While the start of this week marked the beginning of the month of
Ramadan for Xinjiang’s Uighur Muslims, China’s Communist authorities
are reportedly cracking down on Muslim religious activity.
The Web site for the town of
Yingmaili currently lists nine rules put in place to control the Muslim
holy month in the name of “maintaining stability during Ramadan.”
The
list includes barring teachers and students from observing Ramadan,
requiring men to shave their beards, forcing women to take off their
veil’s, prohibiting mosques from letting people from outside the town
stay the night, forbidding retired government officials from entering
mosques, and requiring restaurants to maintain normal hours of
operation.
During Ramadan, Muslim restaurants normally close during day time hours for their religious fasting, known as swam, which takes place from sunrise to sunset. Muslims who are observing Ramadan typically eat large meals at night.
Currently,
as many as a dozen Muslim restaurants in the area had their business
licenses revoked for closing up shop during the Muslim holy month.
This
year, China’s Communist regime forced owners of Halal Food Industry to
sign a guarantee to continue to operate during Ramadan. Any closure
during this period is considered illegal.
Spokesman for the World Uighur Congress, Dillxiati, told Sound of Hope Radio
that the Chinese government has set up surveillance teams in areas such
as all mining industries and enterprises, villages and schools to
monitor and track the region’s Uighur’s in order to restrict their
activities during Ramadan.
Moreover,
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is providing free lunches to teachers
and students in all major institutions and schools in an effort to
smoke out anyone who is engaged in Ramadan activities. If anyone
refuses lunch it will become evident that they are engaged in fasting
and will be punished by school authorities and may even face expulsion.
According to Dilixiati,
all religious activities, cultural traditions and traditional dress of
the Uighur’s are also being prohibited while all religious publications
have been confiscated and shut down by the regime.
It
would appear the CCP is using the recent violence in the area that took
place during the Olympic Games as an excuse for the suppression, “Faced
with recent violent and disruptive activities by religious extremists,
separatists and terrorists, we must… step up ideological education of
religious leaders and followers,” stated a notice on Xinjiang’s Zhaosu
County website.
A notice on the
Xinhe County website echoed a similar sentiment, “We must timely warn
and stop religious believers from organizing and planning large scale
prayer groups and prevent any large crowd incidents that could harm
social stability.”
Dilixiati
suspects the intention of the CCP is to eliminate Uighur’s beliefs
because they think that the Uighur faith is impeding the CCP’s
assimilation of the ethnic group to the Communist ideology.
