While Muslims around the world are observing their holy month of Ramzan, Uyghur Muslims in China are facing a prohibition on their fasting. The Chinese authorities have instructed Muslims in the northwestern province of Xinjiang that their children should not fast during the month of Ramzan. The children were also questioned by the authorities to see if their parents were fasting.
Dilshat Rushit – the spokesperson of the World Uyghur Congress said that during Ramzan, the Chinese authorities have implemented a 24-hour monitoring system in 1,811 villages of Xinjiang, including home inspections of Uyghur families. According to reports, local human rights groups have warned that China’s 11.4 million Uyghur Muslims are at risk of being wiped out completely under the Communist Party’s harsh religious rules.
A report by a coalition of rights groups, including the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), said they have been identified by Beijing as a “threat to be solved through forced assimilation”. According to the report, this is in stark contrast to the relative freedoms enjoyed before President Xi Jinping launched a renewed attack on religious worship, forcing Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists alike to be subjected to party control and censorship of their religious lives.
China has also targeted Muslim communities with its “ethnic unity” campaign, under which authorities pressure members of ethnic minority Uyghur Muslim families to follow non-Muslim traditions, including drinking alcohol and eating pork. In Xinjiang, unity policies have been implemented amid the mass incarceration of at least 1.8 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minority Muslims in ‘re-education’ camps, and their deployment in forced labor, as well as rape, sexual exploitation, and forced sterilization of Muslim women in the camps.
On the other hand, USA president Joe Biden has expressed his solidarity towards the Uyghur Muslims in one of his recent statements. On Thursday, 23rd March 2023, Biden said, “Together with our partners, the United States stands in solidarity with Muslims who continue to face oppression, including Uyghurs in the People’s Republic of China, Rohingya in Burma (Myanmar), and other Muslim communities facing persecution around the world.”
It is notable that Muslims in Xinjiang province of China are subjected to persecution by the Chinese state which wants them to “assimilate” with the Chinese communities rather than just identifying as Muslims. A report published in November 2022 said that the Chinese government is taking special measures to promote intermarriage between Uyghur Muslims and Han Chinese ethnic groups. The means employed by the Chinese government consist of both incentivization and coercive actions, underlines the report.
