China pressures Uyghur Australians to spy on their own communities

CANBERRA, Australia (MNTV) — Chinese authorities are using family ties and tightly controlled visits to East Turkistan to extend Beijing’s repression of Uyghurs into Australia, interrogating Australian citizens and pressuring some to collect information on members of their own communities after returning home.

Human Rights Watch said Monday that Uyghur Australians visiting the region have been questioned about activists, community organizations and even Uyghur-language schools in Australia. 

Some were instructed to photograph people at community gatherings, effectively turning access to long-separated relatives into leverage for surveillance abroad.

The findings were based on interviews with 11 Uyghur Australian citizens and permanent residents in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.

They provide a glimpse into what rights groups describe as transnational repression — attempts by governments to intimidate, silence or control people beyond their borders.

One Australian citizen said Chinese police interrogated him more than a dozen times during a visit, including once for more than seven hours.

Officers sought addresses and phone numbers of prominent Uyghur activists and, when he said he did not have them, told him to monitor their activities after returning to Australia and photograph people attending community events.

Another visitor described being required to register with local authorities and report daily movements and contacts. A third said the pressure was difficult to resist because refusing authorities while inside China could put both the visitor and relatives at risk.

The intimidation reaches beyond political activism. Chinese authorities have questioned visitors about Australia’s Uyghur weekend schools, including who teaches there and whose children attend. 

Australia, home to about 5,000 Uyghurs, has four such schools in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane that seek to preserve a language and culture increasingly suppressed inside East Turkistan.

The pressure is having a chilling effect on community life in Australia. Activists said some Uyghurs avoid protests, cultural organizations, language schools and even social gatherings because being photographed alongside government critics could expose relatives in East Turkistan to retaliation.

That fear draws its power from Beijing’s broader repression of Uyghurs. Chinese authorities have subjected Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in East Turkistan to mass arbitrary detention, imprisonment, pervasive surveillance, religious persecution and forced labor. Human Rights Watch has concluded that the abuses amount to crimes against humanity.

Family separation has consequently become a powerful means of controlling Uyghurs thousands of miles away. Some Australian residents have little or no contact with relatives, while others say conversations are monitored or facilitated by Chinese officials. 

One man said authorities had prevented his imprisoned spouse and children from leaving the region, leaving him fearful that anything he did publicly in Australia could affect them.

The Australian government told Human Rights Watch that foreign governments targeting people in ways that prevent them from exercising fundamental freedoms in Australia was unacceptable. Canberra has previously raised cases involving separated Uyghur families with Beijing, but many remain unable to reunite.

Human Rights Watch called on Australia to strengthen protections against transnational repression, warn Uyghur Australians about the risks of traveling to East Turkistan, investigate intimidation and accelerate family reunification.

The group also urged Canberra to press Beijing to release arbitrarily detained relatives of Uyghur Australians, arguing that people living in Australia cannot fully exercise their freedoms while Chinese authorities retain the ability to punish their families thousands of miles away.