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Ilham Tohti, a Beijing-based Uighur economist, said this year's campaign against participation in Ramadan was being more strictly enforced, with officials in some areas requiring people to sign pledges that they won't take part in religious activities. Tohti said the campaign appeared aimed solely at Uighurs in Xinjiang, noting that Kazakh and Hui Muslims in Xinjiang and Uighurs outside the region face no such restrictions. At the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing, where Tohti teaches, there have been no warnings against taking part in Ramadan and up to 70 Muslim students, including about 10 Uighurs, gather nightly at a local restaurant next to campus to break their fast, he said. He said officials may be particularly nervous about potential unrest in Xinjiang in the lead up to a once-a-decade leadership transition that will kick off in Beijing in the fall. "As a result they are tightening control measures in many areas, not just religion, but this could give rise to new problems and they may end up with an outcome that is the opposite of what they were seeking," he said. On Monday, the U.S. State Department released a global report on religious freedom that criticized authorities in Xinjiang for their "repressive restrictions on religious practices" and failure to "distinguish between peaceful religious practice and criminal or terrorist activities." China's Foreign Ministry dismissed the U.S. report as biased and called it interference in Chinese affairs.
[Associated
Press;
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