The word Islam must not appear on household registration forms, while forms already filled in must be changed.<\/p>\n
2017-01-04<\/p>\n
Ethnic Uyghur government workers in northwestern China\u2019s Xinjiang region are being ordered to remove the word \u201cIslam\u201d from a box indicating religious affiliation on their household registration forms, in a move aimed at further reducing cultural identity in the volatile region, sources say.<\/p>\n
An official directive sent out a month ago warns recipients not to delay in changing the form if the offending word has already been entered, sources in Xinjiang told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe police department is in charge of household registration forms,\u201d a worker in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture\u2019s Municipal Office of Petition Affairs told RFA.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have entered Islam on the form as your religion, you have to take the form back to the office that first issued it and have them change it,\u201d RFA\u2019s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t tell you anything more about it than this, though,\u201d the source said.<\/p>\n
Also speaking to RFA, a police officer in Xinjiang\u2019s Hotan (Hetian) city defended the move, saying, \u201cYes, it is right that these should be changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhoever gets a government salary should not write that they believe in such-and-such a religion on their registration form,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis should be left blank.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a government directive on this, though I cannot tell you when it was issued or what the deadline may be for compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n
‘Aimed mainly at Uyghurs’<\/strong><\/p>\n Religious affiliations are not officially noted down in many other countries in the world, \u201cbut in those countries, you are at least free to practice your religion,\u201d Memet Tohti, a Uyghur living in Canada told RFA.<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot put the Chinese government in this category,\u201d Tohti said.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst of all, this move is aimed mainly at the Uyghurs.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cChina penalizes normal religious practice such as keeping religious books at home, sending one\u2019s children to religious classes, and so on,\u201d Tohti said.<\/p>\n \u201cFor these reasons, we can say that removing religious affiliation from household registration forms is yet another example of China\u2019s atheistic policies.\u201d<\/p>\n Rights groups accuse Chinese authorities of heavy-handed rule in Xinjiang, including violent police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people.<\/p>\n China regularly vows to crack down on what it calls the \u201cthree evils\u201d of terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n But experts outside China say that Beijing has exaggerated the threat from Uyghur separatists, and that domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence that has left hundreds dead since 2012.<\/p>\n Reported by Gulchehra Hoja for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Richard Finney.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The word Islam must not appear on household registration forms, while forms already filled in must be changed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-3292","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\/3292","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=3292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3292"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=3292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}