Ethnic Persecution in the Name of Progress

In 2016, the Communist government in China began a campaign to turn a Muslim minority group, the Uighurs, into loyal supporters of their largely non-Muslim agenda. This largely-innocuous goal quickly manifested itself in insidious ways, however. In order to reach a greater number of constituents, the Communist Party in China offered "free health checks," where data such as fingerprints and blood samples were collected, ostensibly for the protection of Uighurs; in reality, this data was used to profile and track the behavioral patterns of Muslims in China. To what end? It is not apparent that the database was ever wielded against Uighurs, but the area has been embroiled in a decades-long conflict as China attempts to control its largely insular minority. The "health exams" were widespread, with nearly 36 million people participating, but the ethical ramifications go far beyond the actual reach of Chinese genetic collection. In a world where technology is increasingly prevalent, ethnic persecution and authoritarian control over those deemed as opponents have ballooned, giving way to a society where databases can be manipulated to control and surveil minorities without any accountability. The ramifications of this knowledge are global; United States-based companies and professors volunteered both equipment and genetic information to assist China in building its database in the name of scientific progress. Scientific progress, however, should not be invoked to harken back to the eugenicists of the 20th century. Scientific progress cannot be redefined as thinly veiled ethnic persecution. Scientific progress will never become a justification for abhorrent privacy violations and abuses. When considering the increasing influence of globalization, we must be aware of the corruption and authoritarianism we unintentionally enable; halting ethnic persecution on a grand scale is essential to the world's conscience, and it must also be at the forefront of our own. 

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/business/china-xinjiang-uighur-dna-thermo-fisher.html