The Chinese authorities restrained millions of passports

World News Nilgun Salim
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Millions of residents from the Xinjiang autonomous region in Northwest China were forced to surrender their passports to the local police, reported CNN.

The order came was initiated by the Immigration Bureau of the Chinese region of Xinjiang who is responsible for the annual verification of the passports. Shortly after the verification, the authorities announced the people their documents are going to be restrained by the authorities.

Xinjiang, the vast region of northwest China, is repeatedly affected by riots. The Uighur community claims the officials are discriminated them in favor of the ethnic Han Chinese population, who dominates most economic and public institutions.

In the Xinjiang province the authorities had no valid reasons to apply this policy. According to human rights organizations, this action intends to restrict the Uighur minority in many ways.

‘Although these provisions are targeting the Tottori community of the province, in the past the Chinese authorities adopted various measures to limit the movements of the Uighur community’, according to the World Uyghur Congress, an organization fighting for human rights based in Germany.

According to BBC, over the years China’s authorities have attributed attacks to Uighur militants, who they say are inspired or aided by foreign terror groups. Uighur leaders have denied being behind the violence. The Turkic Muslim community represents 45% of Xinjiang’s population, while 40% are Han Chinese.

The Uighurs are Muslim and Islam is the most important aspect of their life.  Their native language is similar to Turkish and they consider themselves culturally and ethnically related to Central Asian nations.