Hikvision, the world’s largest maker of security cameras, is supplying nearly a thousand facial recognition cameras for mosques in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang as the ruling Communist party doubles down on its efforts to monitor all public and private activity in largely Muslim areas.

The Hikvision cameras will be installed at the entrances of 967 mosques in a county in southern Xinjiang, according to a tender reviewed by IPVM, a global video camera research firm. The cameras are said to be powerful enough to capture HD-quality footage and are designed to withstand extreme temperatures.

The cameras are part of a larger $46m project to build an extensive surveillance system in Xinjiang’s Moyu County that has suffered some of the worst terror attacks blamed on Uighur militants in the last decade.