Religion: June 2008 Archives

Original reporting by Ding Xiao for RFA's Mandarin service. Service director: Jennifer Chou. Written and produced in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.

RADIO FREE ASIA
23 June 2008

Chinese authorities have demolished a Uyghur mosque in remote and restive Xinjiang amid mounting tension over security ahead of the Beijing Olympics, according to a Uyghur exile group and local officials.

"The mosque was illegal in the first place," a Uyghur government official said by telephone. Asked for details, he replied, "It's difficult to talk about it. It falls under classified information. I cannot give you any detailed information."

A village elder who asked not to be named said village youths had been gathering for Friday prayers at the mosque in secret, angering local officials.

"They reject these prayers at government-registered mosques," the elder said.

The mosque was built  in 1999, without a permit, 80 kms from the Upper Kumtagh village in Kalpin [in Chinese, Keping] county, he said, adding, "The mosque was illegal."

Local authorities recently learned of the secret gatherings, he said, after "two members of the local youth community were arrested when they went to inner China to learn kung fu, and they talked about the Friday prayers."

According to exiled World Uyghur Congress spokesman Dilxat Raxit, the mosque was targeted because it resisted pressure to publicize the Beijing Olympics.

The county government Web site said the mosque had been demolished because it was illegally built and has been conducting illegal religious activities. It also said those who violate religious laws and regulations will face punishment.

Resistance to curbs

"China is forcing mosques in East Turkestan to publicize the Beijing Olympics to get the Uyghur people to support the Games [but] this has been resisted by the Uyghurs," Raxit said in a statement distributed by e-mail.

Raxit said the mosque, which had been renovated in 1998, was accused of illegally renovating the structure, carrying out illegal religious activities and illegally storing copies of the Muslim holy book the Koran.

Education campaign

The Web site also said local authorities have mobilized people from all walks of life to study Communist Party policy on ethnic minorities in a bid to curb the infiltration by separatists and terrorists.

This education campaign, the Uyghur official said, "has nothing to do with the Beijing Olympics. We are in a remote area and the demolition of the mosque has nothing to do with the Olympics."

A primary school official in Kalpin county said Monday that the local education bureau had instructed every school to make and distribute Olympic-related pictures and artworks.

Olympic torch

The Olympic torch relay passed through Xinjiang last week under tight security.

Residents were told to remain indoors with few exceptions and gatherings were banned. Foreign media were under tight controls, and large-scale traffic restrictions were also in place during the torch rally there.

Beijing has said it fears Muslim separatists may be planning "terrorist activities" around the Olympics, vowing to tighten security in the region, where anti-Beijing sentiment is rife.

Six decades of tension

Both Tibetans and Uyghurs have chafed under Beijing's rule for the last six decades, and Chinese authorities have faced persistent accusations of repression and abuse.

China has waged a campaign over the last decade against what it says are violent separatists and Islamic extremists who aim to establish an independent state in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which shares a border with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Beijing took the position that Uyghur groups were connected with al-Qaeda and that one group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), was a "major component of the terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden." The ETIM has denied that charge.

By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
22 June 2008

The visit of the Olympic torch to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, came and went in about two hours on Saturday. Leaders of the ruling Communist Party probably exhaled once the flame was trundled onto an airplane without incident and flown out of a city that only three months ago had erupted in violent anti-Chinese protests.

But if Chinese leaders were anxious to avoid protests, they did not avoid using the torch relay as a stage to again lash out at the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. Zhang Qingli, the Communist Party secretary of Tibet, stood beneath the Potala Palace, the historic seat of the Dalai Lama, and bid farewell to the flame with a speech that at times was itself fiery. "Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it," Mr. Zhang said, according to Reuters. "We will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique."

The broadside against the Dalai Lama punctuated an abbreviated torch relay in Lhasa that was partly broadcast on state television and that quickly brought criticism from pro-Tibetan groups outside China. For months, advocates for Tibet have demanded in vain that China not take the torch through Lhasa.

"The torch relay in Lhasa is China's latest episode in a series of betrayals of everything the Olympics represent," Kate Woznow, campaign director of Students for a Free Tibet, said in a statement. "Parading the torch through Lhasa while Tibetans live under virtual martial law is China's most egregious exploitation of the Games yet."

The Tibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan regions of western China have been under a security crackdown since March, when violent protests broke out in Lhasa and spread. China has accused the Dalai Lama of masterminding the uprising, a charge he denies. Last week, he called on Tibetans not to protest when the torch passed through Lhasa.

Only a few months ago, the controversy in Tibet appeared likely to cast a pall over the Summer Olympics in Beijing. China had designed the global torch relay as the longest and grandest ever. But it had become the occasion for large protests in London, Paris, San Francisco and elsewhere, as pro-Tibet advocates clashed with Chinese supporters. Talk of boycotting the opening ceremonies of the Games spread through European capitals.

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