Teachers in the Uyghur homeland must demonstrate loyalty to Beijing and to Chinese Communist Party rule.<\/p>\n
2016-08-22<\/p>\n
Universities in northwestern China\u2019s Xinjiang region have begun a new push to strengthen faculty loyalty to Beijing, with instructors forced to write papers promoting \u201cethnic unity\u201d and praising initiatives of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, sources said.<\/p>\n
The move beginning Aug. 15 has introduced a range of new demands and has shortened the time available to instructors for summer break, one teacher in Xinjiang\u2019s mostly Muslim south told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year our summer break was cut short, and political studies have already begun,\u201d RFA\u2019s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are writing and studying papers expressing support for [Chinese] president Xi Jinping\u2019s call to prevent Western ideology from entering the schools, along with various other directives sent out by the Education Ministry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is our present situation, and it will be the same on Teachers\u2019 Day, Sept. 10, when we usually get a day off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur own course of political studies began on Aug. 15,\u201d another teacher said, speaking from Xinjiang\u2019s regional capital Urumqi.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are learning how to curb our students\u2019 inclinations toward religion, stamp out religious extremism, and promote ethnic unity [between Uyghurs and Han Chinese],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Calls seeking comment from several Xinjiang universities rang unanswered, but one Xinjiang teacher told RFA that faculty had been warned against speaking in interviews or taking phone calls from abroad.<\/p>\n
In an Aug. 11 posting, however, the website of southwestern Xinjiang\u2019s Kashgar University boasted \u201cincreased political education and ethnic unity education\u201d as school achievements in a quote by university president Erkin Omer, speaking to Han students visiting from China\u2019s Jilin province.<\/p>\n
Obstacles to advancement<\/strong><\/p>\n Strict political requirements have meanwhile created obstacles for teachers seeking advancement on the basis of academic accomplishments alone, one Xinjiang instructor told RFA, speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n \u201cThese have made it difficult for me to get a professor\u2019s title, or even an associate professorship, so I had to give this up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause some of my students were found praying, I was disqualified twice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cMany teachers have left their posts, and some have gone abroad. I might apply for early retirement as well because of the stress over politics.\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 Chinese domestic policies are largely responsible for instability in the region.<\/p>\n Reported by Mihray Abdilim for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Richard Finney.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Teachers in the Uyghur homeland must demonstrate loyalty to Beijing and to Chinese Communist Party rule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2897","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\/2897","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=2897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2897"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}