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China Puts Pressure on Muslims during Ramadan

BEIJING, Nov 16 (AFP) - China has ordered many Muslims in its tense Xinjiang province to ignore religious rules during the holy month of Ramadan, forbidding them from fasting and ordering women not to tie scarves around their heads, local and overseas sources said Friday.  

Senior Islamic religious leaders there were also called to a three-day meeting in the provincial capital this week to undergo "anti-American" propaganda sessions, an overseas watchdog said. 

This was deemed necessary because Beijing was wary of increasing American influence in Afghanistan, which borders Xinjiang, the group said.  

The efforts seem to back up previous claims by rights groups of intensifying repression against ethnic Uighur Muslims since the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. 

Some Uighurs support the establishment of an independent nation, East Turkestan, in Xinjiang, and there have been occasional acts of violence in recent years blamed on separatists.

German-based Uighur group, the East Turkestan Information Center, said schools and government offices had banned Muslims from adhering to their religious practice of fasting in daylight hours during Ramadan. 

A teacher at the Hotan Hygiene School, which trains nurses in the southern Xinjiang city of Hotan, told AFP it had begun telling students to not fast last year but was now putting more pressure on them following September 11. 

"Because of what's happening in Afghanistan, we've been  told to increase our political ideology training," said the teacher.  

"Fasting begins tomorrow. We'll keep a firm grasp on things," he said. "We request they must eat together in the school cafeteria. They are young people and they have a heavy schoolwork load, so they shouldn't wait until after dark to eat."  

The school could even expel students who refuse to comply, he said. 

He confirmed that middle and elementary schools were ordering pupils not to not observe fasting, mandatory in Ramadan for all Muslims except infants, the infirm or pregnant women. 

Dilixat Raxit, the East Turkestan group's spokesman, said schools in Hotan and another southern Xinjiang city, Kashgar, had organized activities that keep the children in school during lunch and included meals.  

Also, earlier this month Uighur women working in government offices were told they could not wear head scarves during work because it was "feudalistic", Raxit said. 

"Typical head scarves are OK in our school, but those tied in a religious way, showing only the face, are not acceptable," the Hotan Hygiene School teacher said. 

Forty religious leaders were called to a meeting in the capital, Urumqi, which ended Friday, in which they were shown anti-American videos portraying Muslims in America being attacked and afraid to leave home after the September 11 attacks, Raxit said.  

An official at Hotan city's religious bureau told AFP local religious leaders had gone to the meeting, but said he did not know the subject of it.  

China has repeatedly insisted it has a major problem with Uighur "terrorists" in Xinjiang, whom it says have been trained in Afghanistan. 

However, UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson warned Chinese leaders during a visit to Beijing last week that they should not use the war on terror as an excuse for widespread repression in Xinjiang.  

The East Turkestan centre says this is now the case.  

A Uighur man who recently mentioned casually he hoped US soldiers would attack Xinjiang so the Uighurs would be liberated was arrested, Raxit said.  

A French tourist who visited Xinjiang last month told AFP police detained him and his two travel mates, also foreigners, for nine hours after they had dinner with a friendly Uighur woman they met, demanding to know what they were doing at her home.

© Uygur.Org  16/11/2001 19:10  A.Karakas