Residents are urged to watch for ‘Uyghurs from Xinjiang’ and report them to authorities as the city prepares for a major international gathering.<\/p>\n
2016-08-03<\/p>\n
As authorities in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou prepare to host a major international summit in early September, notices have begun to appear in local social media urging residents to be on the lookout for ethnic Uyghurs entering the city, sources say.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone who sees a Uyghur man or woman coming from Xinjiang must report this directly to the police,\u201d reads one notice posted by Hangzhou\u2019s Hongshi property management group, a copy of which was recently obtained by RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service.<\/p>\n
A 500 yuan (U.S. $75.50) reward will be paid following confirmation of the suspect person\u2019s identity as a Uyghur, the notice goes on to say.<\/p>\n
Reached by RFA for comment, an employee at the Hongshi property management office denied that her firm had posted the notice, adding, \u201cI don\u2019t know what kind of announcement you are talking about, but I can tell you our office never published it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t answer your questions on this case,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A police officer answering the phone at Hangzhou\u2019s Mishihang police station also denied all knowledge of the notice, saying, \u201cThis announcement is a fake.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur station\u2019s name and number appear on that notice, but we didn\u2019t publish it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Special scrutiny<\/strong><\/p>\n Hoping to create a secure environment for the G20 summit in early September, Hangzhou city authorities are shutting down businesses and industries across the city, issuing baffling English phrasebooks, and sending its citizens off on vacation, sources say.<\/p>\n China\u2019s mostly Muslim Uyghurs have meanwhile come under special scrutiny in the country\u2019s central and eastern provinces following an upsurge in violence in the northwestern China\u2019s Xinjiang region that has left hundreds dead since 2012, and harassment of the ethnic group has become routine.<\/p>\n Speaking recently to RFA, a Uyghur airline pilot said that he was briefly held and questioned without cause on Jan. 21 while staying at a hotel in Hangzhou.<\/p>\n \u201cThe police entered my room at midnight and asked me to show my ID,\u201d the pilot, named Akbar Memet, said.<\/p>\n \u201cI showed them my identification and told them where I worked, but they insisted on checking my luggage and personal belongings,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Forced to go with them to their station, Memet was interrogated \u201cfor several hours\u201d and had his photograph and fingerprints taken before being allowed to leave, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt deeply stressed and insulted,\u201d Memet said, adding, \u201cThey did this only because I am a Uyghur.\u201d<\/p>\n Forced to leave<\/strong><\/p>\n A Uyghur businessman named Ershiddin was similarly harassed last year while checking his emails in an internet caf\u00e9 in Shanxi province\u2019s Taiyuan city, Ershiddin told RFA.<\/p>\n \u201cI hadn\u2019t been there more than an hour when three Chinese policemen came in and asked me to show my ID,\u201d he said. \u201cThey were very rude and impolite.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the officers then took the owner outside, and when he came back he told me as politely as he could that I would have to leave his caf\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPeople from Xinjiang are forbidden from accessing the internet in public places,\u201d Ershiddin said he was told.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was an order from the police.\u201d<\/p>\n Faced with growing assertions of Uyghur national identity in Xinjiang, China regularly conducts \u201cstrike hard\u201d campaigns in the group\u2019s traditional homeland, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the Uyghur people\u2019s culture and language.<\/p>\n But experts outside China say that Beijing has exaggerated the threat from Uyghur “separatists” and that domestic policies are responsible for instability in the region.<\/p>\n Reported and translated by Eset Sulaiman for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Residents are urged to watch for ‘Uyghurs from Xinjiang’ and report them to authorities as the city prepares for a major international gathering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2849","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\/2849","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=2849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2849"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}