BANGKOK: As Myanmar descends into chaos, smartphone warriors in the anti-coup movement are seeking revenge online against the junta, hounding people with family ties to the military as a form of "social punishment".
The country has been in turmoil since the military ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi in February and the death toll from the violence has risen past 500 as the junta struggles to quash dissent.
Anger and grief over the crackdown are being channelled into an online campaign, with close to 170 people with relatives in the junta listed on a website as "traitors".
The site and a corresponding Facebook page - which had 67,000 followers before it was shut down - detail the personal information of these people, such as workplaces, universities and links to their social media accounts - a practice known as doxxing.
"We are here to punish families of the military or the people who are supporting the military. Never forgive, never forget!" the Facebook page said.
Facebook closed down the page for violating community standards, but other pages with smaller numbers of followers still exist.
"We will continue to closely monitor the situation on the ground in Myanmar," a Facebook spokeswoman said.
People with ties to the Myanmar military are being targeted in an online doxxing campaign by anti-coup activists. (Photo: AFP/STR)
The consequences of social punishment have resulted in some victims being forced to shut down their online businesses and a Myanmar university student in Japan quitting her studies, according to local media reports.
The campaign is broader in scope than those with family ties to the military - people not participating in the civil disobedience strike action are also being targeted and threats have been made to journalists who cover the junta's press conferences.
For Burmese living abroad, doling out "social punishment" to those with junta connections helps ease their sense of powerlessness as they watch from afar, said Yangon-born Cho Yee Latt, who now lives in Singapore.
"(Myanmar) people in Singapore can't do anything, so they feel very stressed out ... they are really angry," she told AFP.
Cho Yee Latt says she contacted the Singapore employer of a Myanmar woman who has a soldier boyfriend and was posting pro-coup messages online.
"We must destroy this corrupted system," she said.
"I only worry about Myanmar's poor who are being killed and arrested. The military families are living in foreign countries overseas, they are living high-class lifestyles, they won't be stressed at all."
Among those targeted is the doctor son of a senior minister, who later went on television to renounce his father.
Bryan Paing Myo Oo, based in Brisbane, Australia, suffered blowback on social media over his father Pwint San's role as commerce minister.
"People who deploy social punishment on me think they are doing the right thing. I want to add that I am participating in social punishment against my father," he told the BBC's Burmese-language programme.
"I texted him: 'Dad, you should quit right now. If not, you will lose me forever as your son.'"
Despite being targeted himself, he sympathises with the aims of social punishment as a way to further pressure the regime.
"I don't blame people for resorting to social punishment because people are being brutally gunned down in the streets, and this is the only weapon civilians have," he said.
The attacks on people with junta links are also being spread on Twitter.
"We will do social punishment to the whole family. We will punish them to the point that they want to kill themselves," one Twitter user wrote, posting pictures of a lieutenant general and his daughter.
Twitter said it was acting on abusive tweets, but experts say social media companies do not have enough Burmese-language moderators to keep up with the challenge.
The "with us or against us" mentality is also being pushed by a group of ousted MPs from Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), who have been working underground against the junta.
The Committee for Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw has warned in a statement that "serious action" would be taken against those who are not part of the protest movement.
The tactic is not unique to Myanmar - during the Hong Kong political protests in 2019, doxxing was commonly used by both sides.
Police became a key target for protesters as clashes raged - especially after officers stopped wearing identification badges - while government loyalists outed Beijing's critics.
Cyber-hate expert Ginger Gorman, who penned a book called "Troll Hunting", says so-called "digilantism" where people seek to get back at others online can have serious real-world consequences.
"This kind of online hunting and extreme cyber-hate perpetrated against an individual is linked to huge harms including ... incitement to suicide, murder and real-life stalking and assault," she told AFP.
There have been isolated reports of the social punishment campaign spilling over into the physical world, with some people in Myanmar having their eyebrows and hair shaved off by anti-coup protesters, according to multiple social media posts.
