• A Chinese official: “The students studying in our schools, your children in particular, are not focusing completely on their lessons. They are occupied with prayer, fasting and some other religious activities. Therefore, they are violating the fifth article, dated 1996, of the Autonomous Regions Education Commission. According to this article, students cannot participate in religious activities (prayer, fasting or other similar religious activities) and cannot act in contravention of the school rules.”

• An Uyghur citizen: “The militia is coming to search the villages and regularly examine the people living there. They come during the nights and search the houses. If they find any religious material, they take that person in for interrogation. They say “These are illegal religious publications.” My father is a common farmer. How can he know whether the Qur’an is illegal or legal?”

• An Uyghur professor working in a higher education institution in Xinjiang, where teaching traditional local music is forbidden: “I have experienced it personally. Although I am not considered to be a devout Muslim, this happened to me. I mention religious tunes in a general sense only during my lectures. These are widely spread tunes. Banning these is just nonsense. These are a part of our musical culture and our history. I need to learn these. However, in the second semester the school management told me that since there are so few students registered for my lecture, I can no longer give lectures. But this isn’t true. I have been waiting for one year now without giving any education. They won’t fire me because they don’t want me to speak out against them. I am still earning a wage from the Communist party. However, the only thing I do is to stroll around the campus or sit in my room. This is nothing but a waste. Still, it would be best for me not to talk about these issues.”

• An Uyghur citizen: “My relatives and I were able to establish a mercantile business. This is something that I am proud of. Earlier I was working in an office. I was providing catering services for schools. They said to me “you can’t have a beard, not even a moustache.” I asked myself who they thought they were, interfering in my personal choices. These are our traditions. No one has the right to interfere with this. When I found an opportunity to leave the country I did. However, if you can’t find another job in the private sector, you either have difficulties or you will die of hunger.”

Finally the report relates that in “experience transfer meetings it is requested that religious functionaries tell the other participants about their hardships and incidents that they encountered during their duties. For example, a mosque imam stood up and mentioned his illegal religious lecture. Or he speaks about how the mosque was using a banned religious book. They talk among themselves about provocative elements and about a sermon that was given by another religious functionary without obtaining a prior permit, and their failure to inform the security forces. They tell how they got