Muslims in China are subject to fasting bans as Ramadan begins

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Fasting bans and increasing attacks on Muslims’ cultural and religious traditions are happening in China as the Muslim world prepares for the holy month of Ramadan.

According to local officials and rights groups, Uyghurs in the northwestern region of Xinjiang are being ordered not to allow their children to fast, and children are being questioned by the authorities about whether or not their parents are fasting.

According to Dilshat Rishit, a spokesperson for the World Uyghur Congress, “the authorities are requiring 1,811 villages [in Xinjiang] to implement a round-the-clock monitoring system during Ramadan, including spot home inspections of Uyghur families.” Muslims around the world observe a fast throughout the day during Ramadan.

Rights groups have warned in a new report that the Communist Party’s stringent religious rules pose an imminent threat to China’s 11.4 million Hui Muslims, who are tightly knit communities of ethnic Chinese who have maintained their Muslim faith over centuries.

According to a report by a group of rights organisations, including the Chinese Human Rights Defenders network, Beijing views them as “a threat to be resolved through forcible assimilation.”

In a report, it was stated that Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists were all subject to party control and censorship due to President Xi Jinping’s “sinicization” programme. This was in stark contrast to the relative freedoms they had before this.

Members of the Hui community “were able to openly participate in mosque communities, Arabic schools, and private worship, albeit under restrictions facilitated by party liaisons,” the report said. Under the Belt and Road Initiative, “Hui businesspeople were encouraged to establish commercial and tourist ties with the wider Muslim world.”

More than 100,000 Hui were reportedly sent to “re-education” camps in Xinjiang alongside Uyghurs as part of a “counterterrorism” campaign, with the government citing “Islamophobic rhetoric that has pervaded global counterterrorism discourse.”

As part of its “ethnic unity” campaign, China has also gone after Muslim communities by forcing Han Chinese “relatives” into ethnic minority Uyghur households and pressuring them to follow non-Muslim traditions like drinking alcohol and eating pork.

At least 1.8 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minority Muslims have been imprisoned in “re-education” camps in Xinjiang, where they have been subjected to forced labour and rape, sexual abuse, and sterilisation at the hands of camp guards.

Reference: Radio Free Asia

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