A warning in a locked-up Chinese mosque against "illegal religious behavior"



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I traveled to Xinjiang in the summer of 2010, the year after riots broke out between the region's indigenous Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority and Han Chinese, who have been growing in numbers there since China's "Going West" policy in 2000.

On a stopover there during a bus tour of China's grape-growing capital in Turpan, Xinjiang, I pushed my way through two locked wooden doors to a small local mosque while my fellow tourists, mainly Hans from the Chinese heartland, purchased overpriced grapes and raisins from Uyghur locals.

This message board was hanging in the courtyard just outside the mosque's prayer hall. The sign to the far left reads, in Chinese and Uyghur script, "23 specific manifestations of illegal religious behavior." The middle sign reads "'Yizboot group' Counterrevolutionaries," and refers to a Uyghur group that opposes Beijing's authority in Xinjiang. The sign to the far right reads, "Building peace '5 Good' Standards for Mosque Behavior."

Signs like these, restricting the religious activities of Xinjiang's Muslim Uyghurs, have been the cause of much contention from locals and international human rights groups.