Renwei Electronics, a recipient of an award issued by Amazon-backed “Joint Innovation Center,” helps Chinese authorities track prisoners in Xinjiang, a Monday report revealed.
The company installs its “smart prison” systems in reeducation camps located in the Xinjiang region, where at least one million ethnic Muslim minorities are being held in mass internment camps, according to BuzzFeed News.
Renwei Electronics helps authorities in Xinjiang, China track people in prisons and detention centers — alerting guards to their movements and even fitting them with heart rate monitors.
Last year, it won an “innovation” award at an Amazon-sponsored event https://t.co/iKzbXY3eIw
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) April 19, 2021
Renwei received a “product innovation award” naming it as one of six “outstanding entrepreneurial companies” at an event co-hosted by the Amazon-sponsored center in November 2020, BuzzFeed News reported. (RELATED: US Corporations Continue Business In China After Western Nations Sanction Chinese Officials Over Uyghur Genocide)
Though Amazon formally ceased its retail operations in China in 2019, the tech giant’s highly profitable cloud computing subsidiary, Amazon Web Services (AWS), still works with the customers in China, according to BuzzFeed News. AWS runs the innovation center with the local Shanghai government and boosts local tech startups, providing them with necessary resources and tech support, the report said.
Renwei’s tracking technology has been used in a number of prisons and detention centers across China, including Zhongjiazhuang Prison in Xinjiang, which is run by a powerful paramilitary organization that the U.S. sanctioned in 2020, BuzzFeed News reported. The company calls its system “an important platform for digital prisons to improve their management capabilities through information technology,” according to BuzzFeed News.
The U.S. State Department characterized the treatment of Uyghur, Kazakh, Hui and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang as a genocide in the annual human rights report published March 30.