Xinjiang

Xinjiang authorities have completed a large scale assessment of the region's Fourth Five Year Plan to Increase Popular Understanding of the Law, according to a September 13 article in Xinjiang Capital News. The assessment team distributed over 1,500 anonymous surveys to citizens in 15 prefectures and cities, 15 counties, and 30 administrative villages to determine their understanding of the legal issues covered during the National Fourth Five Year Plan to Increase Popular Understanding of the Law. The report hails "such a high standard assessment of program delivery" as the first of its kind in Xinjiang.

The Chinese government began construction of a $700 million Counterterrorism Training Center in the capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region on August 29. The government plans to complete the facility within five years. The center will be a training base for police from China and neighboring central Asian states belonging to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

The Munich-based East Turkestan Information Center (ETIC)has released the names of several Uighurs who have been unlawfully searched and beaten by Xinjiang police this summer (in Uighur). The report, which lists the badge numbers of the offending officers, recounts how police beat several Uighurs for questioning the illegal searches. According to the report, police searched Uighur businessman Abdu Semet Abliz without cause and released him only after ordering him to shave his beard and mustache. Many Muslims wear beards as a sign of their faith.

Police arrested seven members of an East Turkestan separatist organization in Hetian prefecture in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, according an to August 30 article in the Hong Kong daily Wen Wei Po. The article also reports that since January, Hetian authorities have disbanded six "illegal underground" religious schools and confiscated unauthorized religious books, periodicals, and audio and video tapes. Xinjiang regulations require that all materials with religious content receive approval from the China Islamic Association before publication or dissemination.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCC) issued a circular on July 18 on behalf of the BBC describing the official obstruction and abuse of two BBC journalists and their driver by public security officers reports United Press International (UPI). The incident occurred while the BBC team was attempting to report on village protests in Hebei province. BBC reporter Bessie Du, along with her cameraman and driver, traveled to the village of Shengyou in Hebei on July 13 to interview a local resident, according to the UPI account of the FCC circular. Officers detained the trio at 10 a.m. on July 14 as they approached a highway tollgate on the Hebei-Beijing boundary. Police snatched the reporter and her cameraman, dragging them into separate vehicles. The reporter, cameraman, and driver were strip-searched in separate interrogation chambers. Authorities released the TV crew at about 4:30 p.m. that same afternoon.

The Yili Kazahk Autonomous Prefecture government has banned the Sala branch of Islam in Xinjiang and arrested 179 practitioners, according to the German-based World Uighur Congress and a report by Agence-France Presse on August 19. High-ranking prefectural officials held a special work conference on the Sala "threat" on August 17, according to the Yili Daily. Government officials accused Sala leaders of "cheating and deceiving the masses, and inciting them to worship their religious leaders," and of pressuring followers to make donations to the organization. Officials also accused the leaders of encouraging "transprovincial worship" and "threatening social stability." The Yili press did not mention any arrests.

The Shuimogou District People's Court in Urumqi on July 21 sentenced six members of the Guanyin Famen [Way of the Goddess of Mercy] organization to prison terms ranging from two to four years for their "cult" activities. Although the central government banned the Way of the Goddess of Mercy organization in July 1999 following its ban on the better known Falun Gong qigong organization, the Xinjiang courts had not convicted and sentenced any of its members for violating the criminal law until July 2005. (For further information on Guanyin Famen see here and here.)

The Kashgar District People’s Intermediate Court sentenced Uighur author Nurmemet Yasin to ten years' imprisonment on February 2, 2005, for publishing a story "inciting splittism." According to a Uighur-language Radio Free Asia report , Yasin published "The Wild Pigeon" in the Kashgar Literature Journal in the fall of 2004, and was arrested in Bachu County (Maralbeshi) on November 29, 2004. The story tells of a wild pigeon that travels far from home, only to be captured by humans and confined to a birdcage. The wild pigeon encounters several tamed pigeons who have lost their souls, in addition to their freedom, in exchange for regular feedings from the humans. The wild pigeon opts to commit suicide rather than remain imprisoned. Chinese authorities apparently interpreted the story as an allegorical criticism of Han Chinese policies in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The court tried Yasin in closed hearings, and RFA sources report that he was denied access to a lawyer.