HONG KONG (BLOOMBERG) - When China regained control of Hong Kong more than two decades ago, the Communist Party entrusted the city's wealthiest tycoons with enormous influence over local politics.
This week President Xi Jinping took his most dramatic step yet to grab some of that power back.
Mr Xi's sweeping overhaul of Hong Kong's electoral system - aimed at neutralising pro-democracy voices - will curtail the clout of billionaires such as Mr Li Ka Shing and Mr Lee Shau Kee, who used to wield effective control over a quarter of the seats on the 1,200-member Election Committee that decides Hong Kong's chief executive.
Under the new system, the moguls will lose more than 10 per cent of their votes to smaller businesses and mainland Chinese companies. The committee will also add 300 more seats filled mostly by Beijing loyalists, further diluting the tycoons' power.
It's the latest sign of a fall from grace for Hong Kong's wealthiest families, who have been blamed by some Chinese officials and state media for failing to prevent anti-government protests in 2019 or fix deep-rooted problems like housing affordability. Beijing's reliance on the tycoons has also shrunk markedly in recent years as China's economy ballooned into a US$14 trillion (S$18 trillion) behemoth.
"The biggest loser in the overhaul is Hong Kong's pro-democracy camp; the second-biggest loser is large property tycoons," said Mr Ivan Choy, who teaches politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
"Beijing no longer wants to negotiate with them at key elections."
Least affordable
One of the biggest sources of friction is Hong Kong's property market, the world's least affordable. The city's sky-high home prices stem from a colonial system that limits land supply while auctioning available plots with a government-decided floor price. Local property moguls, who control the bulk of the city's buildings, have long been viewed as the biggest beneficiaries of the system and most opposed to any reforms.
Hong Kong's top 19 wealthiest people have a combined net worth of about US$272 billion, which is equivalent to 74 per cent of the territory's gross domestic product, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Most of them made money starting out in the property business.
In an interview this week, Mr Leung Chun Ying, who served as the chief executive of the city for five years through June 2017, said the new electoral system will help the government tackle livelihood issues, including a shortage of housing.
"This is the root of a lot of social and economic problems in Hong Kong, housing shortage," Mr Leung told Bloomberg Television on Tuesday (March 30).
The comments by Mr Leung, who is now the vice-chairman of China's top political advisory body, mean Beijing wants the local administration to focus on resolving longstanding problems afflicting the former British colony.
Some of the tycoons came under fire at the height of the 2019 protests. For instance, the 92-year-old Li - Hong Kong's richest person - drew Beijing's ire after he published a vague message in local newspapers that was widely interpreted as a call for not only halting the violence on Hong Kong's streets, but also stressing freedom, tolerance and the rule of law.
China's top law-enforcement body accused the tycoon of "encouraging crime".
Call for 'patriots'
The electoral revamp signed off by Mr Xi allows national security police to vet candidates for the city's Legislative Council, a step that would snuff out all pro-democracy voices and align with Mr Xi's call for "patriots" to run Hong Kong. The US, UK, Japan and the European Union have all condemned China's moves.
In the previous system, top tycoons controlled key votes in deciding the chief executive, Chinese University of Hong Kong's Mr Choy said. While they had traditionally voted for the candidate favoured by Beijing, there were times when they came close to defiance, he said.
During the 2012 election, Beijing's favoured candidate, Mr Leung, won with only 61 per cent of the votes - the lowest among all chief executives - with many tycoons showing support for their peer billionaire, Mr Henry Tang, siding with the pro-democratic opposition camp. Local press widely reported at that time that China's liaison officers in Hong Kong had to step up their efforts to rally support for Mr Leung.
Supporting China
Besides Mr Li and Mr Lee, who founded two of Hong Kong's best-known business empires, Mr Adam Kwok, from the family behind the city's largest developer, and Mr Adrian Cheng, whose family owns a jewellery-to-property conglomerate, were also on the last committee for the 2017 chief executive election. Representatives for Mr Li, Mr Lee, Mr Kwok and Mr Cheng didn't respond to requests for comment.
