When this massive biometric database is complete, the practical effect will be that when any Tibetan runs afoul of the Chinese Communist Party for any reason, immediate and extended family members with similar DNA could be treated as suspects and labeled as separatists. This could also silence activists outside China who don’t want to put their Tibetan relatives at risk.

Lawmakers and human rights groups in the United States are asking U.S. companies to avoid complicity in these human rights violations by cutting ties with the violators. Enter Thermo Fisher Scientific, a U.S. corporation that sells DNA tests kits by the millions. In 2019, the company stopped selling these kits to police in Xinjiang province, where Chinese authorities are repressing ethnic Uyghurs and other minorities, to be consistent with the company’s “values, ethics code and policies.”

But the company refuses to cut off the Tibetan police, who are committing the exact same abuses.