China mosques open under tight security

Mosques reopened for Friday prayers under the watchful eyes of security troops in Urumqi, a riot-torn city on China’s far western frontier where 192 people were killed in ethnic attacks earlier this month.

A large number of security personnel were deployed in the city, especially across Uighur areas. Police officers and riot police armed with rifles told shopkeepers to move their goods inside and close down.

Many of the mosques had been closed for Friday prayers last week after Uighurs attacked Han Chinese in Urumqi on July 5, although some of them were briefly opened when crowds formed at their doors.   

All of the 433 mosques were open this week, China’s official Xinhua news agency said. Although businesses in Urumqi were returning to normal, Internet access in the restive region is still cut. Telephone reception is intermittent.

The streets around the White mosque, where a brief protest broke out after prayers last week, were closed to traffic, but pedestrians were allowed in, some after showing their identification. Close to 100 paramilitary policemen with wooden clubs took up positions opposite the popular White Mosque.

At the Yang Hang mosque, the prayer session was shortened to about 20 minutes, compared to the normal duration of over an hour, but worshippers filed in and out smoothly.

Xinjiang is home to the Muslim Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people with cultural ties to central Asia, who now make up just under half of the region’s 20 million people. Many resent decades of migration by Han Chinese, who they say benefit from economic growth, and also resent religious and cultural discrimination meted out by the government.