Officials accused after ‘unqualified’ people from heavily Muslim province of Xinjiang went on tightly regulated trips
The Guardian - Thursday 15 January 2015
China is investigating 32 officials from the western region of Xinjiang for graft linked to pilgrimages by Muslims to Mecca, state media said on Thursday.
Xinjiang is home to the mostly Muslim Uighur people. Hundreds of
people have been killed there over the past two years in violence
between Uighurs and ethnic majority Han Chinese that the government
blames on Muslim separatists.
China’s Uighur Muslims can usually only make pilgrimages to Mecca on government-organised trips.
The China
Daily, the country’s official English-language newspaper, said 14,000
such pilgrimages were organised in 2014 though some of the people who
went to Mecca were “unqualified“. It did not explain what that meant.
“In addition to arranging pilgrimages for unqualified people, the
investigated officials were found to have asked for and received bribes
or neglected the inspection and management of pilgrimage work,” the
China Daily said, citing the anti-graft watchdog.
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