Xinjiang
Several local governments in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have reported carrying out steps to tighten controls over religion, singling out aspects of Islam in a number of cases. The recent measures continue similar efforts in recent years, as documented by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (1, 2, 3, 4). The ongoing campaigns indicate that religious practice remains a main target of government control in the region, at the same time that some local residents continue to find space to practice their religion or express their beliefs apart from state-dictated confines.
The Standing Committee of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) People's Congress recently completed a first stage of deliberations over draft implementation measures for China's Employment Promotion Law, according to October 9 and October 13, 2011, reports from Legal Daily.
The State Council has issued an opinion on the development of pastoral areas that bolsters longstanding grazing bans and the resettlement of herders, policies that have drawn concern over the efficacy of their stated environmental aims and for their impact on herding communities, including several ethnic minority groups.
Authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have continued to exert tight controls over the Muslim holiday of Ramadan. Directives from local governments throughout the region indicate that during the month-long period of daily fasting, authorities prohibited students, teachers, and government workers from observing the fast, ordered restaurants to stay open, and increased oversight of mosques and religious personnel. The Ramadan curbs follow similar controls in place in previous years, as documented by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) (1, 2, 3).
Congressional-Executive Commission on China | www.cecc.gov
Statement of CECC Chairman Christopher Smith and Cochairman Sherrod Brown on Uyghurs Forcibly Returned to China
August 30, 2011
Authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) continue to target "illegal religious activities" and "religious extremism" as threats to the region's stability, maintaining curbs over religious activities undertaken outside of government-approved parameters and singling out Islamic practices in a number of cases. At a December 2010 XUAR Communist Party Committee Standing Committee meeting, attendees called for "resolutely preventing illegal religious activities and striking against religious extremist forces in accordance with law" as part of the region's work to maintain stability, according to a Xinjiang Daily report (via Xinhua, December 8, 2010). Following the meeting, the Party issued opinions on demarcating and preventing "illegal" religious activities in early 2011, which multiple localities reported implementing, according to descriptions of the opinions. (Full text not available.
The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) government has continued to expand a program of rewarding ethnic minority households that have fewer children than allowed under the region's regulation on population and family planning, building on initiatives throughout China to reward fewer births while intensifying a regional focus on ethnic minority households. Among various population planning reward programs in place in the region, a program in place since 2007 has rewarded rural ethnic minority couples that have fewer than the three children permitted under the XUAR Regulation on Population and Family Planning (Article 15), based on a description of the program posted September 4, 2008, on the Zepu (Poskam) county, Kashgar district, government Web site.
The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) government accelerated steps to promote Mandarin-centered "bilingual education" in the past year, in accordance with targets set in mid-2010 to universalize "bilingual education" in the region's schools. Following a central government and Communist Party-led Work Forum on Xinjiang in May 2010, which set state objectives for the region's economic and political development, XUAR officials announced that they would "basically universalize" "bilingual education" in XUAR schools by 2015 with the goal that ethnic minority students "basically have a skilled grasp and use" of spoken and written Mandarin by 2020, according to May 28 reports from China News Service (via China Xinjiang) and China Daily.