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XINJIANG: Religious
freedom survey September 2004
This article
was published by F18News on: 20 September 2004
By Igor Rotar, Central Asia Correspondent, Forum 18
News Service
In its survey analysis of the religious freedom
situation in the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region of
north-western China (previously known as Eastern
Turkestan), Forum 18 News Service reports on the
pervasive state control over the religious life of
native Muslims, who make up about half the local
population, and religious minorities, enacted through
national-religious committees. These committees, part
of the administration of every city, enforce
compulsory registration and approve the appointment of
all religious leaders, who must come to committee
meetings. Forum 18 learnt that at such a meeting in
Ghulja in August, officials threatened to dismiss a
Patriotic Catholic priest if he preached again against
abortion. Children under 18 are officially banned from
attending places of worship, though Forum 18 observed
that this rule is widely ignored. "We believe that
children need to finish their education and develop
their personalities before they can make an informed
decision as to whether they are believers or atheists,"
an official of Urumqi's national-religious committee
told Forum 18. Contact with fellow-believers abroad
remains restricted, leaving smaller religious
communities isolated.
The Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region (previously
known as Eastern Turkestan) is situated in the north
west of China and borders Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan,
Mongolia and Russia. With 16 per cent of China's
territory, it is the country's largest province.
According to official Chinese statistics, Xinjiang has
a population of 19.3 million. Around half of the
population is now Chinese, while the other half speak
Turkic languages and practise Islam. Of the latter,
Uighurs constitute 42 per cent, the Kazakhs 6.2 per
cent and the Kyrgyz 1 per cent.
Pervasive state control makes it difficult to collect
information on what the state regards as the sensitive
issues of religious freedom or relations between the
Chinese state and Xinjiang's religious believers.
Almost all those interviewed by Forum 18 News Service
said that if the authorities knew they had supplied a
journalist with "negative information", they could
suffer serious consequences. Several interpreters
refused to work for Forum 18 once they found out that
it was investigating religious freedom issues.
Forum 18 discovered that all the believers it had
interviewed in recent years had been questioned by the
Chinese special services, which had tried to find out
why Forum 18 was visiting China and, on an earlier
visit, to establish the whereabouts of the
correspondent, but at the time he had already crossed
the Chinese border. For that reason Forum 18 cannot
reveal the names of sources.
At first glance, it appears that believers in Xinjiang
suffer no persecution from the authorities. Places of
worship for a wide range of faiths function virtually
everywhere in the region. Moreover, such places of
worship are often built at state expense (for example,
the authorities built the Orthodox church in the town
of Ghulja - see F18News 9 September 2004
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=406 ).
Priests at larger places of worship receive a small
state salary. Muslims have their own hospitals staffed
by Muslim women doctors and serving only other Muslim
women. There are also Muslim restaurants.
At the beginning of September Xinjiang's communist
party leader even declared at an international
exhibition in Urumqi that the level of religious
observance among the population needed to be raised.
But in helping believers, the state is trying to keep
religious communities under its control. "In many ways
China today is even freer than countries in the West,"
a Protestant who preferred not to be named told Forum
18. "We have very democratic laws on free enterprise.
There is virtually no street crime in China and there
is no need to be afraid to walk the streets at any
time of day or night. However, Beijing does not allow
any ideology to be preached in public that goes
against official communist party policy."
National-religious committees, which form part of the
administration of every city, maintain control over
the life of believers. Religious communities may
become active only once they have been registered at
the national-religious committee, and only people
whose application has been endorsed by the authorities
may become leaders of religious communities. Leaders
of all the religious communities have to attend
meetings of the national-religious committees, where
officials tell them what policy they must pursue with
believers.
Forum 18 learnt that at a meeting of the
national-religious committee in August, officials
strongly criticised the priest of the local parish of
the Catholic Patriotic Association in Ghulja (Yining
in Chinese) for preaching against abortion in one of
his sermons. Officials warned the priest that if he
continued preaching ideas that went against Communist
Party policy, he would lose his job.
