Suppression of Muslim minorities in China especially the Hui and the Uyghur Muslims is continuing unabated despite an international outcry by the Human Rights Watch and other agencies. China is relentlessly pursuing its policy of discrimination and violation of basic human and religious rights of Muslims under the guise of fighting terrorism and extremism.
MOSQUE DEMOLITION ORDERS IN WEIZHOU
The Chinese Government has targeted mosques and religious structures of Muslim minority communities. In its latest bid the Chinese Government has targeted the grand mosque in Weizhou, Ningxia, in North West region of the country. This region has over 10 million Hui Muslims who share the Chinese language and culture.
Muslims in Weizhou have built a grand mosque in place of a 600 years old mosque, which had been destroyed during the Chinese revolution. However, the local authorities have given them notice to demolish the mosque, citing noncompliance with the permission of the local authorities. The people of Weizhou organised one of the largest protests on August 10, 2018 to prevent the demolition. Looking at the scale of the protest the local authorities have delayed the demolition of the mosque.
WHO ARE HUI MUSLIMS?
Hui Muslims are a minority Muslim community in China. Currently they are 10 million in number. They share a lot of similarities with the local Han Chinese people. They even speak the local Mandarin language. So far they have enjoyed freedom to practise their religion. But of late the Government is restraining them from actively practising their religion i.e. Islam. Many mosques have been demolished or their domes removed, madrasas have been closed and Arabic classes have been stopped in the region. All this is being done in the name of ‘Sinicize Religion’ policy being pursued by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
Minorities in China
China has 55 officially recognised ethnic minority communities. Muslims both Uyghur and Hui contribute to the largest number of minorities. They constitute 1.5-3% of total Chinese population. There are other Muslim minorities such as Kazhaks, Tajik, Krygys and others. They are largely present in South-West and North-West of Xinjiang province. As per 2010 census, the combined population of officially recognised minority groups comprised 8.49% of the population of mainland China.
ARRIVAL OF ISLAM IN CHINA
Islam arrived in China when Hazrat Sa’d bin Abi Waqqas led a delegation in 651 C.E. during the caliphate of Hazrath Usman. The delegation was received by the then emperor Gaozong, of Tang Dynasty. The emperor even ordered the construction of the memorial mosque in Canton, the first mosque in the country, in memory of Prophet Muhammad (Peace and blessings of Allah be to him). Later more Arab and Persian traders started regular trade connections with China which led to further expansion of Muslim community in China.
CONTRIBUTION OF MUSLIMS TO CHINA
Muslims have immensely contributed to the growth and development of China. Muslims have been living in China for more than 1300 years. They have been living harmoniously with the native Han Chinese people. They have contributed to several fields such as Medicine, Mathematics, Astronomy, Architecture, Science and Technology. The encyclopaedia of Chinese herbal medicine ‘Compendium of Materia Medica’ has recorded many medicines and prescriptions, together with their functions, brought by Muslims from the Middle East region. During the Yuan Dynasty, the Government utilised the knowledge brought by Muslims from the Middle East and Persia to build observatories, design cities and build institutions. Chinese Muslims have made great contribution to the field of Astronomy, Mathematics and Physics and have produced well-known researchers and scholars.
ECONOMIC SUCCESS OF CHINA
China is hailed all over the world as a great economic success. It is known for its innovation, growth and development. The entire world admires the country and its hardworking people for their grand achievements. China’s economy has witnessed explosive growth during the last 30 years. It has now become the largest economy in the world. In the year 2017, the economic growth was $23.12 trillion, the largest in the world, which means 6.8% increase over the growth at 6.5% in 2016. China has made great strides in Science and Technology, Bio Technology, Space, Mass transportation and other sectors. It is aiming to drive growth through innovation. However, if it continues to deny its own people religious and human rights, its growth and development will lose its sheen and it will not be meaningful.
SINICISE RELIGION POLICY
China is actively pursuing the policy of ‘Sinicise Religion’, a term coined by Chinese Communist Party in 2016. According to this policy, all the religions in China are expected to assimilate themselves in the Chinese culture, Chinese nationality and Chinese society. China feels a potential threat from religious practices. Getting influenced by the Islamophobia campaigns in the West, the Chinese authorities believe that Muslims and their religion pose a threat to the national security. Hence they expect that all the religions get adapted to the Chinese cultural identity.
LESSON FROM SOVIET DISINTEGRATION
China needs to learn lessons from the disintegration of the Soviet Union which was a superpower during its times. When freedom of speech and religion was denied, people rebelled against the state and their autocratic leaders. This resulted in various states seeking independence from the Union. China cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of its communist comrades from erstwhile Soviet Union. Discrimination and denial of basic and human rights can in reality be a greater threat to the national integrity, not the religious practices of people as misperceived by the Chinese leadership.
