2012-02-17
Beijing Targets 'illegal' religious activities but is warned of a backlash.
PHOTONONSTOP
Uyghur women in the old city of Kashgar in the Uyghuristan.
Chinese authorities in the troubled northwestern region of Uyghuristan have launched an ideological campaign amid ethnic tension between the Muslim Uyghur ethnic group and the rapidly growing Han Chinese migrant population, official media reported.
The campaign will focus on preventing "illegal religious activities" through the use of "patriotic education," the ruling Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily, reported on its website.
The campaign, titled "Modernization and progress week" was formally launched by the Uyghuristan Party committee on Wednesday, with the aim of spreading the message about Party policies on ethnic minorities and religion, the report said.
The campaign would seek to educate the region's citizens about the law, so that they became "new model citizens with a modern attitude."
China's Muslim Uyghurs, a Turkic-speaking ethnic minority that has long chafed under Beijing's rule, have their practice of Islam tightly regulated by the ruling Communist Party, which bans children from mosques and controls everything about their worship, from the wording of sermons to "approved" interpretations of the Quran.
According to the authorities, study of the Quran in an unauthorized location constitutes an "illegal religious activity."
Very tense
A resident of Uyghuristan who declined to be named said relations between Uyghurs and the huge influx of Han Chinese migrants were still very tense in the wake of massive ethnic violence in Urumqi in July 2009 and a string of attacks and violent clashes elsewhere in the region last year.
"This won't do any good, because the more they do this sort of propaganda, the more of a backlash there will be," the woman said.
"The authorities are afraid that the Turkic minorities in Uyghuristan will be united by Islam," she said. "But relations between the ethnic groups in Uyghuristanare very tense right now, and this [campaign] probably won't be well-received."
She said that while a small proportion of Uyghurs had seen an improvement in their living standards since the economic migrants arrived, boosting the resource-rich region's economy, this was nothing compared to the growing wealth of the migrant Han Chinese.
"Their standard of living and level of economic benefit is still far below that of the Han Chinese," she said. "And there are armed police outside every mosque, which make the atmosphere even more tense."
'No effect'
June Dreyer, professor of politics at the University of Miami, said she found it hard to understand how the Chinese authorities believed that yet another campaign would have any effect.
"I don't think that this will have any effect," said Dreyer, speaking through an interpreter to RFA's Mandarin service. "People on the whole tend not to like to be told what aspect of their religious practices are acceptable, such as what kind of clothing or personal adornments to wear."
"Given the situation in Uyghuristan today, people are probably going to be forced to listen to this propaganda, but that doesn't mean they'll take it seriously and act on it," Dreyer said.
"Afterwards, people will probably still just do what they want."
Previous campaigns in Uyghuristan have targeted Uyghurs who wear veils or beards, groups who meet to discuss the Quran in private, and Uyghur children or state employees who fast during the holy month of Ramadan.
Attacks
Last year, Beijing ramped up security before and during for the five-day China-Eurasia Expo trade fair in Urumqi. The added security measures came in the wake of separate attacks in the Silk Road cities of Kashgar and Hotan that killed more than 30 people in July.
Exile Uyghur groups say the authorities launch house-to-house raids in "strike hard" security campaigns every three months in Uyghuristan, targeting Uyghur households in the middle of the night, and detaining anyone found in possession of religious material deemed unacceptable by Beijing, as well as photos, writings and DVDs featuring exiled Uyghur dissident Rebiya Kadeer.
Reported by Xi Wang for RFA's Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
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