Chinese Muslims trying to stop mosque demolition clash with police

telegraph.co.uk:  Muslim protesters surrounded a 13th century mosque in China’s Yunnan province to keep it from being torn down by authorities in a rare display of defiance.

Hundreds of police in riot gear fought back members of the Hui ethnic group who had rallied around their local Najiaying Mosque after residents reported the arrival of cranes to demolish it.

Residents threw rocks at the police who responded by hitting them with batons.

“This is our last bit of dignity,” a local witness told CNN. “It’s like coming to our house to demolish our home. We can’t allow that to happen.”

The protest marks a rare escalation in tensions between southern Muslims and the authorities whose apparent attempt to tear down the mosque shows there is to be no let up in China’s bid to crack down on religion.

Despite being officially atheist, China has taken a tougher stance on Islam in particular. While these efforts have largely concentrated on Xinjiang, an autonomous territory in north-west China, other parts of the country with large Muslim populations have also been targeted.

In Yunnan and other nearby provinces, residents say nurseries, childcare centres and religious schools run by Hui have been closed down. Mosques have also been destroyed, with authorities removing prominent Islamic features such as domes and minarets from thousands across the country.

In 2018, thousands of Hui in Ningxia protested by sitting inside a newly-built mosque for three days to prevent its demolition. Authorities backed down from destroying it, but erected traditional Chinese-style pagodas in place of its domes and minarets. The Najiaying Mosque was one of the last remaining intact.

It again attracted the ire of authorities in 2020 after it installed a new domed roof and a number of minarets. A court ruled that year that the additions were illegal and ordered them to be removed.

On Sunday, worshippers were denied entry to the mosque for noon prayer, leading to violent confrontations, CNN reported.

“After arriving at the mosque, we realised that they had driven the cranes into the compound and were ready for the forced demolition,” a source told CNN, adding that scaffolding had already been erected around the mosque.

The protest is believed to have lasted for several hours before police allowed people into the mosque. Residents continued to surround the mosque over the weekend, fearing that authorities would return.

Police in Tonghai County, where Nagu is located, said dozens of protesters have been arrested and urged those remaining to hand themselves in by June 6. It called the incident “a serious obstruction of social management order” and called on people to “actively report” protesters.

Protests are rare in China but Beijing’s strict lockdown rules saw several break out. In Xinjiang, public anger boiled over after a fatal fire in a high-rise building, prompting crowds to take to the streets of the capital Urumqi and chant: “End the lockdown!”

Authorities began restricting the freedoms of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang in 2017 and have since reportedly arbitrarily detained more than a million Muslims in re-education camps.

In 2021, the UK said it “agrees that there is compelling evidence of widespread and systematic human rights violations occurring in Xinjiang. This includes the extra-judicial detention of over a million Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in ‘political re-education camps’ since 2017.”