Tyr-Ziu Saxnot
01-03-2016, 11:21 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/world/asia/xinjiang-seethes-under-chinese-crackdown.html?_r=0
By ANDREW JACOBSJAN. 2, 2016
Uighur Identity Under Siege in China
KASHGAR, China — Families sundered by a wave of detentions. Mosques barred from broadcasting
the call to prayer. Restrictions on the movements of laborers that have wreaked havoc on
local agriculture. And a battery of ever more intrusive ways to monitor the communications
of citizens for possible threats to public security.
A recent 10-day journey across the Xinjiang region in the far west of China revealed a society
seething with anger and trepidation as the government, alarmed by a slow-boil insurgency that
has claimed hundreds of lives, has introduced unprecedented measures aimed at shaping the
behavior and beliefs of China’s 10 million Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority that
considers this region its homeland.
Driving these policies is the government’s view that tougher security and tighter restraints
on the practice of Islam are the best way to stem a wave of violence that included a knife
attack at a coal mine that killed dozens of people in September.
The tough security measures are on full view for travelers as they stop at the ubiquitous
highway checkpoints that slow movement across this rugged expanse of deserts and snowy peaks.
As heavily armed soldiers rummage through car trunks and examine ID cards, ethnic Uighur motorists and their passengers are sometimes asked to hand over their cellphones so that the police can search them for content or software deemed a threat to public security.
In addition to jihadist videos, the police are on the lookout for Skype and WhatsApp, apps popular with those who communicate with friends and relatives outside China, and for software that allows users to access blocked websites.
“All of us have become terror suspects,” said a 23-year-old Uighur engineering student who said he was detained overnight in November after the police found messages he had exchanged with a friend in Turkey. “These days, even receiving phone calls from overseas is enough to warrant a visit from state security.”
Here in Kashgar, the fabled Silk Road outpost near China’s border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, officials have banned mosques from broadcasting the call to prayer, forcing muezzins to shout out the invocation five times a day from rooftops across the city. The new rule is an addition to longstanding policies that prohibit after-school religious classes and children under 18 from entering mosques. (The installation of video cameras on mosque doorways in recent months makes such rules hard to ignore.)
Southeast of Kashgar, shopkeepers in the city of Hotan seethed over a government decision to outlaw two dozen names considered too Muslim, forcing parents to rename their children or be unable to register them for school, according to local residents and the police.
To the north in Turpan, a fertile oasis famed for its grapes, a vineyard owner complained about new restrictions that bar Uighur migrant laborers from traveling there for the harvest, leaving tons of fruit to wither on the vines.
SAD THAT WE HAVE TO LOOK TO CHINA TO SEE HOW TO DEAL WITH THE MUSLIM MURDERERS.
They should destroy every mosque in that country IMHO.
Murdering thugs, one and all as the Koran commands!!!! -Tyr
By ANDREW JACOBSJAN. 2, 2016
Uighur Identity Under Siege in China
KASHGAR, China — Families sundered by a wave of detentions. Mosques barred from broadcasting
the call to prayer. Restrictions on the movements of laborers that have wreaked havoc on
local agriculture. And a battery of ever more intrusive ways to monitor the communications
of citizens for possible threats to public security.
A recent 10-day journey across the Xinjiang region in the far west of China revealed a society
seething with anger and trepidation as the government, alarmed by a slow-boil insurgency that
has claimed hundreds of lives, has introduced unprecedented measures aimed at shaping the
behavior and beliefs of China’s 10 million Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority that
considers this region its homeland.
Driving these policies is the government’s view that tougher security and tighter restraints
on the practice of Islam are the best way to stem a wave of violence that included a knife
attack at a coal mine that killed dozens of people in September.
The tough security measures are on full view for travelers as they stop at the ubiquitous
highway checkpoints that slow movement across this rugged expanse of deserts and snowy peaks.
As heavily armed soldiers rummage through car trunks and examine ID cards, ethnic Uighur motorists and their passengers are sometimes asked to hand over their cellphones so that the police can search them for content or software deemed a threat to public security.
In addition to jihadist videos, the police are on the lookout for Skype and WhatsApp, apps popular with those who communicate with friends and relatives outside China, and for software that allows users to access blocked websites.
“All of us have become terror suspects,” said a 23-year-old Uighur engineering student who said he was detained overnight in November after the police found messages he had exchanged with a friend in Turkey. “These days, even receiving phone calls from overseas is enough to warrant a visit from state security.”
Here in Kashgar, the fabled Silk Road outpost near China’s border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, officials have banned mosques from broadcasting the call to prayer, forcing muezzins to shout out the invocation five times a day from rooftops across the city. The new rule is an addition to longstanding policies that prohibit after-school religious classes and children under 18 from entering mosques. (The installation of video cameras on mosque doorways in recent months makes such rules hard to ignore.)
Southeast of Kashgar, shopkeepers in the city of Hotan seethed over a government decision to outlaw two dozen names considered too Muslim, forcing parents to rename their children or be unable to register them for school, according to local residents and the police.
To the north in Turpan, a fertile oasis famed for its grapes, a vineyard owner complained about new restrictions that bar Uighur migrant laborers from traveling there for the harvest, leaving tons of fruit to wither on the vines.
SAD THAT WE HAVE TO LOOK TO CHINA TO SEE HOW TO DEAL WITH THE MUSLIM MURDERERS.
They should destroy every mosque in that country IMHO.
Murdering thugs, one and all as the Koran commands!!!! -Tyr