China has tightened controls on Muslims in its remote west ahead of the Olympic torch’s arrival this week to thwart any actions aimed at disrupting the relay, residents and exiles said.
The measures include detaining thousands in the Xinjiang region and forcing Muslim religious officials to undergo “political education” on “protecting” the Olympics, said Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress.
With the Beijing Olympic torch expected in Xinjiang on its nationwide tour, authorities have also confiscated the passports of some Muslims, Uighurs said.
“They are afraid people might travel abroad and join some sort of plot against the Olympics,” said a college-educated Uighur woman in her 20s, whose passport was taken by police in Xinjiang earlier this year.
The woman, whose name must be withheld to protect her from police reprisals, was forced to cancel plans to attend graduate school overseas.
Calls to police and government officials in the Xinjiang capital Urumqi went unanswered at the weekend.
Beijing says it faces a separatist Muslim terrorist threat in Xinjiang, a vast region of deserts and stunning mountain ranges that is home to the Uighurs and other Central Asian peoples who have long chafed under Chinese control.
In recent months China has claimed that several Xinjiang-based terror plots have been smashed, including some specifically aimed at the Aug. 8 to Aug. 24 Olympics.
Uighurs dismiss such claims as political cover for decades of repression and policies aimed at extinguishing their culture.
Exile groups say thousands of Uighurs have been rounded up in the run-up to the Olympics.
“[The crackdown] is intended to prevent Uighurs from telling foreign reporters and visitors the truth of their suffering,” Rebiya Kadeer, head of the Uyghur American Association, said last month.
Beijing Olympic organizers recently said the sensitive Xinjiang torch leg would take place from tomorrow to Thursday, a week earlier than planned. It originally was to transit Urumqi, Kashgar and two other cities.
However, Olympic officials last week would not disclose up-to-date plans amid confusion surrounding sensitive relay legs following violent unrest in Tibet in March.
Raxit said Muslims in Kashgar have also been ordered to avoid any contact with foreigners, report any overseas journalists operating in the area and sign pledges denouncing separatism and supporting Beijing.
Thousands of Muslims who were not residents of Kashgar and Urumqi also had been forced to leave those cities, he said.
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