qz.com: Last week, the state-run China Daily ran a feel-good portrait of a Uighur Muslim family in the Xinjiang region in northwest China celebrating Ramadan, the holy month during which Muslims abstain from food and drink during daylight. “My high school has never made any demands as to whether the students observe the fast or not,” the daughter told the paper.
She said this “in response to some foreign media claims that local governments in Xinjiang ‘intervene’ in religious observances during Ramadan,” as the China Daily put it.
The interviewee’s account differs from what Nicholas Bequelin, researcher at Human Rights Watch, told The Financial Times. According to Bequelin, Uighurs who attend or work in schools have been forbidden from fasting during Ramadan (paywall). Ilham Tohti, an Uighur scholar at Beijing’s Minzu University, told the FT that restrictions against Uighur Chinese Communist Party members and students are only getting stricter.
This is by no means a recent issue. Just two years ago, students at a teaching college in the region were accompanied to lunch by professors, pressured to eat even though they were fasting, as the Los Angeles Time reported. When the time then came to celebrate ‘Id al-Fitr, following Ramadan, students were confined to the campus, making them unable to join their families for the festivities. The government in Xinjiang also forbid restaurants to shut during the month.
Categories: Asia