Beijing, China - Authorities in China's Muslim northwest have detained 179 people in a crackdown on an indigenous Islamic sect, an activist said Thursday.
Authorities in the Yili district on China's northwestern border are trying to wipe out the Salar sect as an "evil cult," said Dilxat Raxit, who advocates for China's Muslims, in a phone call from Sweden.
The local authorities are "fighting the Salar sect and have seized 179 people, who are still being held," said Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uighur Congress, which represents China's Uighurs, another Muslim group.
A police official contacted by phone in Yili confirmed that authorities are fighting "an evil cult" but denied that anyone had been detained. The official, who would give only his surname, Feng, said he didn't know the group's name.
According to Raxit, the Salar sect is a type of Islam practiced by some Chinese Muslims who are members of the Hui ethnic group and is native to western China.
It is not related to the similarly named Salar ethnic group, who are also Muslims, he said.
Hui are descendants of Muslim traders from central Asia and members of China's dominant Han ethnic group who converted to Islam.
Raxit described the Salar sect as within the bounds of mainstream Islam.
"I confess that I don't know a lot about it, but from what I've read it follows the rites that any Muslim anywhere would understand," he said.
China says it is battling Muslim separatists in Uighur-dominated Xinjiang. But diplomats and foreign experts doubt Beijing's claims of an organized separatist campaign in the region.