{"id":68,"date":"2023-04-30T12:00:24","date_gmt":"2023-04-30T16:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/?p=68"},"modified":"2023-04-29T11:55:59","modified_gmt":"2023-04-29T15:55:59","slug":"rfa-most-uyghurs-banned-from-praying-on-islamic-holiday-even-in-their-homes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/rfa-most-uyghurs-banned-from-praying-on-islamic-holiday-even-in-their-homes\/","title":{"rendered":"RFA: Most Uyghurs banned from praying on Islamic holiday, even in their homes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A policeman gestures as Uyghur Muslims arrive at the Id Kah Mosque for prayer on Eid al-Fitr in the old town of Kashgar, northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, June 26, 2017.<\/p><\/div>\n

Chinese authorities banned most Uyghurs praying in mosques \u2013 and even in their homes \u2013 during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, in many parts of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, residents and police said.<\/p>\n

People age 60 and older were allowed to pray in a local mosque under heavy police surveillance during Eid, which fell on April 20-21 this year, they sources said.<\/p>\n

Since 2017, China has restricted or banned ethnic customs and religious rituals among the mostly Muslim Uyghurs in an effort to stamp out \u201creligious extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n

During this year\u2019s Eid, the most important Muslim holiday, authorities in Xinjiang patrolled city streets and searched houses to prevent people from secretly praying inside their homes, the sources said.<\/p>\n

An administrative staffer from Yarkowruk town in Akesu Prefecture said one mosque there was open for Eid prayers.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur police officers went to the mosque to watch the people,\u201d the employee said. \u201cI don’t know if people needed permission to go to the mosque because I did not go there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Likewise, only one mosque was open for Eid prayers in Bulung town, Bay county, an officer at the local police station said, though only residents over 60 years old were allowed to pray if they wanted.<\/p>\n

The government issued a notice that people younger than 60 could not pray on the Eid holiday, he added. <\/p>\n

Only a dozen Uyghur elders in Bulung attended Eid prayers in a mosque as three police officers and several auxiliary police staffers observed and wrote down the Uyghurs\u2019 names, said the officer from the town\u2019s police station. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe mosque was open yesterday, and we went there to surveil people,\u201d the police officer said, adding that he told residents under 60 not to go to the mosque.<\/p>\n

One local resident, who like others in this report requested anonymity for safety reasons, told Radio Free Asia that authorities destroyed almost all the mosques in Nilka and Kunes counties, so that even if the government allowed people to pray during Eid, they could not go to a mosque to do so.<\/p>\n

—more<\/a>—<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chinese authorities banned most Uyghurs praying in mosques \u2013 and even in their homes \u2013 during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, in many parts of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, residents … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eastern-turkestan","category-human-dignity","category-human-rights"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70,"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freedomsherald.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}