China forces Uyghurs to eat pork, abandon Islamic practices during Ramadan

China is continuing its constant oppression of the Uyghur minority at full-speed as many Muslims are forbidden from performing their religious duties even during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan.

Since the beginning of Ramadan, law enforcement have been ordered by local Chinese governments to step up the surveillance and report the locations of Muslims at real-time, especially during Friday prayers, and to screen Uyghur tourists coming from Xinjiang, even searching their baggage, according to the China-based online news agency Bitter Winter.

Eyebrows were especially raised after a Muslim living in Qinghai said that the government forced them to break their fast by placing water along the route of a mosque, treating them like a rat in a cage. If the Muslim did not drink, he would not be permitted into the mosque either.

In Shandong, an eastern province in China, a high school teacher said that Uyghur students were forbidden from fasting during Ramadan and even forced to eat pork, which Muslims are forbidden from consuming, with their Han classmates as a part of the education system vying to Sinicize them.

Government authorities in Kazakhstan have been following in China’s footsteps by forcing Muslims to break their fast by insisting they eat candy and moon cakes. If they refuse, they will be sent to a “re-education camp,” a Muslim told China-based news agency RFA.

Moreover, Muslims who traditionally sleep on hard beds and eat at short-legged tables were banned from practicing their cultures and traditions.

Last year, the Chinese government, which recognizes Islam as an “ideological illness” that must be eradicated, erected spring couplets that included pigs on Uyghur’s doors to celebrate the Year of the Pig. Any Uyghur who took it down was put into indefinite detention at the brutal internment camps.

China's Xinjiang region is home to around 10 million Uyghurs. The Turkic Muslim group, which makes up around 45% of Xinjiang’s population, has long accused China's authorities of cultural, religious and economic discrimination.

Up to a million people, or about 7% of the Muslim population in Xinjiang, have been incarcerated in an expanding network of "political re-education" camps, according to U.S. officials and UN experts.