BOSTON: Some of the biggest public pensions funds in the United States have invested in one of the world's largest purveyors of video surveillance systems that the US government claims are used in wide-scale repression of the Muslim population of western China.
The New York State Teachers Retirement System also owned Hikvision, reporting 81,802 shares at the end of June, up from 26,402 shares at the end of 2018, fund disclosures show.“Our holdings are primarily held according to their weights in passive portfolios matching the MSCI ACWI ex-US index, our policy benchmark. We are monitoring the situation,” said a spokesman for the teachers' fund. The ex-US All Country World Index includes stocks from 22 developed and emerging markets.
Another major fund investing in Hikvision shares is the Florida Retirement System , with 1.8 million shares at the end of June. Beijing denies any mistreatment of people at the camps, which it says provide vocational training to help stamp out religious extremism and teach new work skills. US mutual funds have also cut or eliminated positions in Hikvision amid the negative publicity, which included it being named in a Human Rights Watch report on mass surveillance in Xinjiang in May.
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