Baidu censorship gave the clue for Planet to pursue.

It’s also refreshing to see some original research-driven journalism. They discovered 5 million blank tiles in medium-resolution Baidu maps, and turned to the commercial satellite sources to see what they were hiding. They found 268 newly-built prisons.

“China has secretly built scores of massive new prison and internment camps in the past three years, dramatically escalating its campaign against Muslim minorities even as it publicly claimed the detainees had all been set free. The construction of these purpose-built, high-security camps — some capable of housing tens of thousands of people — signals a radical shift away from the country’s previous makeshift use of public buildings, like schools and retirement homes, to a vast and permanent infrastructure for mass detention. China has established a sprawling system to detain and incarcerate hundreds of thousands of Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities, in what is already the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II.” — News

“Planet was kind enough to give us access to high-resolution imagery for these locations and to task a satellite to capture new imagery of some areas that hadn’t been photographed in high resolution since 2006”
— imagery collection details.

Full disclosure: From its founding, Planet has been focused on global transparency, humanitarian causes and good journalism. Having led their first two rounds of funding, I posted their founding story at the time. By imaging the whole Earth every day, and over time, Planet can detect changes to the world, in conflict, natural disaster, and repression zones. They can also apply deep learning algorithms to search their massive imagery database for similar structures (like prison camps or new housing starts). They can detect illegal fishing or deforestation as it is happening. They can count every tree on Earth every day. If we know more about what is happening on our planet, we can better protect it. Bravo Planet — I am so proud of you!

One response to “Transparency from Space — China’s New Prison Camps”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Another interesting political move today, from the WSJ: "China Irate After U.S. Removes ‘Terrorist’ Label From Separatist Group"

    "A State Department official said Friday that the delisting occurred “because, for more than a decade, there has been no credible evidence that ETIM continues to exist.”

    The Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project said the Chinese government has justified repressive measures by citing questionable threats from the group.

    “The harmful effects of China’s exploitation of the imagined ‘ETIM’ threat are real—20 years of state terror directed at Uighurs,” said UHRP Executive Director Omer Kanat. “This long-overdue decision is a definitive rejection of China’s claims.”

    The U.S. listed ETIM as a terrorist organization in 2002 as Washington was seeking Beijing’s cooperation with its global War on Terror in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. While Chinese officials blamed a number of terrorist attacks on the group and has used its existence to justify a harsh crackdown on the Muslim population in Xinjiang, U.S. policy makers and scholars have long cast doubt on the group’s significance and reach.

    Scholars of the region say there is little reliable information about ETIM and scant evidence of its ties to global terrorism.

    “The group has not really existed since the early 2000s,” said James Millward, a professor of Chinese and Central Asian history at Georgetown University. “Listing ETIM in the first place was the mistake.”

    In publishing the order quietly while Americans are preoccupied with a presidential election, the State Department is trying to send a message to Beijing without drawing too much attention to its original misstep, Mr. Millward said."

    Reply

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