Muslims protest outside Kolkata Chinese Consulate

Muslims under the leadership of the Kolkata-based Islamic Association for Peace staged an hour-long protest outside the Chinese consulate in the city's Salt Lake area on Saturday morning.

Displaying banners and raising slogans against the large-scale "oppression of Muslim Uyghurs" in China's Xinjiang province, the protestors also condemned Beijing's "cartographic aggression" by showing the whole of Arunachal Pradesh as Chinese territory in the 2O23 Standard Map published by its Ministry of Natural Resources.

The protestors raised slogans that Arunachal Pradesh is an "inalienable part of India" and called for immediate restoration of the religious rights of the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.

"The Chinese authorities have barred the Islamic practice of namaz five times a day and warned Muslims against keeping beards and their women from putting on burqa (full dress with veil.) Tens of thousands of them have been sent to re-education camps so that they become Communists and give up their religious practices", said Najib Ullah, chairman of the Islamic Association of Peace (IAP) while addressing media persons at the venue of the demonstration.

He said the Chinese authorities had resorted to mass sterilisation of Muslim women in Xinjiang and resorted to extensive torture of Muslim families when they tried to practise Islam in the right spirit.

"Sinkiang for Uighurs is now a huge prison. It is facing demographic aggression through the transfer of tens of thousands of Han Chinese to the province," Najibullah said. " What happened in Tibet before is now happening in Xinjiang. This is the worst form of state-sponsored majoritarianism."

The Chinese consulate in Kolkata has witnessed frequent protest demonstrations by local groups supporting the cause of Tibet and also by front organisations of India's ruling BJP.

While the pro-Tibet groups have agitated over the lack of religious and ethnic rights of ethnic Tibetans and efforts to marginalise them by huge transfer of Han Chinese population, the BJP-linked groups have protested over frequent Chinese military intrusions across the Line of Actual Control from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh.

This is however the first time Muslims in Kolkata have protested over Uighur persecution in China's Xinjiang province.

The Islamic Association for Peace issued a statement in this regard on Saturday.

Claiming to speak on behalf of every oppressed section of the world, the release made three demands. These are

i) Atrocities (in the form of killing, rape, torture, sterilization, etc) on Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province by the Chinese Government must stop immediately.

ii) Uyghur Muslims must be granted social, religious and economic freedom.

iii) Immediate exclusion of Arunachal Pradesh from the Chinese standard map.

/KN/