Yet some of the tycoon electors are rallying behind the new system. Hang Lung Properties, whose chairman Ronnie Chan was on the Election Committee in 2017, said the group is supportive of China's move "to improve Hong Kong's electoral system". Mr Robert Ng, head of Sino Group that owns properties including the Far East Finance Centre and the Conrad Hong Kong hotel, expressed enthusiasm in a statement sent to Bloomberg News through a representative.
Mr Ng fully supports the change "as it enhances the one country, two systems principle and adds greater stability and prosperity to the livelihood of HK people", according to the statement.
BEIJING: Designer Zhou Li took to the stage amid applause following her runway show at China Fashion Week with a prop that has political overtones: A bouquet of cotton plants.
"As far as I'm concerned, I think Xinjiang cotton is my sweetheart, my love, which is to say I'm very grateful it has brought me such happiness," Zhou, 56, told Reuters after her show on Tuesday (Mar 30) in Beijing.
Zhou, chief designer and founder of Chinese fashion brand Sun-Bird, is a patriotic supporter of a boycott targeting several major Western apparel brands in China that have expressed concern over alleged rights abuses in Xinjiang province.
She said her garments on show on Tuesday, which featured slick minimalist designs with ruffles and ancient Chinese characters, used Xinjiang cotton exclusively.
"For our Chinese designs, I'm certainly right to support the Xinjiang people," she said.
H&M, Burberry, Adidas and Nike are among those hit by consumer boycotts in China after their comments on alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang resurfaced on Chinese social media last week.
The backlash has put the brands in an awkward position given the importance of the market in China, where news and social media are tightly controlled by the Communist Party-controlled government and patriotic campaigns targeting foreign brands are common.
"First of all, as everyone knows, these are false statements (from the brands)," 19-year old fashion model Zhao Yinuo said outside the event. "But of course I can't comment too much on this because it involves political issues."
The European Union, the United States, Britain and Canada last week imposed sanctions on Chinese officials, accusing them of human rights abuses in Xinjiang. China retaliated with sanctions of its own on lawmakers and academics.
Xinjiang produces around 20 per cent of the world's cotton.
Some researchers and lawmakers say Xinjiang authorities use coercive labour programmes to meet seasonal cotton picking needs. China strongly denies the claims, and says all labour in Xinjiang is consensual and contract-based.
"I can't believe our Chinese Communist Party would ever do such a thing," said a 19-year old student surnamed Li at the fashion event. "Our nation is very united."
YANGON: Myanmar’s military government announced on Wednesday (Mar 31) it is implementing a unilateral one-month ceasefire, but made an exception for actions that disrupt the government’s security and administrative operations - a clear reference to the mass movement that has held daily nationwide protests against its seizure of power in February.
The announcement came after a flurry of combat with at least two of the ethnic minority guerrilla organisations that maintain a strong presence in their respective areas along the borders.
More than a dozen such groups have for decades sought greater autonomy from the central government, sometimes through armed struggle. Even in times of peace, relations have been strained and ceasefires fragile.
The movement against the Feb 1 coup that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi focuses on civil disobedience, calling on employees in the public and private sectors to stop work that supports the machinery of governing.
It has been seeking an alliance with the ethnic minority armed groups to boost pressure on the military government. It would like them to form what they are calling a federal army as a counterweight to the government armed forces.
Anti-coup protesters hold slogans during a demonstration in Yangon, Myanmar on Mar 31, 2021. (Photo: AP)
Largely peaceful demonstrators in the cities and towns of Myanmar have been facing police and soldiers armed with war weapons that they have used freely. At least 536 protesters and bystanders have been killed since the coup, according to Myanmar’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which counts those it can document and says the actual toll is likely much higher.
There was no immediate reaction to the ceasefire announcement from the ethnic minority forces. Several of the major groups - including the Kachin in the north, the Karen in the east and the Rakhines’ Arakan Army in western Myanmar - have publicly denounced the coup and have said they will defend protesters in the territory they control.
