By Tsering Dhundup.
DHARAMSHALA May 12: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly expressed concerns over reports of China forcefully gathering DNA from Tibetans in Tibet, at Freedom House’s annual Freedom Awards on May 10, 2023.
“We’re also concerned about reports of the spread of mass DNA collection to Tibet as an additional form of control and surveillance over the Tibetan population,” Secretary Blinken said. Access to human genomic data opens up a whole other set of human rights concerns, advances in biotechnology have enabled genomic surveillance based on a person’s DNA. Potentially facilitating abuses, he added.
Since June 2016, police in the so called Tibet Autonomous Region have engaged in a mass DNA collection program targeting men, women, and children across the region. Mass DNA collection appears unconnected to any ongoing criminal investigation. Instead, our research suggests that mass DNA collection is a form of social control directed against the Tibetan people, Citizens Lab, a civil society organization stated.
In a report released by Humans Rights Watch on September 5 2021. Chinese authorities are significantly increasing policing, including arbitrary collection of DNA from residents in many towns and villages throughout the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), Human Rights Watch said.
The report also stated that people cannot decline to provide their DNA and that police do not need credible evidence of any criminal conduct to demand samples. A report from Lhasa municipality in April 2022 stated that blood samples for DNA collection were being systematically collected from children at kindergartens and from other residents. A report from a Tibetan township in so called Qinghai province in December 2020 stated that DNA was being collected from all boys aged five and above.
“The Chinese government is already subjecting Tibetans to pervasive repression,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “Now the authorities are literally taking blood without consent to strengthen their surveillance capabilities.”
In September 2022, a report from Citizen Lab claimed that the Chinese government had collected genetic material from nearly a third of the population in Tibet, 1.2 million out of 3.6 million without clearly obtaining consent from those involved. The CCP has used genetic materials collected from Uyghurs in East Turkestan (Ch. Xinjiang) to further its surveillance systems and forced ethnic change campaigns in the region.
“Throughout its brutal occupation of Tibet, China has used Tibet as a laboratory for relentless methods of social control, including this horrific campaign of mass DNA collection,” said advocacy group International Campaign for Tibet.
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Collecting DNA also allows authorities to eliminate critics using targeted bioweapons. New tools like CAS 9 Crispr let scientists create a virus to target specific individuals or a group.
Is this only limited to the TAR region? There has been a lot of DNA collection under “covid” testing as well across the globe. What is done with that data and the various apps used with the data, who knows? Some places have regulations in place for medical privacy, but perhaps how that is enforced needs to be evaluated?