Cases focus on bribes taken to evade tight restrictions on Muslims wanting to travel to Mecca <\/p>\n
ucanews.com reporter, Beijing
October 31, 2014<\/p>\n
At least 13 Chinese officials have been investigated for corruption in drawing up lists of Muslims traveling to Mecca for the Hajj, state media reported on Friday.<\/p>\n
Authorities in restive Xinjiang said the cases pointed to bribe-taking by civil servants who manage China\u2019s strict Hajj registration process.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome officials have abused their power by changing the list to cut waiting time for relatives,\u201d the state-run China Daily <\/em>reported.<\/p>\n The cases, recorded this year up to the end of August, were investigated by Xinjiang\u2019s new political discipline inspection unit, which was established amid a widening crackdown on corruption by China\u2019s Communist Party.<\/p>\n It remained unclear whether verdicts or punishment had been meted out against the officials, who were also not named.<\/p>\n In recent years, the government has barred private agencies from organizing Hajj tours as it attempts to strictly control Muslims traveling to Mecca amid concerns over religious extremism and terrorism.<\/p>\n But complete government control has reportedly made the process more prone to corruption by state officials.<\/p>\n Chinese pilgrims are required to register on long waiting lists to travel with agencies approved by the government\u2019s China Islamic Association (IAC).<\/p>\n Those accepted must sign a declaration \u201cto return as scheduled\u201d and deposit 50,000 yuan (US$8,184), according to IAC regulations.<\/p>\n Some Uyghurs, the dominant minority Muslim group in Xinjiang, have reportedly had their passports confiscated to force them to travel with government-approved tours.<\/p>\n About 14,000 of China\u2019s more than 20 million Muslims traveled to Mecca for the annual Hajj earlier this month, according to Chinese media.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cases focus on bribes taken to evade tight restrictions on Muslims wanting to travel to Mecca <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-1355","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\/1355","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=1355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1355"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=1355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}