COPS are sending people to “concentration camps” if they’re found with Facebook on their phones during random stop and searches in China, it is claimed. Western social media is banned in China’s Xinjiang region where police are accused of seizing residents’ phones and installing spyware. Pictures uploaded to Twitter show buildings in China that are allegedly being used as ‘re-education’ camps . Offenders are said to be sent to “re-education” camps to clamp down on social media use. Mandatory spyware is downloaded onto citizen’s phones to restrict what citizens can access.
And he said living in China is “like Nazi Germany” and likened the Chinese Communist Party to ISIS. He said: “If you [have] got Twitter or Facebook in your phone, you will be sentenced to 15 years in concentration camps.” Kasim told The Sun Online: “China doesn’t want you to know what’s happening outside of China, so they’ve built a firewall. “Police check your phone looking for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – any app not made in China. “If they catch you with any of these apps, or in contact with someone abroad – even someone from China who has now left the country – they accuse you of hating communism, of hating China.
“Almost every police [officer] has handheld equipment they connect to your phone with a USB where they can scan everything on your phone, all your photos, everyone you’ve ever spoken to. “They transfer everything to their own system, iPhones only take about three minutes to scan – other phones can take hours.” Images shared by another activist claim to show cops on a tube train approaching passengers to check their phones. Sun Online has been unable to verify the authenticity of the pictures.
COPS CHECKING PHONES
But reports of Chinese police manually checking phones are not uncommon and have been confirmed by rights groups. Maya Wang, China senior researcher from Human Rights Watch, told Sun Online: “Police [in Xinjiang] are checking people’s phones. “There have been several testimonies from people who have been detained in these political re-education facilities for using Whatsapp.” Kasim also shared pictures of what he says are two of these facilities, calling them “concentration camps” and saying he risked his life to photograph them. He claimed one camp is a now-abandoned hospital that can allegedly hold up to 7,000 people. Another image shows a white building with high walls and an impenetrable-looking fence. Political re-education facilities are legal in the region and implemented by the Chinese government as “counter-terrorism measures”.