This week the Associated Press has posted multiple stories about business relationships between American tech firms and the Chinese surveillance state.
- Silicon Valley enabled brutal mass detention and surveillance in China, internal documents show
- How the AP uncovered US big tech’s role in China’s digital police state
- How US tech enabled China’s surveillance state (video)
ICT makes the following statement in response to this reporting.
“The International Campaign for Tibet is shocked and dismayed by the recent AP story exposing the long-standing business relationships between China’s surveillance state and major American tech firms,” said ICT President Tencho Gyatso. “I am appalled that US technology companies have made millions in profits selling to China’s security services, who have imposed an increasingly Orwellian system of surveillance and repression in Tibet and Xinjiang, among other areas. While Tibetans, Uyghurs, and others fight for their fundamental freedoms, American corporations should not be providing Chinese security services with the ability to track, surveil, and exploit these communities. ICT calls on American technology companies to sever immediately any remaining ties or business relationships with China’s police state or entities affiliated with it.
ICT also calls on Congress to do everything in its power to hold accountable US companies who are working with Chinese security firms and putting corporate profits over the lives and freedoms of so many across Tibet and China. We must always put human rights and personal dignity above corporate profits.”