Freedoms Herald

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.

Chinese authorities banned most Uyghurs praying in mosques – and even in their homes – 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.

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.

Since 2017, China has restricted or banned ethnic customs and religious rituals among the mostly Muslim Uyghurs in an effort to stamp out “religious extremism.”

During this year’s 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.

An administrative staffer from Yarkowruk town in Akesu Prefecture said one mosque there was open for Eid prayers.

“Our police officers went to the mosque to watch the people,” the employee said. “I don’t know if people needed permission to go to the mosque because I did not go there.”

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.

The government issued a notice that people younger than 60 could not pray on the Eid holiday, he added.

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’ names, said the officer from the town’s police station.

“The mosque was open yesterday, and we went there to surveil people,” the police officer said, adding that he told residents under 60 not to go to the mosque.

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.

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Arfiya Eri’s election gives hope to second-generation Uyghurs living in exile, advocates say

A Japanese woman of Uyghur ethnicity and who was educated in the United States has been elected a member of the Japanese parliament — the first person of Uyghur heritage to run as a major party candidate in an election there.

Arfiya Eri, a 34-year-old member of the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, was elected on Sunday to the lower house of the Japanese Diet to represent Chiba prefecture’s 5th district. She captured the seat previously held by Kentaro Sonoura, a former LDP lawmaker who resigned last December over a political funds scandal.

The World Uyghur Congress, or WUC, applauded the election of Eri, also known as Alfiya Hidetoshi, as the first Uyghur woman to be elected to any parliament, and the first Uyghur-Japanese politician to hold a seat in the Diet, or Japanese parliament.

Eri beat six other candidates from Chiba to win the contentious election, receiving about 5,000 votes more than the candidate who came in second, said Sawut Memet, a standing committee member of the Japanese Uyghur Association, based in Tokyo.

“This historic victory is significant for the Uyghur Japanese community, as well as the global Uyghur diaspora community,” the organization said in a statement issued Monday. “The WUC firmly believes that she will serve the interests of the Japanese citizens, and the country, at the same time raising the Uyghur issue in the Japanese Parliament and other high-level forums.”

Eri’s election comes as Uyghur rights groups have called on the international community to take concrete action against China for committing severe rights abuses against the mostly Muslim group in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Japan’s government in recent years has expressed concern about human rights conditions in Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has detained Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in “re-education” camps, monitored them with intrusive digital surveillance technologies, subjected them to forced labor, and worse.

Japan’s Lower House adopted a resolution in February 2022, expressing concern over the human rights situation in China, including the plight of the Uyghurs, and called on Beijing to take measures to address the situation.

That September, WUC President Dolkun Isa asked the Japanese parliament to declare that China’s abuse of the Uyghurs amounted to a genocide, following similar determinations of genocide and crimes against humanity by the U.S. State Department and several Western legislatures.

Her election has “tremendous positive implications for Uyghurs,” showing that they are not “terrorists” as China has made them out to be to justify its repressive policies in Xinjiang, Memet told RFA.

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