A public toilet has been erected on the site of a demolished mosque in Atush (in Chinese, Atushi) city, in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), according to a local official, as part of what some observers believe is a campaign aimed at breaking the spirit of Uyghur Muslims.Reports of the construction of the restroom on the former site of the Tokul mosque in Atush’s Suntagh village come days after RFA’s Uyghur Service learned that authorities had razed two of three mosques there in carrying out a directive to destroy Muslim places of worship en masse that was launched in late 2016, known as “Mosque Rectification.”
The Mosque Rectification drive, part of a series of hardline policies under top leader Xi Jinping, predates the mass incarceration of as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a vast network of internment camps in the XUAR that began in April 2017.
RFA recently conducted a telephone interview with a Uyghur neighborhood committee chief from Suntagh village in Atush, a county-level city of about 270,000 people under the administration of Kashgar prefecture in the cotton- and grape-growing region of southwestern XUAR.
The committee chief, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal, told RFA that Tokul mosque was torn down in 2018 and that a lavatory had been built in its place by “Han [Chinese] comrades.”
“It’s a public toilet … they haven’t opened it yet, but it’s built,” he said.
“People have toilets at home, so there weren’t any problems like that,” he added, when asked if there had been a need for the public toilet in the local community.
The committee chief said that with Suntagh located about three kilometers (1.85 miles) outside of central Atush, the area sees few to no tourists who would require access to a washroom.
He conceded that the toilet was likely built to cover up the ruins of the destroyed Tokul mosque, as well as for the needs of inspecting groups or cadres visiting the area.
The chief said it was unclear how many people the restroom was built to accommodate.
“It’s still closed, so I haven’t even been inside,” he said.
Another resident of Suntagh, who also declined to be named, said that one of the two mosques in the village RFA recently learned were torn down in or around the autumn of 2019—Azna mosque—had been replaced with “a convenience store” that sells alcohol and cigarettes, the use of which is frowned upon in Islam.
Earlier, a public security officer in Suntagh confirmed that Azna mosque and Bastaggam mosque had been destroyed, while the mosque authorities left standing—Teres mosque—was the smallest and in the poorest condition of all three.
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