China’s ruling Communist Party has hardened its rhetoric on Islam, with top officials making repeated warnings about the spectre of global religious “extremism” seeping into the country, and the need to protect traditional Chinese identity. Sharhat Ahan, a top party official in Xinjiang, on Sunday became the latest official from a predominantly Muslim region to …
Read the full post →“China launches “all-out-offensive” against Uyghur minority”
Many couples fret over choosing the perfect name for their newborn, but for Muslims in western China that decision has now become even more fraught: pick the wrong name and your child will be denied education and government benefits. Officials in the western region of Xinjiang, home to roughly half of China’s 23 million Muslims, …
Read the full post →“China bans religious names for Muslim babies in Xinjiang”
A rights group says China appears to be laying the groundwork for the mass collection of DNA from residents of a restive region with a large Muslim population. Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that police in western China’s Xinjiang region have sought more than $11.5 million in equipment to analyze DNA samples. Maya Wang, a …
Read the full post →“China reportedly creating extensive DNA database in Muslim region”
Authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang region are doubling down on a bid to prevent Muslim Uyghurs from fasting and praying during Islam’s holy month of Ramadan by embedding Chinese officials in their homes, according to official sources. While authorities in Xinjiang have typically forced restaurants to stay open and restricted access to mosques during Ramadan …
Read the full post →“China embeds cadres in Uyghur homes during Ramadan”
Authorities in China’s Xinjiang region have updated guidelines on detaining Muslim Uyghurs on religious “extremism” charges, which include the posture they take while at prayer, their hair color, and even how they wear their watches, official sources said. Thousands of Uyghurs accused of having “extremist” and “politically incorrect” views have been held in political re-education …
Read the full post →“China introduces revised Uyghur extremism list”
At least 120,000 members of China’s Muslim Uighur minority have been confined to political “re-education camps” redolent of the Mao era that are springing up across the country’s western borderlands, a report has claimed. Radio Free Asia (RFA), a US-backed news group whose journalists have produced some of the most detailed reporting on the heavily securitised region …
Read the full post →“China ‘holding at least 120,000 Uighurs in re-education camps'”
Internment camps with up to a million prisoners. Empty neighborhoods. Students, musicians, athletes, and peaceful academicsjailed. A massive high-tech surveillance state that monitors and judges every movement. The future of more than 10 million Uighurs, the members of China’s Turkic-speaking Muslim minority, is looking increasingly grim. As the Chinese authorities continue a brutal crackdown in Xinjiang, the northwest region of China that’s home …
Read the full post →“Thousands of Uighur have been detained without trial in China”
The Weizhou grand mosque, with numerous domes and minarets in a Middle Eastern style, had not received proper permits before construction, officials in the town of Weizhou said in a notice on Aug. 3. The mosque would be forcibly demolished on Friday, they added in the notice, widely circulated among Chinese Muslims on social media. …
Read the full post →“Chinese officials plan to demolish mosque”
In China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang resides the majority of the country’s Uighur population. One of China’s Muslim ethnic minority groups, the Uighurs make up approximately 45% of the population of Xinjiang province. For months, there have been speculations that the Chinese government has been illegally and inhumanely detaining tens of thousands of Muslim minorities, …
Read the full post →“Uighurs are forced to swear allegiance to Chinese president Xi Jinping”
After years of persecution by Chinese police, Uighur businessman Mehmet fled his home in northern Xinjiang for neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, only to be harassed by Kyrgyz police and threatened with deportation. On his sixth arrest in July last year, a Kyrgyz security officer brought Mehmet to the basement of a security facility and showed him about 70 Uighur men …
Read the full post →“China extends Uighur crackdown beyond its borders”
