dogu-turkistan-sempozyumu

Eastern Turkistan after the Cold War and 9/11 A Critical Study of the Chinese Theses and Policies/ Dr Akram Hicaziand personal behavior of the Uyghur people are under control. The centralgovernment subjects all imams to a regular evaluation, requests them to carry out“self criticism” sessions, imposing systems of control on the mosques, removingreligious teachers and students from schools, controlling literature and poetry toensure that there are no hostile political signs and seeing every expression ofdispleasure with Beijing politics as a “separatist tendency”. Such a “tendency” is acapital crime under Chinese law, with the penalty being execution. Muslims whotry to carry out their religious lives in a way with which the government and partydo not agree are jailed, tortured and sometimes executed. The heaviest penaltiesare applied to those who are said to be involved in separatist activities. Laws regulating how the affairs of ethnic and religious minoritiesshould be managed; these laws are deemed to be state secrets. In this context, theexecutive director of the Chinese Human Rights Organization, Sharon Hom, hasthe following to say: “Beijing sees the Uyghur people as a threat to the nationaland ethnic structure of the Chinese nation”. Details regarding how the two laws,disclosed here for the first time, work are provided in the booklet mentionedabove. According to this, even though there is no relation with national security,it is absolutely forbidden to leak any information related to ethnic minorities orreligious and political issues, except those that have been specifically permitted.Below we will give some official quotations and local eyewitness reports thatdisclose how China acted in the area of religious freedom before September 11,2001; these have the status of a statutory decree or are disguised as legislationwith some technical loopholes: Wang Lequan, Regional Communist Party Secretary: “We shouldincrease pressure on religious leaders. We should ensure that they are politicallydomicile. They should be committed to the homeland with feverish love, supportCommunist Party leaders and the socialist system, they should be opposed tonational separatism and illegal religious activities, they should defend nationalunity and homeland integrity, and they should be consciously committed to thenational laws and policies. An Uyghur citizen: “This is a Uyghur school and most of the peopleworking here are Uyghur. However, they are not permitted to talk about religionto their children in their houses nor in their workplaces. Talking about religion in325