UYGHUR MUSLIMS ASPIRATIONS
Another region which has significant population of Muslims in China is the Uyghur province, which is named as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). There are more than 10 million Uyghur Muslims living there for hundreds of years. Uyghur Muslims are Turkic Muslims who have a distinct Islamic identity. Even in this region the Chinese Government continues to deny people the right to practise religion and free speech. China doesn’t recognise the aspirations of Uyghur Muslim minorities. It treats their religion, language, culture and identity as one of the three evil factors, ‘separatism, terrorism and extremism’.
The Government as a part of its policy picks up thousands of young people and puts them in political education camps to brainwash them and make them forcibly accept Chinese ideology, culture and practices. Many Uyghur Muslims who resist this are sometimes branded as terrorists and extremists.
POLITICAL RE-EDUCATION CAMPS
People who are suspected to be involved in religious activities are considered a threat to the national security. They are treated on par with terrorists, separatists and extremists. In order to change their ideological mindset, the Chinese Government has started ‘political re-education camps’ at several places in Xinjiang. These camps are usually hosted in Government buildings or school buildings where in cramped and squalid conditions Uyghur Muslims are brainwashed, and even forced to renounce their ethnic and religious identities and accept Chinese Communist philosophy and culture.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), a global organisation working for the protection of human rights, has criticised the Chinese Government for holding people in such camps. Sophie Richardson, China Director, HRW, has said, “The Chinese authorities are holding people at these ‘political education’ centres not because they have committed any crimes, but because they deem them politically unreliable”. “The government has provided no credible reason for holding these people and should free them immediately”, she has added. Dolkun Isa, President of the World Uyghur Congress, also confirms the state of affairs in these camps and has said, “China seeks to cover up its crimes against humanity in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where thousands of Uyghurs accused of harbouring extremist and politically incorrect views have been detained in political re-education camps and prisons throughout the region since April 2017.”
US Vice President Mike Pense has expressed his anguish and said, “Beijing is holding hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of Uyghur Muslims in so-called re-education camps, where they are forced to undergo round-the-clock political indoctrination to denounce their religious beliefs and their cultural identity as the goal.” Omer Kanat, Chairman, Executive Committee of World Uyghur Congress, said, “Every household, every family had three or four people taken away.”
“In some villages, you cannot see men on the streets anymore – only women and children – all the men have been sent to the camps,” he added. One estimate says that there are nearly 120,000 Uyghur Muslims detained in one overcrowded camp in Southern Xinjiang where conditions are pathetic and miserable. Human Rights activists portray the atrocities which go on in these camps. The Uyghur Muslims are forced to praise the communist party, sing their songs, taught Mandarin, forced to study thoughts of the Chinese leaders. They are also made to confess forcefully several things which they have not committed.
Maya Wang, a Hong Kong based China researcher for Human Rights Watch, calls the activities of Chinese authorities ‘completely unlawful’ and has demanded the release of all the detainees. The regional Government which is now being led by Chen Quanguo, a Xi loyalist, has introduced new measures to curb the freedom of Uyghur people. They have enacted a new law which has banned keeping long beards, veils in public and home schooling. All these measures have received wide international condemnation.
Rebiya Kadeer, one of the exiled Uyghur leaders, feels, “The real intention of the Chinese Government is to eliminate the Uyghurs as a distinct ethnic group.” She further adds, “Religious suppression, cultural restriction, ban on Uyghur language, and other modes of repression in Xinjiang only makes Uyghur hold on to their identity more firmly.” She feels that China has awakened the Uyghur people.
Conditions in Uyghur region are miserable as there is large scale violation of basic human rights especially by the Chinese security forces. Muslims who constitute more than 45% of the population are discriminated, and are under constant surveillance. The Government uses high tech gadgets to monitor every movement of Muslims.
Children below 18 years of age are not allowed entry to mosque for prayers. Several artists have been recruited to artistically depict the propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party through paintings and hoardings in the region. The Government is deliberately altering the demographics of the province by bringing Han Chinese from other regions and encouraging them to settle down in the Uyghur region. Such migration has slowly increased the population of the Han Chinese community. The entire region has become a state under surveillance.
The Chinese authorities however continue to deny that there are excesses on the Uyghur people. They claim that all citizens are being looked after in the same manner. However the reality is different and has been confirmed by various human rights activists.
