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China To Scrutinize Muslim Religious And Folk Customs In Xinjiang
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| China has stepped up its crackdown on Mulsims after Sept 11 attacks. |
BEIJING, Jan. 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - China is stepping up control of Muslim religious and folk customs in its western-most Xinjiang region, as Beijing cracks down on separatist groups there, government and other sources said Tuesday, news agencies reported.
The government of Yili prefecture, a hotbed in China's border region with Kazhakstan, has issued a circular calling on officials to step up surveillance of local religious and folk customs, the Munich-based East Turkestan Information Center said, quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The circular specifically targets weddings, funerals, house-moving rituals and the wearing of earrings, the center said in a statement.
"Since the September 11 terrorist incident, the Chinese government is not only using counter-terrorism to strike at Uighur people [who are] legally seeking political rights, but now views traditional ethnic lifestyles as a major element of instability," the center said.
Ethnic Uighur government and party officials have been told to seek permission before attending any such festivals or ceremonies and report back to the government upon the completion of their activities, the circular said.
An official from the Communist Party office of Yili prefecture told AFP by phone that the circular was issued January 3, but was aimed at "establishing spiritual civilization," curbing waste at over-extravagant ceremonies and eradicating "feudal, superstitious and backward ideas."
The regulations applied only to Yili prefecture and not to the whole of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, he said.
"This is not the first time we've had this kind of document,” he said, declining to identify himself, “we are always issuing these. This is not aimed at the religious practices of ethnic minorities.”
China has stepped up its crackdown in the region since the September 11 attacks on the United States and the subsequent bombing of neighboring Afghanistan. Besides arresting suspected separatists, Beijing has clamped down on religious, educational and other cultural activities.
Earlier, police in the capital of China's predominantly Muslim western Xinjiang region have arrested 166 “separatists and criminals” during a three-month campaign, Chinese state media said.
The arrests took place in Urumqi from September 20 to November 30, 2001, during a crackdown on crime, the Xinjiang Daily said in a report seen in Beijing Friday, AFP reported.
Among the 166 were ethnic Uighurs classified by Beijing as "terrorists" and other "major criminals," the paper said, without giving a breakdown of the figures.
In recent years, the region has seen a sporadic and limited campaign of violence by freedom fighters, mainly in the form of bombings and riots.
However, the United States has said it does not consider Xinjiang separatists to be terrorists, and human rights groups have strongly stated their concern that such labeling promotes human rights abuses.
The London-based human rights watchdog, Amnesty International, issued a report warning that the Chinese government's call on October 11 for international support of its crackdown on "terrorism" raised concerns about repression.
"The Chinese authorities do not distinguish between 'terrorism' and 'separatism'," Amnesty International said in its statement released the same day.
"Separatism in fact covers a broad range of activities, most of which amount to no more than peaceful opposition or dissent,” Amnesty added. “Preaching or teaching Islam outside government controls is also considered subversive."
Amnesty said that since the mid-1990s, several hundred Uighurs, accused of such activities, have been executed, while thousands more have been detained, imprisoned and tortured.
The group also said that the Chinese government has placed growing restrictions on the practice of Islam in the region.
In November, at the start of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, local and overseas news agencies reported that some Muslims in Xinjiang province had been forbidden to fast and some Muslim women were forbidden from wearing Islamic headcovers.
United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Mary Robinson, warned Chinese leaders during a visit to Beijing in November that they should not use the war on terror as an excuse for widespread repression in
Xinjiang.
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