Chinese authorities are intensifying their campaign of repression against Uyghur Muslims by employing spies to ensure that they are not fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramzan, according to a report by Radio Free Asia.
The report states that the spies that Chinese officials refer to as ‘ears’ are recruited from regular civilians, police officials, and members of neighbourhood committees, citing a police officer from a region close to Turpan, or Tulufan in Chinese, in the eastern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
“We have many secret agents,” the police officer told Radio Free Asia. As part of broader attempts to denigrate Uyghur culture, language, and religion, China started arbitrarily imprisoning Uyghurs in ‘re-education’ camps in 2017 and also prohibited them from fasting throughout Ramadan.
In 2021 and 2022, the prohibition was partially removed, allowing those over 65 to fast, and police decreased the frequency of house inspections and patrols of the streets.
However this year, irrespective of age, gender, or occupation, the government has outlawed fasting, according to a political officer at Turpan City Police Station. “No one is allowed to fast in this Ramzan,” which this year takes place from March 22 to April 20.
A policeman from Turpan City Bazaar Police Station found that 54 of the 56 Uyghur locals and former inmates who were called in for questioning during the first week of Ramzan had broken the rule by fasting. He and the other policeman at the station were unwilling to talk about what happened to people they found to have breached the diktat.
Two or three agents from each hamlet have been hired by the police stations in the region to keep an eye on locals who have been released from prison and people who have been imprisoned and interrogated in the past for Ramzan fasting.
The police officer from a neighbourhood close to Turpan remarked, “Our ‘ears’ came from three fields, the regular inhabitants, the police, and the neighbourhood committees.”
“We hired Uyghurs to monitor other Uyghurs due to linguistic issues,” she explained and added, “70 to 80 Uyghur police officers work directly as ‘ears’ or supervise other civilian ‘ears’ at my place of employment.” One of the local policemen revealed that some communities even had four or five spies.
Authorities claimed to have even infiltrated the police force with spies to monitor whether Uyghur police officers were fasting in observance of Ramzan.
According to the police officer from a region close to Turpan, her station has 286 policemen, most of whom are Uyghurs. Nonetheless, due to the language barrier, her ‘comrades,’ or the Chinese police, found it challenging to spy on the Uyghur population there.
She noted that instead, Uyghur police personnel were sent out into the community to keep a close check on Uyghur citizens, or they were appointed as chiefs of the spy networks. She warned that both individuals who plan to fast and those who have in the past broken the law by doing so would be the subject of an investigation.
She pointed out that surveillance of the elderly and teens were necessary because ‘older people have rigid ideas and will not transform easily,’ and youngsters ‘are easy to confuse’ and vulnerable to the words of adults.
A staff member of the Turpan Prefecture Police Bureau proclaimed that the local government hired spies to monitor the police forces to determine whether Uyghur employees were fasting from dawn to night and then presented the findings at weekly political gatherings.
She shared, “We have our upper-level officers and internal agents watching the behaviour of Uyghur policemen,” including those officers put their Uyghur coworkers to the test by giving them fruit to eat. They haven’t yet found any cops who are fasting, she further said.
In addition to house searches, street patrols, and mosque searches, are also covered under this year’s policy as per a police officer from a station in Turpan City. Chinese officials consider eating before sunrise and having a meal together after sunset to be infractions of the law. Hence, the police on patrol interrogate Uyghur Muslim families to find out if they are doing this.
“When we search the houses, we check if they have carried out illegal religious activities and if there are security threats,” he affirmed. Violators would face legal education for minor offences and jail time for serious ones.
For years, Chinese authorities have imposed harsh restrictions on Uyghur Muslims in the north-western region of Xinjiang. More than a million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, who are primarily Muslim, have reportedly been interned in camps, according to the UN.
