In recent years, China has endeavored to woo hearts and minds in the northwest region of Xinjiang while engaging in a military crackdown against terrorism. It has told the military to learn local folk songs and dances. It has sent thousands of cadres to befriend local villagers.
This week, Beijing launched another public-relations fusillade in the form of a white paper heralding the region’s religious freedom. Such freedom, the paper said, “cannot be matched by that in any other historical period, and is undeniable to anyone who respects the facts.”
The somewhat defensively couched phrasing comes after years of criticism by rights groups and foreign governments regarding China’s policies in the region, which is home to the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic group. As the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recently put it, Beijing’s efforts to fight terrorism have “led to a wide-scale crackdown on religious expression,” as well as hundreds or thousands of Uighurs seized in security sweeps and many prosecuted on charges of endangering state security.
The government has cracked down on beards and face-covering veils, with authorities in the regional capital of Urumqi approving an outright ban on the latter.
On Thursday, officials said the government has made a great effort to support Xinjiang’s believers, including better training for clerical personnel and extensive publication of religious works.
“Every ethnic group fully enjoys the right of freedom of religion and fully enjoys the happiness and serenity of religious and social harmony,” Shoket Imin, who sits on the standing committee of the party’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Regional Committee, told reporters.
An ethnic Uighur, he said he personally never felt discriminated against while growing up in the region. Among other things, he noted, the government offers preferential university-admissions policies to ethnic minorities.
Asked about strictures barring children under age 18 from attending mosques, he said that people aren’t permitted to use religion to disrupt social order or obstruct national education.
While it was hard to tell what prompted this particular release, Maya Wang, researcher with the nonprofit Human Rights Watch, noted that it comes ahead of the anniversary of July 2009 violence in Urumqi, which officials said at the time left nearly 200 dead. The release also comes a week ahead of the start of Ramadan, a traditionally sensitive time in the region, given past strictures on its observance.
Beijing blames violence in the region on Uighur separatists who it says have links to overseas terror groups. Locals, meanwhile, argue that violence is largely caused by a heavy-handed attitude toward the region and its religion. The government said last year that 181 terror groups had been dismantled during a year-long campaign launched after a May 2014 bombing in Urumqi that killed 39.
Ms. Wang said religious freedom in the region had “significantly deteriorated.”
“Over the past decade, [Beijing] has increasingly treated peaceful criticism of the government or expressions of distinct Uighur identity including their religion as evidence of ‘separatism, splittism, and terrorism,’ ” she said.
In late 2014, a Chinese court sentenced Ilham Tohti — an economist at Beijing’s Minzu University and rights campaigner seen as a moderate voice for the Uighur minority — to life in prison on charges of separatism, in a case that sparked international condemnation.
This week’s white paper comes on the heels of another one late last year titled “Historical Witness to Ethnic Equality, Unity and Development in Xinjiang,” which highlighted improving living conditions in the region.http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/06/02/beijing-touts-uighurs-religious-freedom-amid-terrorism-crackdown/
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