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| Muslims: Chinese Uighurs leave a mosque in Kashgar, in Xinjiang Province. The Chinese do not let Uighurs attend mosque until
age 18. Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images |
Uighurs struggle in a world reshaped by Chinese influx
In China's far west, the Muslim ethnic group finds itself relegated to menial jobs. Chinese officials also restrict religious practice and use of their language in schools.
from the April 28, 2008 edition
Page 3 of 4
"The Uighurs are in a very difficult position," says Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher with Human Rights Watch. "They can modernize but at the expense of their culture, or they can refuse to do so and end up marginalized economically."
Of special concern to many Uighurs is their Muslim religion, which local people say is attracting increasing numbers as an expression of their identity, and which the authorities see as a potential breeding ground for separatism.
On the wall of the 16th-century ochre brick mosque here in Kucha, a predominantly Uighur town of 200,000, a red banner proclaims – in Chinese and Uighur script: "Fight Against Illegal Religious Activity: Create a Harmonious Society."
Inside the prayer hall, a notice board explains "illegal religious activity." Near the top of the list is a warning that indicates the government's worries: "It is forbidden to praise jihad, pan-Turkism, or pan-Islamism."
Young men under the age of 18 are not allowed to pray in the mosque, the guardian says. Recently introduced regulations forbid local government employees from going to the mosque and ban teachers from wearing beards and students from bringing the Koran to university, human rights activists say.
"If you get too religious, the government gets worried," says one cotton farmer in a village 50 miles south of Kucha, where, he says, 50 young men have been arrested in recent months for studying at private religious schools, accused of belonging to the outlawed Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Islamic Party.
"There is no religious freedom here," the farmer says bluntly.
The Chinese government "conflates … any religious activities outside the official framework with terrorism and separatism," argues Mr. Bequelin, leading ordinary Uighur believers to fear they could be charged with aiding the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an armed separatist organization on the US government list of terrorist groups.
ETIM, a shadowy group that advocates an independent Islamic state for Uighurs, is seen by the Chinese authorities as the principal security danger in the region. Accused of a failed bomb plot on a Chinese airliner last month, the organization "is the preeminent threat to the Beijing Olympics," says Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore.
That threat, however, says Mr. Gunaratna, comes not from "ETIM's support network in Xinjiang, but from an operational network" based abroad, along the Pakistan-Afghan border, comprising about 40 men who have linked up with Al Qaeda allies there.
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