The world’s largest manufacturers and suppliers of video surveillance equipment are companies owned by the Chinese government, Hikvision and Dahua. The Chinese government has utilised Hikvision and Dahua surveillance technology to facilitate its mass-crackdown on the Uyghur population and transform the Region into a ‘high-tech penal colony’. Chinese state-owned surveillance cameras are found across UK public buildings, putting UK society at risk of security breaches and complicity in genocidal crimes.
In November 2022 the UK government has also recognised its security cameras as a security risk. Despite this, Hikvision cameras can still be found in government departments, local councils, police stations and even hospitals up and down the UK – Earlier this year the government rejected Lord Alton’s ‘Hikvisoin’ amendment to the Procurement Bill, claiming that the evidence linking Hikvision and Dahua to egregious human rights abuses is ‘highly contested.’[1]
As it stands, the government’s policy is insufficient to tackle the scale of the problem. Not only does this strategy fail to protect sensitive sites which fall outside the government’s remit, including police stations, councils, military bases and educational institutions, it also does little to address the huge amount of public money being funneled into companies with known complicity genocide.
you can read a more detailed briefing here.
TIME TO TAKE ACTION
Write to your MP using this suggested template urging them to support Lord Alton’s amendment, which would ban all UK institutions from procuring surveillance technology from companies that are subject to the National Intelligence Law.
Jewish history knows only too well what it is for a people to suffer this way, with too few to speak up for us. Our experience of interment and of religious and ethnic persecution shows us the importance of the right to hold and express our beliefs freely, a right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, without fear of violence, persecution, and genocide.
[1]https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-02-07/debates/237d01ac-578d-4083-8ad3-1b53bf032d78/ProcurementBill(Lords)(SixthSitting)
