A Uyghur Muslim leader and delegate to China\u2019s top political consultative body has voiced rare public criticism of religious restrictions and employment discrimination in the restive northwestern Xinjiang region, drawing praise from fellow members of the ethnic minority.<\/p>\n
2014-03-19<\/p>\n
A Uyghur Muslim leader and delegate to China\u2019s top political consultative body has voiced rare public criticism of religious restrictions and employment discrimination in the restive northwestern Xinjiang region, drawing praise from fellow members of the ethnic minority.<\/p>\n
Ablimit Ahmettohti Damolla Hajim, delegate to the Chinese People\u2019s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said majority Han Chinese emigration to Xinjiang and strict curbs on everyday practice of Islam were sidelining Uyghurs in their own homeland.<\/p>\n
During last week\u2019s CPPCC meeting in Beijing, Hajim called on leaders in China\u2019s central government to address the issues and create clearer \u201cinstructions\u201d that would protect ethnic minority and religious rights guaranteed in existing national laws, according to his interview with state-run media.<\/p>\n
The CPPCC is part of the ruling Chinese Communist Party-controlled governmental structure and meets once a year along with the National People\u2019s Congress, the country\u2019s rubber stamp parliament.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll policies must be in accordance with the nation\u2019s Constitution and the Regional Autonomy Law,\u201d Hajim said in the interview on the sidelines of the \u201ctwo sessions\u201d meetings.<\/p>\n
‘Misunderstanding’ of Islam<\/strong><\/p>\n Hajim, who is also a member of the government-affiliated Islamic Association in Xinjiang\u2019s southwestern Hotan prefecture, said the government\u2019s \u201cmisunderstanding\u201d of Islam was preventing Uyghur Muslims from practicing \u201cnormal religious life.\u201d<\/p>\n Land development plans carried out by the government left no space for mosques in Uyghur communities, while an attack against Islam in the education system was pushing Uyghur students away from schools, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe schools do not recognize the Muslim pupils\u2019 religious beliefs. Anti-religious propaganda permeates the atmosphere in the schools,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He said there should be \u201cno conflict\u201d between Islam and modern education and questioned why Uyghur children were \u201cfleeing from schools.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere are no permits to build new mosques for Muslim residents in the newly developed residential areas.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn airports in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region there are special rooms for smokers, but no spaces for people to pray.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow are people to practice their normal religious life in their own land?\u201d<\/p>\n Uyghur Muslims have also been subjected to more \u201cextreme\u201d restrictions on religious practice, such as being forced to sign promises not to pray in state-run hospitals, he said.<\/p>\n These kinds of policies \u201cgo against the Constitution and Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I raised these problems [at the conference] and asked for instructions from the leaders of the central government.\u201d<\/p>\n Unemployment and job discrimination<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the most pressing issues he called on the government to address at the conference, Hajim said, was rampant unemployment among Uyghur youth following decades of government-encouraged Han Chinese emigration into the region.<\/p>\n Uyghur young people were not seeing the benefits of the country\u2019s economic growth because employers were discriminating against them and preferring Han Chinese instead, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cRecently there have been great amount of immigrants and job-seekers coming to Xinjiang from everywhere [else in China].<\/p>\n \u201cThey occupy most important jobs and vacancies, and local Uyghurs cannot find jobs even if they have achieved a high level of education,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Uyghurs react<\/strong><\/p>\n Hajim\u2019s remarks in the interview triggered a flurry of comments from Uyghur netizens, many of them praising him for boldly speaking out against government policies in the region.<\/p>\n One commenter on Baghdax, one of Xinjiang\u2019s most popular websites, posted in Uyghur, \u201cNo Uyghur people\u2019s representative has ever before dared to speak such true words to the central government on the behalf of Uyghur people\u2019s interests.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe is the true representative of the Uyghur people,\u201d another commenter on the website said.<\/p>\n Misranim, a popular Urumqi-based Uyghur-language website, urged readers to listen to the radio interview.<\/p>\n Hajim\u2019s comments came while all eyes were on Xinjiang during the March 3-13 legislative meetings as leaders pledged to promote stability in the region in the wake of a deadly stabbing attack in the southwestern city of Kunming that leaders have blamed on Uyghur \u201cseparatists.\u201d <\/p>\n Critics who have called for greater autonomy in Xinjiang have been accused of \u201cseparatism\u201d and faced imprisonment\u2014including prominent Uyghur economist Ilham Tohti, who was detained in January.<\/p>\n China has intensified a sweeping security crackdown in Xinjiang, where according to official figures about 100 people are believed to have been killed over the past year\u2014many of them Uyghurs accused by the authorities of terrorism and separatism.<\/p>\n Rights groups and experts say Beijing exaggerates the terrorism threat to take the heat off domestic policies that cause unrest or to justify the authorities’ use of force against Uyghurs.<\/p>\n Reported and translated by Eset Sulaiman for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Uyghur Muslim leader and delegate to China\u2019s top political consultative body has voiced rare public criticism of religious restrictions and employment discrimination in the restive northwestern Xinjiang region, drawing praise from fellow members of the ethnic minority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-480","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\/480","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=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}