Beijing authorities have exhausted all means to fully implement the Sinicization policy in Xinjiang. As the Chinese New Year approaches, ethnic minority areas in Kashgar and Yili, Xinjiang, are hanging colored lanterns filled with Han Chinese colors. According to overseas Uighur organizations, local Uighurs are being forced to observe Han Chinese holidays, and in addition, Kazakhs in Yili say ethnic minorities are being asked to spend the New Year with Han Chinese.
This Friday (Feb. 12) is the Chinese New Year for Han Chinese. Once again, there were lively scenes of official-led Han Chinese New Year celebrations with great fanfare in Uyghur-gathering areas, many of whom were Uyghurs banging gongs and drums. Dilishati, a spokesman for the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, told Radio Free Asia this Monday (2/8) that the World Uyghur Congress has learned that government officials across Xinjiang are using whether to celebrate the Spring Festival to screen Uyghurs for any tendency to resent the government: “China has asked to use the Spring Festival to screen Uyghur cadres for resistance to Chinese cultural ideas, while locally asking Uyghurs to People put up couplets and red lanterns, and there are joint inspections by the stability task force. But Spring Festivalers will be accused of being extremists who resist Chinese Culture and put into concentration camps for political brainwashing.”
Multiple videos from Kashgar, Xinjiang, provided by World Vision show various ethnic groups, including Uyghurs in the interior, beating gongs and drums to celebrate the Han Chinese Lunar New Year: “Celebrate the reunion with fervor, beat gongs and drums for the New Year ……”
According to official media reports, the “New Year flavor” is gradually heating up in the streets and alleys of Kashgar city, creating a red-hot New Year scene by hanging big red lanterns and decorating with colorful lights from February 1. As a resident of Kashgar, I deeply feel the development and changes of my hometown in recent years, especially the night scene of Kashgar has become more beautiful. …….” said Pati Guli Aibaiti. .
Dirichati strongly questioned this. He said the Chinese government has resorted to coercive means in an attempt to make Uyghurs accept the Spring Festival as their own traditional holiday for political purposes of assimilation.
Also according to the official media Guangming.com, villager Yusuf Jiang, who put Spring Festival couplets on the door of his house for the first Time before the Spring Festival in Tushala Township, Hotan City, said excitedly, “……. The Party and the government sent the Spring Festival couplets to our house early. Now the days are getting better and better, how happy we are.”
The authorities described the move as “to promote the excellent Chinese traditional culture, strengthen the identification with Chinese culture and cultivate the core socialist values.”
Muslim families and Han Chinese visit each other
In the Ili region, where Kazakhs are concentrated, authorities are going to require Kazakhs and Han Chinese to visit each other’s homes and dine.
Dina, a businesswoman who lived in Kazakhstan the previous year and is from Yili, Xinjiang, told the station that during the Spring Festival, every Kazakh Family is required to make friends with Han Chinese and visit each other at their doors: “Kazakhs, Uighurs, every family has to spend the Spring Festival, saying ‘ethnic unity and family unity’ , one is Han a Uyghur or Kazakh. They (Han) Spring Festival to your Home, you also have to go to their home, must go, interaction, dinner, but not the Spring Festival. On that day of the Spring Festival, every village committee has to arrange a program, and all the villagers have to go.”
The reporter asked Dina whether ethnic minorities can refuse to spend the Spring Festival, her answer is no, otherwise they will be sent to the Education and Training Center: “Impossible, impossible, must pass, because to (comply with) ‘national unity and family’, if you do not (Spring Festival), directly send you to the Education and Training Center. “
Education and training center renamed entrepreneurship center
Most of China’s official so-called education and training centers have been closed due to outside pressure, but a few have been renamed, for example, as “entrepreneurship centers” and continue to exist. Dina said, “The education and training high schools have been changed to entrepreneurship centers and have become places of labor, making clothes and naan (big cakes), and there are two in Nilek County.”
Rais Khan, a Kazakh, told the station, “Regarding the Spring Festival, the Uyghurs and Kazakhs want to spend it with the Han Chinese, forcing them to put up spring scrolls. As far as I understand it, the authorities forced spring couplets between 2017 and 2020, and distributed pork to Muslim families. But now, in the name of helping to solve difficulties, arrangements are being made for Han Chinese to go to Muslim families and then Muslim families are required to go to Han Chinese families for pork meals on a regular basis.”
In response to continued revelations of Chinese abuses against minority Muslims in Xinjiang, last week British Foreign Office Minister for Asia Adams said the country is seriously considering any further sanctions against China, including Chinese officials.
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