World Uyghur Congress, 20 May 2018

China passed critical amendments to the Regulations on Religious Affairs – a core piece of legislation that seeks to control and regulate religious practice in China. The amendments hand near total control over religious practice to the state and ensure that all religious activities are closely monitored.

Worryingly, Article 12 requires all religious practice to be conducted state-approved sites—which now effectively criminalises all religious practice performed outside these venues. Because of this, simply praying at one’s own home is now considered illegal and can land Uyghurs in prison.

The amendments also further criminalise religious content that is distributed online. In practice, this could simply mean posting religious content online such as Quranic verses, as a Uyghur woman did in 2017 when she was held under criminal detention on suspicion of promoting “extremist religious thought.”

The regulations also give greater attention to the ostensible use of religion as a vessel for extremist or separatist tendencies and sees “extremism” as something to be guarded against in religious management.