A city in China’s restive western region of Xinjiang has banned people with head scarves, veils and long beards from boarding buses, as the government battles unrest with a policy that critics said discriminates against Muslims.<\/p>\n
BEIJING Wed Aug 6, 2014 3:23am EDT<\/p>\n
(Reuters) – A city in China’s restive western region of Xinjiang has banned people with head scarves, veils and long beards from boarding buses, as the government battles unrest with a policy that critics said discriminates against Muslims.<\/p>\n
Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur people who speak a Turkic language, has been beset for years by violence that the government blames on Islamist militants or separatists.<\/p>\n
Authorities will prohibit five types of passengers – those who wear veils, head scarves, a loose-fitting garment called a jilbab, clothing with the crescent moon and star, and those with long beards – from boarding buses in the northwestern city of Karamay, state media said.<\/p>\n
The crescent moon and star symbol of Islam features on many national flags, besides being used by groups China<\/a> says want to set up an independent state called East Turkestan.<\/p>\n The rules were intended to help strengthen security through August 20 during an athletics event and would be enforced by security teams, the ruling Communist Party-run Karamay Daily said on Monday.<\/p>\n “Those who do not comply, especially those five types of passengers, will be reported to the police,” the paper said.<\/p>\n In July, authorities in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi banned bus passengers from carrying items ranging from cigarette lighters to yogurt and water, in a bid to prevent violent attacks. [ID:nL4N0Q0395]\n Exiled Uighur groups and human rights activists say the government’s repressive policies in Xinjiang, including controls on Islam, have provoked unrest, a claim Beijing denies.<\/p>\n “Officials in Karamay city are endorsing an openly racist and discriminatory policy aimed at ordinary Uighur people,” Alim Seytoff, the president of the Washington-based Uyghur American Association, said in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n While many Uighur women dress in much the same casual style as those elsewhere in China<\/a>, some have begun to wear the full veil, a garment more common in Pakistan<\/a> or Afghanistan<\/a> than in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n Police have offered money for tips on everything from “violent terrorism training” to individuals who grow long beards. [ID:nL4N0PO0BC]\n Hundreds have died in unrest in Xinjiang in the past 18 months, but tight security makes it almost impossible for journalists to make independent assessments of the violence.<\/p>\n About 100 people were killed when knife-wielding attackers staged assaults in two towns in the region’s south in late July, state media said, including 59 “terrorists” shot dead by police. A suicide bombing killed 39 people at a market in Urumqi in May. [ID:nL4N0Q902F]\n (Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A city in China’s restive western region of Xinjiang has banned people with head scarves, veils and long beards from boarding buses, as the government battles unrest with a policy that critics said discriminates against Muslims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-1002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=1002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}