Under an unwritten rule, a believer may not hold a
senior position in a state organisation, or be a
school teacher. The deputy head of the national
religious committee in Urumqi, Shi Si Shin, admitted
to Forum 18 that young people aged under 18 are not
allowed to attend places of worship. "We believe that
children need to finish their education and develop
their personalities before they can make an informed
decision as to whether they are believers or atheists,"
he told Forum 18 on 14 September.
In 2003 Forum 18 saw posters in the mosques in the
city of Kashgar in south-western Xinjiang, saying that
children aged under 18 years old were not allowed to
attend mosque (see F18News 23 September 2003
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=143 ).
Interestingly, this year in Urumqi, Ghulja and Turpan
in north-eastern Xinjiang (where the population is not
as devout as in south-western Xinjiang) Forum 18 saw
no such posters. "My children have been accepted as
Pioneers at school," a Catholic, who preferred not to
be named, told Forum 18. "They believe in God and do
not want to wear the red scarf. But I'm frightened to
tell the teachers that I don't want my children to be
Pioneers. I'm afraid I may lose my good position at a
state-owned company."
To be fair, many of the prohibitions put in place by
the Chinese authorities are mild and are not enforced.
Forum 18 frequently saw children in places of worship
of various faiths. "When I was appointed head teacher,
I was called to a meeting at the city administration
and told it was advisable for head teachers to join
the Communist Party," one Muslim told Forum 18 in
Urumqi. "I said I couldn't do that because I had grown
up in a very devout family. The officials laughed, but
even so they did appoint me head teacher."
Chinese policy is reminiscent in this respect of
Soviet communist policy in the 1980s. If senior
officials and students did not display their piety
publicly, the Soviet authorities generally turned a
blind eye towards their religious beliefs.
However, if Beijing occasionally demonstrates a
certain leniency towards local believers, the Chinese
authorities are quick to prevent the import of any
religious ideology from abroad, leaving many smaller
religious communities isolated. Under Chinese law,
foreign missionaries are not allowed to work on
Chinese territory. Any religious literature or objects
may be imported only with the permission of the
authorities.
The authorities also try to limit access by believers
to foreign websites that are critical of Beijing's
policies. Posters in many Internet cafes in Xinjiang
warn that clients must not visit such websites. (For
the results of Forum 18's investigation into the
Chinese authorities' extensive blocking of access to
foreign religious and political websites, including
those covering Xinjiang's Muslim Uighurs, see F18News
21 July 2004
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=366
).
At the same time, Beijing is quick
to stop any missionary activity on its territory. Last
December an Orthodox dean based in neighbouring
Kazakhstan, Fr Vianor Ivanov, was arrested by Chinese
customs officials after trying to bring Orthodox
literature and baptismal crosses into the country
without permission from the Chinese authorities. Fr
Ivanov was taken to Ghulja and held under house arrest
in a hotel for a week, during which he was taken each
day for questioning by the state security services. Fr
Ivanov was then deported back to Kazakhstan, and all
his religious literature and baptismal crosses were
confiscated (see F18News 9 September 2004
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=406 ).
Forum 18 found in the Bortala-Mongolian autonomous
prefecture that portraits of the Tibetan Buddhist
spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, currently in exile in
India, may not be displayed in Buddhist temples (see
F18News 13 September 2004 http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=409
).
Under Chinese law a foreign member of the clergy may
work in China on a temporary basis only with Beijing's
permission, and Chinese students may study abroad only
after obtaining authorisation from the authorities. In
practice, the authorities are generally unwilling to
issue such authorisations.
There are no priests in Xinjiang for either of the
functioning Orthodox churches - in Urumqi and Ghulja.
Although there are no educational establishments in
China itself where Orthodox priests can train, the
Chinese government appears to be in no hurry to
authorise an Orthodox priest to come to serve in
Xinjiang from abroad and has prevented Orthodox
believers from Xinjiang going to study in foreign
seminaries. "We have asked the Chinese authorities for
permission for our representative to go and study at a
seminary in Russia, but we have had no reply," one
Orthodox believer told Forum 18 in Urumqi.
A printer-friendly map of China (including Xinjiang)
is available from
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/
atlas/index.html?Parent=asia&Rootmap=china
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