Chinese Muslims going to Makkah this year for Hajj are wearing devices that allow the Chinese government to track their position during the spiritual journey, and this has been criticized by human rights activists.
\n\u201cThis is yet another way of persecuting Muslims for practicing their religion, by suggesting that they require to be monitored rather like criminal suspects or persons serving a suspended prison sentence,\u201d Eva Pils, a China human rights expert at King\u2019s College London, told The Wall Street Journal.
\nThe devices came to the public after the state-run China Islamic Association published photos of Chinese Muslims at the Beijing airport departing for Makkah in Saudi Arabia in recent days wearing customized \u201csmart cards\u201d on blue lanyards around their necks.
\nThe devices, which include a GPS tracker and personal data, are designed to ensure the wearer\u2019s safety, according to the association.
\nThe state-run Global Times highlighted usage of the Makkah tracking devices Tuesday, saying they were being used by fewer than a third of the 11,500 Chinese Muslims making the pilgrimage.
\n\u201cThey are piloting and trialing it, likely with an eye on expanding it,\u201d said Adrian Zenz, a lecturer at the European School of Culture and Theology who studies China\u2019s policies for Muslims and Tibetans.
\nMa Lijun, a legal representative for the device\u2019s manufacturer, Beijing Fengjiang Technology Co., said it\u2019s unclear if the cards will be used more broadly in the future.
\n\u201cIt depends on what the China Islamic Association decides,\u201d he said.
\nChina routinely cracks down on its Muslim citizens \u2013 most of them belonging to the Uighur Turkic ethnic group, mainly based in the Xinjiang province.
\nA statement from the US State Department last week accused China of detaining hundreds of thousands of Muslims in \u201cpolitical re-education\u201d centers and other facilities in its northwest.
\nChina legal expert Jerome Cohen says the detentions are possibly the largest outside the criminal process in China since the Maoist \u201canti-rightist\u201d campaign of the 1950s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chinese Muslims going to Makkah this year for Hajj are wearing devices that allow the Chinese government to track their position during the spiritual journey, and this has been criticized by human rights activists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c102-muslim-minorities"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n