The report, relying on public documents, satellite images, and witness testimonies, highlights that authorities are now targeting mosques in the northern Ningxia region and Gansu province, areas with significant Hui Muslim populations, as part of an officially termed “consolidation” process, writes the AP.

According to the report, this crackdown involves not only closures but also the removal of architectural elements from mosques to align them more closely with “Chinese” aesthetics. This aligns with the broader objective of the ruling Communist Party to assert control over religious practices and mitigate potential challenges to its authority.

President Xi Jinping’s 2016 call for the “Sinicization” of religions initiated a crackdown primarily focused on Xinjiang, home to over 11 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.

A United Nations report from the previous year suggested that China may have committed “crimes against humanity” in Xinjiang, including the construction of extrajudicial internment camps holding at least 1 million Uyghurs, Huis, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz.

Human Rights Watch asserts that Chinese authorities are decommissioning, closing, demolishing, or repurposing mosques in regions outside Xinjiang to suppress religious expression.

In response to an Associated Press request for comment, the Chinese Foreign Ministry emphasized its commitment to protecting and repairing mosques, stating that it ensures the normal religious needs of believers are met. The ministry criticized the alleged bias against China and urged organizations to refrain from using religious issues for political manipulation.

The term “mosque consolidation” first surfaced in an April 2018 internal party document, leaked as part of the “Xinjiang Papers.” The document instructed state agencies nationwide to enhance the standardized management of Islamic religious venues and discouraged the construction of new mosques to reduce their overall number.

Human Rights Watch’s acting China director, Maya Wang, asserted, “The Chinese government is not ‘consolidating’ mosques as it claims, but closing many down in violation of religious freedom.” She described the government’s actions as part of a systematic effort to curb the practice of Islam in China.

The group’s researchers detail specific instances of mosque alterations, such as the removal of domes and minarets in Liaoqiao and Chuankou villages in Ningxia between 2019 and 2021. Videos and images, corroborated with satellite imagery, documented the destruction of three mosques’ main buildings and damage to the ablution hall of another.

References to the ” consolidating mosques ” policy were also found in a March 2018 document from Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia, which advocated for strict control over the number and scale of religious venues, encouraging mosques to adopt Chinese architectural styles.

In Gansu province, local governments have similarly detailed efforts to “consolidate” mosques, with Guanghe County reporting the cancellation of mosque registrations, closures, and improvements.

While news reports suggest that the Chinese government has faced occasional public backlash over mosque closures or alterations in various regions, the Associated Press could not independently verify the changes outlined in the Human Rights Watch report.

The post China Extends Mosque Crackdown Beyond Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch Reports first appeared on The Postcolonial.

On October 19, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) released a report detailing the suffocating social control that the Chinese authorities are exerting on the Uyghurs and other indigenous groups in the Xinjiang region.

In spite of Chinese attempts at muddying the waters on the matter while harassing those seeking to expose the bottom, the Australian report joins a long list of reports, eyewitness accounts and open-source investigations that have shed light on the Chinese government programs in Xinjiang.

The revelations have led two separate American administrations and the Canadian Parliament to declare the Chinese actions in Xinjiang a genocide.

Yet, there are parallels between the Chinese abuses and the Indian residential school system established in Canada in the beginning of the 20^th century, that was central to the country’s policy on indigenous groups, as well as the American justifications of human rights violations after September 11.

Schools that ‘civilize’

Part of the Chinese social control in Xinjiang appears in the form of Chinese government-run boarding schools intended for Muslim children. In 2019 nearly half a million children in Xinjiang had been separated from their families and placed in such boarding schools.

Most of these boarding school programs began around the beginning of the 20^th century, and in Canada the last of them did not close until 1996. These schools were considered ‘engines of cultural and spiritual change where savages went in and Christians came out.’

Another War on Terror

While Muslim children in Xinjiang have been taken away to boarding schools, many of their parents have been taken to internment camps. It is estimated that more than a million people are currently kept in such camps while upwards of eight million have passed through one of them in recent years.

Former detainees describe how they were subjected to daily physical and psychological abuse, torture as well as attempts at brainwashing through a ceaseless barrage of government propaganda.

However, while the Chinese claim that the camps are not detention camps but rather vocational centres, they often justify internments in Xinjiang as being part of an effort to combat the dangers of separatist extremism and Islamic terrorism in the region.

From changing American administrations a similar rhetoric has been employed in the War on Terror to justify the indefinite detention of people at Guantanamo without due process, the use of drone strikes to target alleged terrorists at the expense of civilian casualties, and the invasion of other countries.

Turning the spotlight to the Chinese atrocities in Xinjiang with strong condemnation compels countries like the US and Canada to engage with their own similarly dark pasts on the matter. Alternatively, genocide could end up simply becoming a meaningless accusation tossed around between geopolitical rivals.

The post Xinjian genocide draws parallels to Canada and US first appeared on The Postcolonial.