Activists demand answers from U.S. company that sold DNA kits to Tibet
Mass DNA collection by police in Tibet has been part of a series of campaigns launched in the past several years aimed at “strengthening social governance at the grassroots level,” according to state media.
Tibetan rights groups have been ramping up pressure on Thermo Fisher, a Boston-based bioinformatics company that has sold DNA testing equipment to police in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).
This week, activists delivered petitions to company offices in Boston and India, staged community rallies, and established an installation outside Thermo Fisher headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Offices there denied them entry into the building, activists said.
“It’s been extremely frustrating for Tibetans,” said Pema Doma, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, “because we’re not trying to oppose the company. We’re not trying to criticize Marc Casper [Thermo Fisher CEO], but we have to do those things because of the policies that the company is engaging in.”
Students for a Free Tibet, in collaboration with other human rights organizations, have been organizing against Thermo Fisher’s sales to China since Human Rights Watch and Citizen Lab last year revealed evidence of police-led mass DNA collection campaigns in Tibet, targeting Tibetans as young as five years old in the region as well as in Tibetan areas outside of the TAR. Government documents indicate that authorities intend to create a DNA database that activists fear may be used to expand China’s mass surveillance program of Tibetans.
Research suggests that mass DNA collection campaigns in Tibet are unconnected to criminal investigations and do not appear to require informed consent. An analysis by Emile Dirks, author of the Citizen Lab report, found that between June 2016 and July 2022, police may have collected DNA samples from roughly one-quarter to one-third of Tibet’s total population.
“If you look at a campaign of mass DNA collection against the backdrop of both the nature of policing and China and also the very specific kind of state surveillance repression that goes on, that becomes very worrying because effectively, the police could, if they wish to, use this collected data, use the surveillance capabilities for any purpose they see fit,” Dirks told The China Project.
Following numerous protests, petitions, rallies, and letters to company leadership in the past several months — including from the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and Europe’s Interparliamentary Alliance on China — activists say the response from the company has been inadequate. Casper has refused to meet with members of the Tibetan community, says Doma.
“We’re talking about a scale of three years, five years, 10 years maybe, where the Chinese government is steadily sharing their tools and tactics of repression,” Doma said. “The fact that there is a private company like Thermo Fisher where most of the leaders that are making these decisions about business with the Chinese government have never really even spoken to a single person that has been impacted by those human rights violations [is] extremely concerning.”
In response to the CECC’s inquiry, Casper defended Thermo Fisher’s sales to the TAR, stating that the company abides by all U.S. standards and regulations and that sales were consistent with “a law enforcement entity engaging in routine forensics investigations in a locality with a population on par with the Tibet Autonomous Region.” Based on the types of products sold in the region, “there can be no reasonable basis to conclude that the tender could support the DNA collection efforts,” the company wrote in January.
“When they claim that the kits are only being used for their ‘intended use’…how do they actually guarantee that their kits or parts are only being used for purposes that are ethical or that they’re comfortable with?” Dirks said. “Have they actually grappled with the inherent character of policing in China, where the lines dividing political control from crime control are routinely blurred? It’s not clear to me that they have actually grappled with this.”
At least one Thermo Fisher shareholder, Azzad Asset Management, has spoken out in support of Tibetans’ concerns. The company offered one of its seats at the company’s annual general meeting, which took place Wednesday, to Tibetan activist Tenzin Yangzom, who intended to directly question Casper about the business his company has conducted with China.
But technical issues stopped activists from joining. Doma said Azzad shared activists’ comments and concerns with the company following the meeting, which lasted just 13 minutes.
Joshua Brockwell, investment communications director for Azzad Asset Management, said in a statement that the company is calling on Thermo Fisher to halt sales of DNA kits to Tibet, a move “not only more consistent with American values; it is an important way to mitigate potential harm to shareholder value from reputational risks associated with doing business in occupied territories.”
DNA collection in Tibet
Mass DNA collection by police in Tibet has been part of a series of campaigns launched in the past several years. One such campaign, “The Three Greats,” was launched in early 2022 and is aimed at “strengthening social governance at the grassroots level,” according to state media. In practice, this has meant the expansion of police presence in Tibetan villages and visits to Tibetan households in which police collect information about residents and question them about their views and opinions in an attempt to resolve local disputes.
“The Three Greats” campaign is only one channel through which Tibetan DNA has been collected; numerous other drives on city or prefecture levels have been documented. Researchers say collection may have started as early as 2013 and expanded to mass collection campaigns by 2016, using public security or social stability maintenance as justification. There is no evidence that residents may choose to opt out and there seems to be no legal basis for such collection drives in Chinese — let alone international — law, Dirks says.
Across China, authorities collect DNA of certain populations, including migrant workers or suspected criminals, and have launched a major campaign dedicated to collecting DNA from tens of millions of Chinese men. Authorities have launched similar collection campaigns in Xinjiang, where an estimated 1 million Uyghur Muslims have been detained in “reeducation camps” as China expands its surveillance over minority groups through other efforts like iris scans and fingerprinting.
In recent years, rights groups have reported an increase in surveillance, cultural and religious suppression, and restrictions on freedom of movement in the TAR. In February, the UN raised alarms that over 1 million Tibetan children had been separated from their families and placed in residential schools where they are subject to cultural, religious, and linguistic forced assimilation.
Thermo Fisher has reportedly sold DNA testing equipment to nine Chinese cities and counties, tailoring them to the specifications of Chinese police, according to the New York Times. Kits were sold to police in Xinjiang until 2019, when the company announced that it would stop selling products there as “consistent with Thermo Fisher’s values, ethics code and policies.” Later that year, the Trump administration banned the sale of American goods to Xinjiang law enforcement agencies.
Thermo Fisher did not respond to The China Project’s request for comment.
