Chinese authorities in Tekes county in the northwestern region of Xinjiang have searched the homes of 30,000 members of the mostly Muslim Kazakh ethnic group in recent weeks, confiscating copies of the Quran, prayer mats and other religious items, RFA has learned.
\nAn ethnic Kazakh resident of Tekes county, which is in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture, said he recently returned to China from a visit to relatives across the border in Kazakhstan to find his hometown a mass of police guarded and mobile checkpoints.
\nHe said his name and ID card number have now been added to a police \u201cwanted\u201d list along with some 60 other ethnic Kazakhs, for \u201creturning to China after a long absence.\u201d
\n\u201cBetween Oct. 25 and Nov. 1, the homes and residences of 30,000 Kazakhs were forcibly searched,\u201d the source said. \u201cThey were looking for Qurans, prayer mats and beads, and anything bearing the name of Allah or the prophet Mohammed.\u201d
\nHe said Han Chinese in the area, an estimated 30,000 of whom also spend long periods of time in Kazakhstan, were ignored in the crackdown.
\n\u201cThey confiscated all kinds of religious items,\u201d he said.
\nAn officer who answered the phone at the Tekes county police department on Thursday declined to comment.
\n\u201cYou\u2019ll have to come in person \u2026 and ask that. We don\u2019t accept phone calls,\u201d the officer said.
\nA second source, a Kazakh-language interpreter, confirmed the first source\u2019s account.
\n\u201cIn Tekes county, 30,000 homes were searched by police for Qurans, prayer mats and also clothing bought in Kazakhstan, and anything sent by parcel from Kazakhstan,\u201d the source said. \u201cThe police confiscated all of it.\u201d
\n\u201cI also heard that there are now 60 names on a police blacklist of people from Tekes county who went to visit relatives in Kazakhstan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Confiscating religious items<\/strong> Chinese authorities in Tekes county in the northwestern region of Xinjiang have searched the homes of 30,000 members of the mostly Muslim Kazakh ethnic group in recent weeks, confiscating copies of the Quran, prayer mats and other religious items, RFA has learned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c102-muslim-minorities"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nSources said officials had warned people not to try to hide any items, because if they were subsequently turned up in police raids, \u201cthere would be severe consequences.\u201d
\nLocal ethnic minorities are also under huge pressure to attend early morning flag-raising ceremonies, where people stand to attention and the national anthem is played, they said.
\nThe raids in Tekes come after Chinese authorities in Xinjiang ordered ethnic minority Muslim families to hand in religious items including prayer mats and copies of the Quran to the authorities in September.
\nOfficials across Xinjiang have been warning neighborhoods and mosques that ethnic minority Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz Muslims must hand in the items or face harsh punishment if they are found later, sources in the region told RFA at the time.
\nEarlier this year, Xinjiang authorities began confiscating all Qurans published more than five years ago due to \u201cextremist content,\u201d according to local officials, amid an ongoing campaign against \u201cillegal\u201d religious items owned by mostly Muslim ethnic Uyghur residents.
\nThe Qurans were appropriated as part of the \u201cThree Illegals and One Item\u201d campaign underway in Xinjiang that bans \u201cillegal\u201d publicity materials, religious activities, and religious teaching, as well as items deemed by authorities to be tools of terrorism\u2014including knives, flammable objects, remote-controlled toys, and objects sporting symbols related to Islam, they said.
\nChinese authorities have lately issued orders for ethnic Kazakh Chinese nationals to hand in their passports and Kazakh green cards in some parts of Xinjiang, and have detained hundreds of Kazakhs returning from overseas study or family visits to Kazakhstan, sending them for indefinite terms in \u201cre-education\u201d facilities.
\nOfficial figures show that there are around 1.5 million Kazakhs in China, mostly concentrated in and around the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture close to the Kazakhstan border.
\nChina has previously welcomed Kazakhs who wished to relocate from Kazakhstan, with their numbers peaking at nearly 38,000 in 2006. But now many Kazakhs with Chinese nationality are heading back in the other direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"