The Kachin Independence Army, the armed wing of the Kachin Independence Organization, attacked a police station in Kachin state’s Shwegu township before dawn Wednesday, according to local news outlets The 74 Media and Bhamo Platform. The attackers were reported to have seized weapons and supplies and wounded one police officer.
The Kachin have staged a series of attacks on government forces in their territory since the coup, saying the latest round of fighting was triggered by government assaults on four Kachin outposts. After one Kachin assault in mid-March, the military retaliated with a helicopter attack on a Kachin base.
Wednesday’s Kachin attack followed new conflict in eastern Myanmar, where Karen guerrillas seized an army outpost Saturday. Myanmar’s military followed with airstrikes through Wednesday that killed at least 13 villagers and drove thousands more across the border into Thailand, according to the Free Burma Rangers, an established humanitarian group that provides medical assistance to the area’s villagers.
After the airstrikes, the Karen National Union issued a statement from one of its armed units saying Myanmar military “ground troops are advancing into our territories from all fronts” and that it may have to respond. The KNU is the main political body representing the Karen minority.
The conflict in eastern Myanmar spread the crisis to neighbouring Thailand, where an estimated 3,000 Karen took temporary shelter. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said they quickly went back across the border voluntarily and were not forced by Thailand. Thai authorities said Wednesday that only about 200 remained in the country and were preparing to go back.
Anti-coup protesters run to avoid military forces during a demonstration in Yangon, Myanmar on Mar 31, 2021. (Photo: AP)
Protests continued in Myanmar’s cities against the military takeover that reversed a decade of progress toward democracy in the Southeast Asian country that came after five decades of army rule.
Demonstrators marched through at least one area of Yangon despite reduced numbers in the face of the ever-climbing death toll. The mainly young protesters in the city’s Hlaing suburb stopped to honour a protester killed in an earlier confrontation with security forces.
A long column of teachers, perched on motorbikes, kept the spirit of opposition to the coup alive in southern Myanmar. Two per bike, they carried signs reading “We Want Democracy” and shouted slogans as they rode through the town of Launglone and into the surrounding countryside.
An outside visitor was able to see Aung San Suu Kyi for the first time since she was detained when the military staged its coup. She spoke by video link with one of her lawyers, Min Min Soe, according to the online news site The Irrawaddy.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been held on several minor criminal charges, and the army said it is investigating more serious allegations of corruption against her. Her supporters dismiss the legal actions as politically motivated, aimed at discrediting her and preventing her from returning to the political arena, where she is the country’s most popular figure.
The Irrawaddy quoted Min Min Soe saying that Aung San Suu Kyi, who is thought to be held somewhere in the capital Naypyitaw, is in good health.
“She even urged us to stay healthy. She was smiling and looked relaxed,” the lawyer said.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, 2,729 people have been detained in the crackdown since the coup, and arrest warrants issued for 120 others.
"We need to respect science and respect the opinions and the conclusions reached by scientists," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying told a daily briefing in Beijing on Wednesday (March 31). "The WHO should play a leading role."
In a separate briefing, Chinese scientists working alongside the 17 international experts assembled by the WHO for the mission to Wuhan - the central Chinese city where coronavirus was first detected in late 2019 - also defended the thoroughness of their findings and conclusion.
Professor Liang Wannian, an epidemiologist who headed the team of Chinese experts working with the WHO, said at a separate press briefing that the merit of the report should be judged by scientists.
China's comments came a day after the release of the study into the origins of Covid-19. The report, written after four weeks of investigative work in Wuhan city - capital of Hubei province - drew widespread criticism from countries including the United States.
The US and 13 other countries expressed concerns on Tuesday that the WHO report lacked access to complete data, according to a joint statement. The statement was signed by Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, South Korea, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, and the US.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus unexpectedly also critiqued the report, saying it had not sufficiently examined the controversial hypothesis that the virus could have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers have been studying different coronaviruses, including ones with similarities to Sars-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19.
"I'm not sure how he understands the issue," Prof Liang said of Dr Tedros' comments. "Whether the examination was sufficient or not should be judged by scientists and history."
