In a current affairs program, “Xin Viewpoint,” broadcast on April 27 by China’s state-run China International Television (CITV), ambassadors from Pakistan, Palestine, and Syria expressed their views on the situation in Xinjiang.
The English-language program was billed as a corrective to Western politicians and media and accused them of deliberately ignoring the “economic, social, and cultural rights” of other Uighur minorities practicing Islam “in the region.”
Two of the three diplomats, Pakistani Ambassador to China Moeen Haq and Palestinian Ambassador Fariz Mahdavi, participated in a visit to Xinjiang organized by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. It is home to the majority of the Uighur people. The U.S. and some other countries say the Uighurs are persecuted.
The question, spearheaded by program host Liu Xin, underscored the ability of the region’s ethnic minorities to preserve their culture and customs in coexistence with the minority Han Chinese there. The guests she invited agreed.
Moin Haque described Xinjiang as a place of ethnic harmony and diversity, where multiple languages and cultures are protected and preserved. Mahdavi, for her part, praised the region’s religious freedom, even joking that there are “too many mosques” in Xinjiang.
You know, if you do the math, the average number of mosques here is about one mosque for every 2,000 residents,” Mahdawi said. We don’t even have that rate in our country. Not anywhere else.”
He said, “Of course those mosques were built a long time ago and have been very well maintained. …Those mosques are actually open day and night. Some of them are actually quite modern. Some of the mosques that we visited were built in the last four or five years.”
What Mahdavi and the other participants in the program said was actually a repetition of the Chinese government’s misleading claims.
After evidence emerged last year that the Chinese government had razed thousands of mosques in the Xinjiang region, a statement issued by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said exactly the same thing as Mahdavi. The statement said there were 24,000 mosques in Xinjiang and that “Xinjiang has one mosque for every 530 Muslims, more per capita than many Muslim countries.”
Multiple investigations and news reports have contradicted this claim, showing that the process of mosque destruction in Xinjiang has accelerated since 2016.
In August 2016, Chen Quanguo was promoted to be the Communist Party secretary in charge of Xinjiang. Earlier, during his tenure as CCP secretary in charge of Tibet, Chen was widely credited with introducing a comprehensive system of social control there, where a massive crackdown on religious freedom and what the U.S., as well as other countries, accuse of cultural genocide continues to this day.
The estimated number of 24,000 mosques in Xinjiang is derived from the Chinese government’s 2004 economic census.
There is considerable evidence that this number no longer corresponds to reality.
In December 2016, Radio Free Asia reported that China’s Central Bureau of Ethnic and Religious Affairs had launched a campaign to “clean up the mosques” in the name of improving public safety. Some 5,000 mosques were destroyed during the three-month campaign.
Wang Jingfu, director of Xinjiang’s Kashgar Commission for Ethnic and Religious Affairs, confirmed that most of the mosques in the southern Xinjiang city had been destroyed. Wang told Radio Free Asia, “We demolished almost 70 percent of the mosques in this city because there were too many mosques and some of them were unnecessary.” He reiterated that the bulldozing of mosques was mainly for public safety.
Residents in other areas have reported similar levels of vandalism and demolition, and local officials have confirmed the claims.
A 2019 joint investigation by the British newspaper The Guardian and the investigative news website Bellingcat found that dozens of religious sites have been razed in Xinjiang since 2016. Their researchers analyzed 91 religious sites using satellite imagery and found that 31 mosques and two religious sanctuaries suffered “significant structural destruction between 2016 and 2018.”
Another 15 religious sites were destroyed or nearly destroyed. Some former residents of Xinjiang noted that nine other religious sites lacked the typical appearance of a mosque and were apparently also destroyed mosques. Another 15 were found to have been destroyed or nearly destroyed. Former residents of Xinjiang noted that the other nine sites lacked the typical appearance of a mosque, but were also sites where mosques had apparently been razed to the ground.
The previous month, AFP reported that 36 mosques and religious sites in Xinjiang “have been demolished or had their domes and corner towers removed since 2017.”
The Uyghur Human Rights Project, a human rights advocacy research organization based in Washington, D.C., reported in 2019 that more than 100 mosques in Xinjiang had either “been completely destroyed or had one of their architectural components removed.”
The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported in October 2020 that some mosques in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi and Kashgar have been converted into cafes, rest areas and other tourist locations for Han Chinese.
Radio Free Asia reported on April 29 of this year that a mosque believed to be the oldest in the Xinjiang city of Yining was leased to a businessman from Beijing and converted into a tourist hotel.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute estimated in September 2020 that there are about 16,000 mosques in Xinjiang, or about 65 percent of mosques “destroyed or damaged” by government policies, most of which have occurred since 2017. About 8,500 have been razed.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute says important Islamic shrines, cemeteries and pilgrimage routes have been razed in the same period. The institute estimates that there are now fewer than 15,500 mosques left in Xinjiang, including 7,500 that “have suffered some degree of damage. “
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute said it arrived at these estimates of mosque destruction in Xinjiang through “a sample-based approach that is consistent with rigorous statistical estimates. “
From a more specific perspective, the institute found 900 sites that existed prior to the 2017 crackdown campaign, including 533 mosques, 382 shrines and other religious sites, then compared them to satellite images from 2019 to 2020, and then derived estimates of the number of religious sites destroyed across the Xinjiang region from the proportion of observed destroyed religious sites.
All of these reports reveal a broader pattern of discrimination against Islam.
A BBC report on the destruction of mosques said the corporation found announcements about a ban on young men wearing long beards.
A January 2020 Radio Free State report on the so-called “Three New Activities” found that local authorities were forcing Uighurs and other Islamic minorities to abandon traditional items, such as carpets and pillows, and replace them with more “Chinese” household items. items.
This followed a $575 million lifestyle “modernization” campaign by authorities. During the campaign, traditional elements of Uighur architecture and design were dismantled.
Uighurs were also reportedly forced to eat pork and drink alcohol. Islam prohibits the eating of pork and the drinking of alcohol.
In October 2020, Chinese authorities reportedly banned pilgrimages to Mecca for followers of Islam. And pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the five pillars of Islam. China’s Communist Party-run Global Times reported that those allowed to go on the pilgrimage are required to bring GPS trackers to make their trip “more comfortable and safe.”
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