Hui Muslims Safeguard Historic Najiaying Mosque in Yunnan, China

• Hui Muslims confront the Chinese Police over their attempts to demolish a Mosque in Yunnan

• For the past few days, Hui Muslims have been preventing the Chinese authorities from accessing the Mosque by continuing to resist them- women have been standing in unison outside the Mosque during the day, and men during the night.

On Saturday, when the Chinese authorities attempted to dismantle parts of the Najiaying mosque in Nagu, Yunnan province, hundreds of police clashed with protesters in the predominately Muslim town in China.

Over the past couple of days, men have been safeguarding the Mosque during the night and women during the day.

Police claim that the cause of the attempted demolition is due to the apparent illegal additions to the mosque’s construction work. In 2020, the court ruled that a minaret and the dome, were illegal built and had to be removed. The Hui community have objected to this claim and have since resisted the deconstruction of the Mosque.

Several videos have circulated on social media since the weekend, showing police with riot shields and protective gear clashing with hundreds of protesters outside the mosque. Several people were reportedly arrested. A statement has since been issued by the local police acknowledging the unrest and giving protesters until 6 June to hand themselves in to authorities.

It comes as no surprise that discussion of the incident on Chinese social media have been swiftly censored. Searches on “Weibo” for “Najiaying mosque” have brought results of pro-government comments.

There is evidently no religious freedom for Muslims in China, irrespective of the fallacious constitution that stipulates that there is. In 2015, Xi Jinping, China’s president, said, “The growing number of religious believers in the country should be treated with caution”. The oppression of our Uyghur brothers and sisters in China is ongoing and unaccounted for, a minority group being ethnically cleansed solely for their religious beliefs.

In 2018, when a similar deconstruction plan of a mosque happened, hundreds of Hui Muslims in Ningxia, China, bravely protested the demotion of the mosque in question. The police still removed the minarets of the Mosque.