’s taken as an indication of guilt, and I think, that’s deeply problematic,” Richardson added.
This emotion detection system appears to be the latest element of the Chinese government’s data-obsessive persecution of the Uyghur population, let alone the physical and emotional abuse committed by the communist regime.
In February, the BBC reported that “women in China’s ‘re-education’ camps for Uyghurs have been systematically raped, sexually abused, and tortured.” One witness described how “women were removed from the cells ‘every night’ and raped by one or more masked Chinese men” and that “she was tortured and later gang-raped on three occasions, each time by two or three men.” Another said “she was forced to strip Uyghur women naked and handcuff them, before leaving them alone with Chinese men,” and that afterwards she was required to clean the rooms.
The Uyghurs are a mostly Muslim Turkic minority group, and the communist Chinese regime faces allegations of having detained at least 1 million Uyghurs without trial.
Multiple human rights groups have accused the Chinese government of stripping away “the religious and other freedoms of the Uyghurs, culminating in an oppressive system of mass surveillance, detention, indoctrination, and even forced sterilization.”