Sky News has obtained rare access to China’s Xinjiang Province to investigate reports Muslims are being targeted and oppressed by the government.<\/p>\n
By Mark Stone
Asia Correspondent in Xinjiang Province, China
2014-09-01<\/p>\n
Sky News has obtained rare access to China’s Xinjiang Province to investigate reports Muslims are being targeted and oppressed by the government.<\/p>\n
China’s leaders say foreign Islamist extremists, perhaps with links to IS and al Qaeda, are infiltrating its population, responsible for growing unrest in the region.<\/p>\n
Since December, a series of bloody bomb and knife attacks have killed more than a hundred people across China.<\/p>\n
Urumqi, a city on the old Silk Road with a population of three million, is the provincial capital and a place on edge right now.<\/p>\n
Soldiers stand guard outside the city’s great mosque. Armoured police vehicles are parked in the shadows.<\/p>\n
Oil and gas rich, the far-western province of Xinjiang is home to the Uighur people, China’s Muslim minority. The province was once almost all theirs.<\/p>\n
These days, they share it with the Han Chinese, the country’s dominant ethnic group; the people who would be globally recognisable as Chinese.<\/p>\n
In recent years, relations between the Uighurs and the Han have become increasingly difficult.<\/p>\n
Ancient Uighur homes have been destroyed. Uighur culture has been diluted and their freedom to practise Islam has been restricted.<\/p>\n
In May, two 4×4 vehicles drove up a busy market street in a Han Chinese district of Urumqi. It was early morning and Gongyuan Street was crowded with shoppers.<\/p>\n
Explosives were thrown from the vehicles as they passed up the street. Forty-three died and more than 90 were injured.<\/p>\n
Today, the same street is almost deserted. We meet a Mr Sun, a retired Han Chinese teacher.<\/p>\n
He saw it all happen and we ask him who did it. “Minorities,” he says. He leans forward and whispers: “Muslims.”<\/p>\n
Our taxi driver, also Han Chinese, goes further. Echoing the government line, he says the attack was the work of religious fanatics infiltrating the south.<\/p>\n
“From Kashgar,” he says. “It’s only those who are uncultured who cause problems.<\/p>\n
“People who were not educated, who live in the south. They are brainwashed by terrorists.”<\/p>\n
The Chinese government says it is facing an unprecedented threat from Islamist extremism.<\/p>\n
They say foreign extremists are infiltrating the Uighur population and radicalising them.<\/p>\n
However, Uighurs in exile, human rights organisations and the US government doubt that Islamist extremism is to blame.<\/p>\n
They believe the Communist Party is blaming external forces as a way of dealing with internal unrest.<\/p>\n
The tactics used to counter the violence are exacerbating the problem, they say.<\/p>\n
Kashgar is further west from Urumqi; closer to Baghdad than it is to Beijing.<\/p>\n
It is the Uighur heartland and lies just under 200 miles from the Afghan and Pakistani borders.<\/p>\n
At the city’s centre, the Id Kah mosque is the country’s largest. In July, the Imam was murdered here; stabbed and clubbed to death.<\/p>\n
“He deserved to die,” a Uighur shopkeeper tells me quietly. He does not want to be identified. All Uighurs fear government reprisals if caught talking to foreigners.<\/p>\n
The shopkeeper tells me that the Imam was a stooge of the Chinese government and condoning a series of restrictions for Uighurs in the region.<\/p>\n
The restrictions are spelt out on a sign in a neighbouring street. With pictures, it states that beards are banned for young men and veils are banned for women.<\/p>\n
Other policies include preventing Muslims from fasting at Ramadan.<\/p>\n
“You understand what this sign means?” a young Uighur man says. “There’s no freedom for us here.”<\/p>\n
The message was the same from the Uighur men. If you pressure and restrict people, they will fight back.<\/p>\n
There are signs all around that this Chinese “war on terror” is intensifying. As it does, the resentment will only increase.<\/p>\n
If religious extremists are among the Uighur population, and we saw no evidence of it, their efforts to recruit and to rally will only be made easier.<\/p>\n
For the Chinese government, Islamist extremism could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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