The coronavirus probably spread from bats to humans via another animal, according to the WHO-China study. The most productive research would be to look for such an animal link, it said.
Dr Peter Ben Embarek, co-leader of the WHO investigation trip to Wuhan, has said that the lab hypothesis - which was promoted by former US president Donald Trump's administration - was not the main focus of the investigation and so did not receive the same depth of attention and work as other theories.
The team did not do a full investigation of the labs, he added.
Ms Hua on Wednesday also refuted the joint statement made by the US and 13 other countries, saying this was evidence of certain countries' disrespect for science and political manipulation of the origin-tracing issue.
She said politicising the origin-tracing issue was immoral and will jeopardise anti-pandemic cooperation.
"These countries should engage in some self-reflection and ask themselves, how has their own anti-epidemic work gone? What have they done for international cooperation in the fight against the pandemic?" Ms Hua said.
The experts "said they went to places they wanted to and they met people they wanted to", she added.
Prof Liang also told reporters that researchers from both sides had access to the same data throughout the investigation and that the assertions about lack of access were not accurate.
"Of course, according to Chinese law, some data cannot be taken away or photographed, but when we were analysing it together in Wuhan, everyone could see the database, the materials - it was all done together," said Prof Liang.
Women who made allegations last month of rape and sexual abuse in Chinese detention camps have been harassed and smeared in the weeks since. Rights groups say the attacks are typical of an aggressive campaign by China to silence those who speak up.
Qelbinur Sedik was making breakfast when the video call came, and the sight of her sister's name made her nervous. Many months had passed since the two had spoken. In fact, many months had passed since Sedik had spoken to any of her family in China.
Sedik was in the kitchen of her temporary home in the Netherlands, where she shared a room with several other refugees, mostly from Africa. Two weeks earlier, she and three other women had spoken to the BBC for a story about alleged rape and torture in China's secretive detention camps in the Xinjiang region, where Sedik worked as a camp teacher.
Now her sister was calling.
She hit answer, but when the picture appeared it wasn't her sister on the screen, it was a policeman from her hometown in Xinjiang.
"What are you up to Qelbinur?" he said, smiling. "Who are you with?"
This was not the first time the officer had called from her sister's phone. This time, Sedik took a screenshot. When he heard the sound it made, the officer removed his numbered police jacket, Sedik said. She took another screenshot.
Police composite
'You must think very carefully'
In conversations with the BBC over the past few weeks, 22 people who have left Xinjiang to live abroad described a pattern of threats, harassment, and public character attacks they said were designed to deter them from speaking out about alleged human rights abuses back home.
According to UN estimates, China has detained more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslims in camps in Xinjiang. The Chinese state has been accused of an array of abuses there including forced labour, sterilisation, torture, rape, and genocide. China denies those charges, saying its camps are "re-education" facilities for combatting terrorism.
Among the few who have fled Xinjiang and spoken publicly, many have received a call like the one to Sedik that morning - from a police officer or government official at their family home, or from a relative summoned to a police station. Sometimes the calls contain vague advice to consider the welfare of their family in Xinjiang, sometimes direct threats to detain and punish relatives.
Others have been publicly smeared in press conferences or state media videos; or been subjected to barrages of messages or hacking attempts directed at their phones. (Last week, Facebook said that it had discovered "an extremely targeted operation" emanating from China to hack Uyghur activists abroad.)
Some of those who spoke to the BBC - from the US, UK, Australia, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, Germany, and Turkey - provided screenshots of threatening WhatsApp, WeChat and Facebook messages; others described in detail what had been said in phone and video calls. Everyone described some form of detention or harassment of their family members in Xinjiang by local police or state security officials.
A gate of what is officially known as a "vocational skills education centre" in Xinjiang
When Qelbinur Sedik recounted the call from the policeman that morning, via her sister's phone, she buried her head in her hands and wept.
"He said, 'You must bear in mind that all your family and relatives are with us. You must think very carefully about that fact.'
