\u00a0China\u2019s close watch over its Islamic minority is being extended abroad, as Muslims from some Chinese regions make the Hajj pilgrimage wearing state-issued tracking devices.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0China\u2019s close watch over its Islamic minority is being extended abroad, as Muslims from some Chinese regions make the Hajj pilgrimage wearing state-issued tracking devices.<\/p>\n
The state-run China Islamic Association published photos of Chinese Muslims at the Beijing airport departing for Mecca in Saudi Arabia in recent days wearing customized \u201csmart cards\u201d on blue lanyards around their necks. The devices, which include a GPS tracker and personal data, are designed to ensure the wearer\u2019s safety, according to the association.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Human rights activists contend the tracking devices are another example of China\u2019s extraordinary efforts to monitor its Muslim minority using modern surveillance tools.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is yet-another way of persecuting Muslims for practicing their religion, by suggesting that they require to be monitored rather like criminal suspects or persons serving a suspended prison sentence,\u201d said Eva Pils, a China human rights expert at King\u2019s College London.\u00a0<\/p>\n
China has detained hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uighurs in \u201cpolitical re-education\u201d centers and other facilities in its northwest.<\/p>\n
China legal expert Jerome Cohen says the detentions are possibly the largest outside the criminal process in China since the Maoist \u201canti-rightist\u201d campaign of the 1950s.\u00a0<\/p>\n
China\u2019s United Front Work Department, which oversees religious regulation, and its Ministry of Public Security didn\u2019t respond to requests for comment Tuesday. China has previously said its restrictive policies for Muslims were needed to \u201cfight terrorism\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The state-run Global Times highlighted usage of the tracking devices Tuesday, saying they were being used by fewer than a third of the 11,500 Chinese Muslims making the pilgrimage. Pilgrims from the Xinjiang region, which has been a center of Muslim unrest, aren\u2019t wearing the devices this year, the newspaper said.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0China\u2019s close watch over its Islamic minority is being extended abroad, as Muslims from some Chinese regions make the Hajj pilgrimage wearing state-issued tracking devices. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0China\u2019s close watch over its Islamic minority is being extended abroad, as Muslims from some Chinese regions make the Hajj pilgrimage wearing state-issued tracking devices. The state-run China …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":17484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_108372464460192_245495985553329":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[125,219,100,290,205,369],"class_list":["post-6224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-china","tag-human-rights","tag-islam","tag-mecca","tag-muslim","tag-pilgrimage"],"yoast_head":"\n