China bans fasting for public workers during Ramadan

The restriction applies to workers in the country's mainly Muslim region of Xinjiang. Restaurants in Xinjiang have also been ordered to stay open.

A Chinese Muslim man offers prayers on the first day of Ramadan at a mosque in Beijing on June 18, 2015. Greg Baker/AFP Photo

BEIJING // China has banned civil servants, students and teachers in its mainly Muslim Xinjiang region from fasting during Ramadan and ordered restaurants to stay open, according to notices posted on local government websites.

The country’s ruling communist party is officially atheist and for years has restricted the practice of dawn to dusk fasting in Xinjiang, home to the mostly Muslim Uighur minority.

“Food service workplaces will operate normal hours during Ramadan,” said a notice posted last week on the website of the state food and drug administration in Xinjiang’s Jinghe county.

“During Ramadan do not engage in fasting, vigils or other religious activities,” officials in the region’s Bole county were told at a meeting this week.

Uighur rights groups say China’s restrictions on Islam in Xinjiang have added to ethnic tensions in the region, where clashes have killed hundreds in recent years.

China says it faces a terrorist threat in Xinjiang, with officials blaming “religious extremism” for growing violence.

“China’s goal in prohibiting fasting is to forcibly move Uighurs away from their Muslim culture during Ramadan,” said Dilxat Rexit, a spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress.

“Policies that prohibit religious fasting is a provocation and will only lead to instability and conflict.”

As in previous years, school children were included in directives limiting Ramadan fasting and other religious observances.

The education bureau of Tarbaghatay city, known as Tacheng in Chinese, this month ordered schools to communicate to students that “during Ramadan, ethnic minority students do not fast, do not enter mosques ... and do not attend religious activities”.

Similar orders were posted on the websites of other Xinjiang education bureaus and schools.

Officials in the region’s Qiemo county informed local religious leaders there would be increased inspections during Ramadan in order to “maintain social stability”.

Ahead of the holy month, one village in Yili, near the border with Kazakhstan, said mosques must check the identification card of anyone who comes to pray during Ramadan.

* Agence France-Presse