"He stressed that several times, then he said, 'You have been living abroad for some time now, you must have a lot of friends. Can you give us their names?'
When she refused, the officer put Sedik's sister on the call, she said, and her sister shouted at her, 'Shut up! You should shut up from now on!', followed by a string of insults.
"At that point I couldn't control my emotions," Sedik said. "My tears flowed."
Before the officer hung up, Sedik said, he told her several times to go to the Chinese embassy so the staff there could arrange her safe passage back to China - a common instruction in these kinds of calls.
"This country opens its arms to you," he said.
'Misogyny as a communication style'
Reports of this type of intimidation are not new, but Uyghur activists say China has become more aggressive in response to growing outrage over alleged rights abuses in Xinjiang. The Chinese government has gone on the attack in public in recent weeks, directing a slew of misogynistic abuse specifically at women who have spoken up about alleged sexual abuse.
At recent press conferences, China's foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin and Xinjiang official Xu Guixiang held up pictures of women who gave first-hand accounts of sexual assault in detention camps and called them "liars"; said one was "morally depraved" and of "inferior character"; and accused another of adultery. One woman was branded a "bitch of bad moral quality" by a former husband in what appeared to be a staged video put out by state media; another was called a "scumbag" and "child abuser" by a Chinese official.
Wang Wenbin holds up pictures of witnesses Zumrat Dawat and Tursunay Ziawudun in Beijing last month
Wang, the foreign ministry spokesman, revealed what he said were private medical records, claiming that they disproved one woman's account of having an IUD forcibly fitted. Officials have also claimed that sexually transmitted diseases were responsible for fertility problems suffered by former camp detainees, rather than violent physical abuse, and put out a range of propaganda material calling the women "actresses".
Tursunay Ziawudun, a former camp detainee who is now in the US, was one of the women attacked at a press conference. When she watched it, she was relieved Wang had not mentioned her family, she said, but "deeply sad" about the rest. Ziawudun has previously recounted being raped and tortured during her detention in Xinjiang in 2018.
"After all the horrors they inflicted on me, how can they be so cruel and shameless as to attack me publicly?" she said in a phone interview after the press conference.
The attacks on Ziawudun and others showed that China was "adopting misogyny as a style of public communication," said James Millward, a professor of Chinese history at Georgetown University.
"We have these various women coming forward and telling very credible stories about how they've been abused," he said. "And the response shows a complete tone deafness and misunderstanding of how sexual assault and sexual trauma is now being understood and treated now. Besides being horrifying, it's also completely counterproductive for the Chinese state."
The Chinese embassy in London told the BBC that China stood by its assertions that the women's accounts of rape and sexual abuse were lies, and said it was reasonable to publicise private medical records as evidence.
Tursunay Ziawudun at her new home in the US last month
Two other women who spoke to the BBC have been the targets of what appear to be highly staged videos, published by Chinese state media, in which their family and friends insult them and accuse them of stealing money and telling lies. According to a report published last month by the US-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, China has produced at least 22 videos in which individuals are allegedly forced to make scripted statements, often denouncing their family members as liars or thieves.
Aziz Isa Elkun, a Uyghur exile in the UK, had not been able to contact his elderly mother and sister for years when he saw them in a Chinese state media video calling him a liar and a shame on the family. Elkun's crime had been to draw attention to the destruction of Uyghur cemeteries in Xinjiang, including his father's tomb.
"You could tell what they were saying was scripted, but it was still extremely painful to see my elderly mother in a Chinese propaganda film," Elkun said.
Qelbinur Sedik is worried a similar video of her husband could be released any day, she said. He told her on the phone late last year that Chinese officials had visited him at home in Xinjiang and forced him to recite lines calling her a liar. He said he struggled so much to say the lines correctly that it took four hours to film the short clip.
'Maybe we can co-operate'
Another common form of harassment described by those who spoke to the BBC was pressure to spy on fellow Uyghurs and organisations that scrutinise China, often in return for contact with family, guarantees of relatives' safety, or access to visas or passports.