INFRINGEMENT OF PRIVACY OF UYGHURS
There is no protection of the privacy of the Uyghur Muslims. As a policy of the Government called Live-in, the state officials visit the homes of the Uyghur Muslims at their will, stay with them and preach the communist ideology. Even the tourists who come to the old city visit these homes at their will and stay with them. All these policies of the Government are an infringement of the privacy of the Uyghur Muslims which is fundamental to life. When the communist officials visit homes, Uyghurs are required to give detailed information about their personal lives and political views. The officials use these live-in stays for political education of the inmates.
United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has observed, “The Chinese Government has instituted a multifaceted security grid throughout Xinjiang comprised of both personnel and advanced technology, including armed checkpoints, facial and iris recognition software, and cell phone monitoring. Moreover, the Chinese Government seeks to stymie the growth of the next generation of Uyghur Muslims by banning Uyghur language instruction in schools, prohibiting children from attending mosques, and proscribing Islamic baby names considered “extreme.”
According to Human Rights Watch, Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have collected DNA samples, fingerprints, iris scans, and blood types of all Muslims in the region between the age of 12 and 65, which is a violation of human rights. With the help of biometric data, law enforcement agencies are constantly monitoring the movement of all Muslims. HRW has condemned these live-in visits by the communist party officials and demanded an end to these programmes which violate right to privacy and family life and the cultural rights of ethnic minorities, which are protected under the International Human Rights Laws.
INEFFECTIVE ROLE OF MUSLIM NATIONS
Several Muslim countries and their leaders are exhibiting indifference to the plight of Uyghur Muslims. This could be due to the economic interests they share with the Chinese Government and other establishments. China is known for providing economic assistance for several Central Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Hence many of the Muslim nations do not wish to antagonise the Chinese leadership by raising Uyghur related issues. Hence they prefer to maintain stoic silence on the burning issues of Uyghurs. In the past, whenever a Muslim majority country spoke on the issue of Uyghurs, China had quickly reacted by threatening that country. In 2014 Turkey expressed its concern on the crackdown on Uyghur people by the Chinese regime. China instantly portrayed it as the distortion of facts and had threatened Turkey. Simone van Nieuwenhuizen, a Chinese politics researcher at the University of Technology, Sydney said, “Like most states, many Muslim majority countries have increasingly close economic relations with China”.
“There is a general consensus that speaking out about the situation in Xinjiang might jeopardise the development of economic ties, and it is therefore not in their interests to do so,” he further added.
USCIRF has also denounced the Chinese Government’s crackdown on Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang region. It has observed that the Xinjiang region resembles like a police state. Daniel Mark, Chairman, USCIRF, has said, “The Chinese government’s restrictions on Uyghur Muslims are an attempt to assimilate a besieged religious and ethnic minority.” He has further added by stating that “By installing Communist Party cadres in Uyghur homes and detaining countless innocent Uyghurs in extrajudicial ‘re-education camps,’ the Chinese government has created a culture of fear, suspicion, and mistrust throughout Xinjiang. Indeed, the government’s actions are disrupting the communities as they try to live their lives and practise their faith in peace.”
USCIRF has recommended the State Department to designate China as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 for engaging in or tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.
GLOBAL CONCERN ON RIGHTS VIOLATION IN CHINA
US Vice President Mike Pense, while addressing the Religious Freedom Conference at the U.S. State Department on July 26, 2018 in Washington said, “The religious persecution is growing in both scope and scale in China, which has been labelled a “religious freedom violator” in the State Department’s annual International Religious Freedom Report every year since 1999. Marco Rubio, Chairman, Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC), has said, “Beijing is guilty of some of the world’s worst religious persecution for its treatment of ethnic Uyghurs”. He has slammed the Chinese government and its ruling Communist Party as “equal-opportunity oppressors targeting unregistered and registered Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong practitioners, and others with harassment, detention, imprisonment and more.”
Marco Rubio has called China’s persecution of Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic groups in XUAR “arguably among the worst, if not the most severe, in the world today of an authoritarian government brutally and systematically targeting a minority faith community.”
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also cautioned that China should refrain from using “the guise of a counter terrorism investigation to persecute religious freedom.”
COLLABORATION AMONG RIGHT ACTIVISTS NEEDED
All the human rights activists, agencies and the NGOs must collaborate and engage with the Chinese leadership and persuade them to stop the large scale violation of human and religious rights of Muslim minorities in China. Only a peaceful coexistence of all communities collaborating and harmoniously working together with understanding and compassion can take China to the new levels of growth and prosperity. Economic Development of a country will be meaningless, until the basic human and religious rights of its people are protected and guaranteed.