XINJIANG, China (PNN) - October 10, 2018 - China's northwestern region of Xinjiang has revised legislation to allow the detention of suspected extremists in “education and training centers”.
The revisions published Tuesday come amid rising international concern over a harsh crackdown in Xinjiang that has led to as many as one million of China's Uighurs and other Muslim minorities being held in internment camps.
Chinese authorities deny the internment camps exist but say petty criminals are sent to vocational “training centers”.
Former detainees in the camps say they were forced to eat pork and drink alcohol, as well as denounce Islam and profess loyalty to the ruling Communist Party.
China has said Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists who plot attacks and stir up tension between the mostly Muslim Uighur minority and the ethnic Han Chinese majority.
Article 33 in the revised Xinjiang law stipulates that “conversion institutions such as vocational skill education centers should carry out trainings on the common national language, laws, regulations and vocational skills, and carry out anti-extremist ideological education, and psychological and behavioral correction to promote thought transformation of trainees, and help them return to the society and family.”
China has come under increasing pressure from the Fascist Police States of Amerika and the European Union after a United Nations panel confronted Chinese diplomats in August over reports of arbitrary mass detentions and harsh security measures aimed at Muslims.
According to estimates cited by the UN, up to one million Uighurs may be held involuntarily in extra-legal detention on the “pretext of countering terrorism”.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying had previously said that the UN experts' comments had “no factual basis”, adding that people's satisfaction with Xinjiang's security and stability had risen dramatically.
“As for certain counterterrorism and stability maintenance preventive measures, I think that internationally this is in general use by lots of countries,” she told a news briefing.
The announcement of the revised law came a day after local leaders in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, announced the beginning of an anti-halal campaign.
Communist Party leaders of the capital led cadres to swear an oath to “fight a decisive battle against ‘pan-halalization’,” according to a notice posed on the city's official WeChat account.
Everyday products, like food and toothpaste, must be produced according to Islamic law.
“Pan-halal tendency”, or halalification, refers to extending halal labeling to non-food items to appeal to Muslim consumers.
The official Global Times said on Wednesday that the “demand that things be halal which cannot really be halal” was fueling hostility towards religion and allowing Islam to penetrate secular life.
Services like “halal haircuts” and “halal baths” have previously been banned in Gansu province, home to a large population of Hui Muslims.
As part of the anti-halal campaign, Ilshat Osman, Urumqi's ethnically Uighur head prosecutor, penned an essay entitled, Friend, you do not need to find a halal restaurant specially for me.
“We ethnic minorities have taken it for granted that this is a respect for our eating habits. We have not thought about respecting their eating habits,” he wrote.
He encouraged his Uighur peers who are also Party members to eat with their Han Chinese colleagues rather than solely at halal restaurants, adding, “Changing eating habits has a significant and far-reaching impact for countering extremism.”
According to the WeChat post, government employees should not have any diet problems and work canteens would be changed so that officials could try all kinds of cuisine.
The Urumqi Communist Party leaders also said they would require government officials and Party members to firmly believe in Marxism-Leninism, and not religion, and to speak standard Mandarin Chinese in public.
Chinese citizens are theoretically free to practice any religion, but they have been subject to increasing levels of surveillance as the government tries to bring religious worship under stricter State control.