Muslim Group in China Ordered to Install App That Detects Terrorist Content

By Vianne Ilagan, Christian Post Contributor Monday, July 31, 2017

Chinese authorities in Xinjiang's capital city, Urumqi, have urged a Muslim minority group in the province to install spyware apps on their mobile devices so the government can spot "terrorist and illegal religious" content.

Through the Jingwang app, the government can easily scan devices to determine the existence of any terrorist propaganda.

A few weeks ago, the Xinjiang police officially sent a notice to the group via messenger WeChat to order them to install the Jingwang app for future inspections.

In the order sent on July 10, the government said that the goal of the app was specifically to filter out terrorist content. This applied to users with Android devices.

"In order to achieve city-wide coverage in the antiterrorist video and audio clean-up, and to target people, materials and thinking for clean-up work, management and crackdowns, a technology company affiliated with the municipal police department has developed an app for Android smartphones that can filter out terrorist video and audio content," the directive read.

The notice further explained that once the app was installed in an Android phone, it automatically identified "the location of video or audio containing terrorist content or illegal religious content, images, e-books or documents, and delete them automatically."

Soon after sending the notice, the police started conducting inspections on the streets, asking people to stop and present their phones to show that they have already installed the app. Part of the inspection was to ensure that the people in the community send their WeChat messages using the Chinese and Uyghur languages only.

According to reports, 10 Kazakh women have so far been arrested since the checkpoints were set in place. A Kazakh source from the region said the women had been detained on charges of using WeChat to talk about content that should not be discussed.