Beijing, China - China is waging a campaign to suppress peaceful Muslim religious and cultural activities in its west under the guise of fighting terrorism, two U.S.-based human rights groups said Tuesday.
Comparing the situation to Tibet, a report by the two groups said Muslims in the Xinjiang region are "concerned for their cultural survival" amid a government-financed influx of settlers from China's Han ethnic majority.
The communist government is trying to "smother Islam" among Uighurs in Xinjiang, said Human Rights Watch and Human Rights in China. They accused the government of carrying out a "crushing campaign of religious repression."
"China has opportunistically used the post-September 11 environment to make the outrageous claim that individuals disseminating peaceful religious and cultural messages in Xinjiang are terrorists," the report said.
Independent mosques are banned in China and state-sanctioned religious bodies are tightly controlled.
The report said the government tries to control all aspects of the Muslim faith in Xinjiang — picking clerics, deciding which version of the Quran to use, and where and how to hold religious festivals.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said he had not read the report and could not comment on it, but he insisted that "people of various ethnic groups in Xinjiang enjoy all civil rights, including the freedom of religious beliefs."
Qin also said that separatists in Xinjiang were a "serious threat to the security of not only China, but of the whole region," and the crackdown on them was "an important part of the international fight against terrorism."
Muslims in Xinjiang who worship in violation of state controls face harassment, fines, prison and torture, the report said. There have been "vast increases" in the number of Uighurs imprisoned for religious offenses, and minors are forbidden from engaging in any religious activity, it said.
"The situation is not dissimilar to Tibet, with the Chinese state attempting to refashion a religion to control an ethnic minority," Brad Adams, the director of Human Rights Watch, said in a news release announcing the report.
Beijing has used economic incentives to encourage settlers from the ethnic Han majority to move to both Xinjiang and Tibet in an effort to integrate them with the country's booming east. Communist troops marched into Tibet in 1950, and China has spent decades trying to suppress pro-independence sentiment.
"Much like Tibetans, the Uighurs in Xinjiang are concerned for their cultural survival in the face of a government-supported influx of ethnic Chinese migrants," the 114-page report said.
The Chinese government has blamed separatists for what it says is a campaign of bombings and assassinations.
"Separatist sentiments are a reality in Xinjiang, though they provide no justification for the broad denial of basic rights," the report said.
Diplomats and foreign experts say most violence in Xinjiang blamed on separatists is not politically motivated and appears to stem from personal disputes. Officials in Xinjiang say there has been no separatist violence in recent years.
In 2002, the United States listed the Xinjiang-based East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terror group — a classification that some believed was a concession to China in exchange for support of the American-led anti-terrorist campaign.
The report calls on Washington not to "acquiesce in any future demands from China to place organizations on lists of terrorist organizations without sufficient evidence."