China Uses Fake NGOs and Cyberattacks to Target Uyghur Exiles and Global Dissent

Beijing’s GONGOs Flood UN Halls While Hackers Target Uyghur Exiles: ICIJ Exposes China’s Global Crackdown on Dissent

By Uyghur Times Staff
April 30, 2025 – Geneva

China Uses Fake NGOs and Cyberattacks to Silence Uyghur and Global Dissent

April 30, 2025 – Geneva

A groundbreaking global investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), in collaboration with over 40 media partners including Le Monde, Paper Trail Media, and others, has laid bare the Chinese government’s sophisticated machinery of transnational repression. Published under the series “China Targets” and overviewed in the report Inside China’s Machinery of Repression, the findings detail how Beijing systematically manipulates international institutions and deploys digital warfare to crush dissent—particularly targeting Uyghur voices advocating for justice in East Turkistan (Xinjiang).

At the heart of the exposé is China’s aggressive use of so-called GONGOs (government-organized non-governmental organizations). These entities masquerade as independent civil society groups but function as extensions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and state apparatus. An ICIJ analysis of 106 NGOs registered with the United Nations from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan revealed that at least 59 maintain close ties to Beijing—through direct government funding, leadership roles held by current or former CCP officials, or consistent parroting of official Chinese narratives during UN sessions.

Over the past seven years, particularly since around 2018, there has been a sharp surge in these GONGOs gaining access to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) and other bodies in Geneva. They flood meetings, disrupt proceedings, heap praise on China’s human rights record, and actively work to drown out or block genuine independent NGOs raising alarms about mass atrocities in East Turkistan, cultural erasure in Tibet, and democratic crackdowns in Hong Kong.

The Palais des Nations—the UN’s European headquarters—has increasingly become a hostile environment for Uyghur, Tibetan, and other critics of President Xi Jinping’s regime. Genuine human rights defenders report being surveilled, filmed, followed, and intimidated inside UN premises by delegates from these pro-Beijing groups. Many activists have been deterred from attending sessions altogether due to the orchestrated harassment.

World Uyghur Congress (WUC) leaders have been directly affected. Zumretay Arkin, WUC Vice President and a prominent global advocate, and Erkin Zunun, Vice Chair of the WUC Executive Committee and Chief Coordinator, have faced monitoring, surveillance, and overt harassment during UN events in Geneva. These incidents form part of a broader pattern where Chinese state-linked actors seek to silence testimony about the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in East Turkistan—abuses first highlighted in the landmark 2022 report by then-UN High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, which cited possible crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims.

The repression does not stop at the UN’s doors. The investigation uncovers how China extends its reach through cyberattacks and digital surveillance against Uyghur activists abroad. In Germany, where many Uyghur exiles reside, Erkin Zunun was hit by sophisticated malware campaigns attributed to Chinese state-sponsored hackers. Researchers from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab identified attempts to infiltrate devices of WUC-affiliated Uyghur advocates using malicious software disguised as Uyghur-language tools. The attacks aimed to compromise private and professional accounts, steal sensitive information, and further intimidate dissidents.

These digital assaults are emblematic of Beijing’s “all possible methods” approach to transnational repression—combining institutional manipulation at multilateral forums with cyber operations, coercion of families back home, and threats to silence critics living in safety abroad.