A Uyghur British citizen who did not want to be named said he was harassed repeatedly by intelligence officials during and after a visit to Xinjiang and told to spy on Uyghur groups and on Amnesty International, by joining the charity as a volunteer. When he refused, he received repeated calls from his brother pleading with him to do it, he said.
Jevlan Shirmemmet, who left Xinjiang to study in Turkey, gave the BBC a recording of a call he received a few weeks after posting on social media about his family's mass arrest in Xinjiang. The caller, who said he was from the Chinese embassy in Ankara, told Shirmemmet to "write down everyone you've been in contact with since you left Xinjiang," and send an email "describing your activities," so that "the mainland might reconsider your family's situation". Another Uyghur in exile in Turkey described a similar call from the same embassy.
Mustafa Aksu, a 34-year-old activist in the US whose parents are detained in Xinjiang, showed the BBC text and voice messages from an old school friend, now a Chinese police officer, who Aksu said was pressuring him to provide information about Uyghur activists.
"He says, 'Maybe we can co-operate. I'm sure you must miss your parents.'"
Jevlan Shirmemmet has publicly protested for the release of his mother
Not everyone feels that they can refuse these requests. "When I say no, they get my younger brother and sister to call and tell me to do it," said a Uyghur student in Turkey, who provided screenshots of the messages from police. "They could send my brother and sister to a concentration camp. What choice do I have?" she said.
Some have sought to protect themselves by gradually cutting off means of contact. "You can throw away the phone and cancel the number," said Abdulweli Ayup, a Uyghur linguist in Norway, "but you cancel your number and they contact you on Facebook; you delete Facebook and they contact you by email."
Others have tried beyond hope to stay in touch. A Uyghur exile in the Netherlands said she still sends pictures and emojis to her young son and parents, four years after her number was blocked. "Maybe one day they will see," she said.
The BBC was not able to independently verify the identities of the people behind the calls and messages provided by various interviewees, but Uyghur rights activists say efforts to coerce Uyghurs to spy for the Chinese government are common.
"It comes as an offer first - 'You won't have any more visa problems', or 'We can help your family' - that kind of thing," said Rahima Mahmut, a prominent UK-based Uyghur activist. "Later it comes as a threat," she said.
The UK Foreign Office told the BBC it was "closely monitoring reports that members of the Uyghur diaspora in the UK have been harassed by the Chinese authorities", and that it had "raised our concerns directly with the Chinese embassy in London".
The Chinese embassy in London told the BBC that the allegations in this story were "completely untrue" and it was "baffling that the BBC so readily believes whatever is said by a few 'East Turkestan' elements outside China" - using another term for the Xinjiang region.
Uyghur protesters in Istanbul last month. Uyghurs in Turkey fear they could be deported to China
Despite the growing public outrage over alleged abuses in Xinjiang, the number of people who have spoken publicly remains vanishingly small compared with the estimated number detained. China has been tremendously successful at silencing people through fear, said Nury Turkel, a commissioner on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
"Millions of people have disappeared into the camps, and yet we have only a handful of Uyghurs speaking out against the detention of their loved ones," Turkel said. "Why? Because they are afraid."
Some Uyghurs who have criticised China have managed to maintain limited contact with loved ones. Ferkat Jawdat, a prominent activist in the US, speaks to his mother regularly now, after campaigning publicly for her release from detention. She is under house arrest, and her calls are monitored, but she is there on the other end of the line.
It can be hard to make sense of why some Uyghurs are harassed and others are not; some allowed contact with loved ones and others not. Some have speculated that China is "A/B testing" - trying to work out whether fear or kindness is more efficient. For the thousands who are cut off, it can feel ruthless and arbitrary.
Jawdat knows that the likelihood of seeing his mother again before she dies is diminishing, so when they speak on the phone they speak carefully. He did tell her once that Chinese state media had put out a video of her saying she was ashamed of him. She said she knew, they had come to film it a few days earlier. "How did I look?" she joked. Then, taking a risk, she told him she had only ever been proud of him.
