Xinjiang

The government of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region announced the specific selection criteria for prospective middle and high school students, according to an April 20 Urumqi News account. All students in China must take entrance examinations, but the government has preferential programs for ethnic minorities. The Xinjiang government will send 3,115 of the top applicants to special classes at high schools in eastern Chinese provinces, and will train another 3,000 students at local middle schools.

The Chinese government is conducting a "wholesale assault" against the Muslim faith of the Uighurs in northwest China, according to a new report jointly published by Human Rights Watch and Human Rights in China, entitled "Devastating Blows: Religious Repression of Uighurs in Xinjiang." The report is based on previously undisclosed regulations and documents intended strictly for internal circulation within the Chinese Communist Party and government organizations. The report’s appendix publishes five of these documents, including a document confirming that a large number of Uighurs have been arrested for alleged religious and state security offenses; a regulation strictly prohibiting minors from practicing religion; and a manual for officials with details on how to repress religion.

The Xinjiang government will hold open examinations for 700 civil service positions, according to Tianshan Net, a website jointly managed by Xinjiang’s Propaganda Department and the People’s Daily. 500 of these positions will go to ethnic Han Chinese, while ethnic nationalities, which make up over 60 percent of the region’s total population, will fill the remainder. Examinees with the highest scores will go to southern Xinjiang to serve for six-year terms in county and village-level government positions. Uighurs make up more than 95 percent of the population in southern Xinjiang. The government also said that it will not assign successful examinees to their hometowns.

Armed police will no longer guard the government office compound in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, according to a China Youth Daily report on April 1. The Xinjiang government will also remove the walls surrounding the compound in an effort to "build a transparent government" in the autonomous region, where the Muslim minority populations are subject to strict government controls and monitoring and often complain that officials exclude them from the decisionmaking process.

In March 2005, the government armed police patrolmen in Urumqi with new pistols and submachine guns and added new anti-terror programs to their training schedules. Before the new equipment was issued, police carried only batons, tear gas grenades, and self-protection gear. A March 1 Urumqi Evening News report commented that "police patrolmen in Urumqi have never in the history of the city been so fully equipped."

Foreign Ministry press spokesman Liu Jianchao told reporters at a March 29 press briefing that the Chinese government has been "closely following the development of the situation in Kyrgyzstan" since protestors overthrew former President Askar Akayev on March 24. China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and Kyrgyzstan share a 682-mile border; ethnic Uighurs, Kyrgyz and other minorities live on both sides of the frontier. Chinese security officials closed the border with Kyrgyzstan between March 23 and 28 as a result of the violence and unsettled political conditions in Bishkek and elsewhere in the Central Asian republic.

A Catholic priest in the Xinjiang city of Ghulja (Yining in Chinese) told the Norway-based Forum 18 News Service that government authorities in Xinjiang do not allow minors to attend church services. This information apparently contradicts Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao’s recent statement that "China has no laws prohibiting minors from believing in religion." According to the Ghulja-based priest, police checkpoints at churches prevent minors from attending services; a schoolteacher beat one boy who managed to attend Christmas Mass; and managers at state-owned enterprises threaten to sack employees who attend church.

The United Nations Development Programme recently announced that it is working with the governments of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to promote increased regional trade and tourism, create better transportation networks, improve informational exchanges, and develop policy regulations. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will help coordinate the two-year, million dollar, "Silk Road Area Development" program.

According to a March 1 report in the Urumqi Evening News, police patrolmen in Urumqi have been issued new pistols and submachine guns, and new anti-terror programs have been added to their training schedules. Previously, police carried only police batons, tear gas grenades, and self-protection gear. The report says that "police patrolmen in Urumqi have never in the history of the city been so fully equipped."