It is a Chinese island 12,000 km south-east of Xinjiang.
In Hainan, far from the media noise surrounding the repressive policy towards the Uyghur minority, who are predominantly Muslim, Beijing has begun to closely monitor and impose religious restrictions on another community, much smaller in number. and less known: the Utsuls.
The women and girls of this majority Muslim minority, 10,000 members strong, have no longer been allowed to wear the veil or their traditional outfits at school and in public buildings for a month, the South Morning found. China Post, Monday September 28.
Official documents from local authorities, obtained by the Hong Kong daily, also reveal a series of measures to be implemented which “recall those deployed at the beginning in the province of Xinjiang”, notes the South Morning China Post.
Increase surveillance
Thus, the size of some mosques that need to be renovated will have to be reduced, and a member of the Communist Party will have to sit on the board of these places of worship.
All references to “Arabist” words - such as the term halal - should also be deleted from storefronts.
The documents also mention the need to increase surveillance of this community in order to maintain “public order”.
Utsuls members of the Communist Party will thus be subjected to questioning to ensure that they do not actively practice their religion.
These measures specifically target this community and not the other Muslims on the island who are members of the Hui, the largest Muslim ethnic group in China.
The documents consulted only concern the areas where the Utsuls live.
This decision to go after this tiny minority may come as a surprise.
Historically, the Utsuls are among the oldest predominantly Muslim communities still present in China.
“The Utsuls cemeteries are, probably, the oldest Muslim burial sites in the country and date back to the 12th century,” recalls Dru Gladney, anthropologist and president of the Pacific Basin Institute in California, who studied this minority, contacted by France 24.
They have no desire for independence, have never presented a threat to public order and their religious practice is similar to that of the Hui ethnic group.
“Their faith is Sunni, and I have never seen the influence of the most conservative currents of Islam such as Salafism,” underlines Dru Gladney, who visited there, in the 1980s and the year past.
Their only particularism is their language, Tsat, which is similar to Malay and is not spoken anywhere else in China.
Atmosphere of “generalized suspicion”
Beijing can hardly, in these conditions, justify its discriminatory policy against the Utsuls by pretext of any terrorist threat, as had been done in the case of the Uyghurs.
For Dru Gladney, this hides something else.
As proof of this, he saw the ban on wearing the veil which “is not, strictly speaking, a religious sign for the Utsuls, but rather a traditional garment linked to their culture”.
But for Katja Drinhausen, a specialist in governance issues in China at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (Merics, a research institute on China based in Berlin), the example of the Utsuls is a “textbook case of the evolution of the Chinese Communist Party's policy towards minorities under Xi Jinping ”.
The measures imposed, or in the process of being, on this community of Hainan Island are, in reality, “similar to those deployed at the national level for all religious minorities, as in Inner Mongolia or in Gansu province. , in Tibet, where a large number of Muslims live ”, underlines this specialist, contacted by France 24.
Extending this discriminatory policy to the Utsuls “simply shows how mentalities have changed,” notes Katja Drinhausen.
There is an atmosphere of "generalized suspicion" of religion in power circles, even when it comes to a community as old, small in number and well established as that of the island of Hainan.
A mistrust that strikes all minorities, including Hui Muslims and Catholics.
This policy of bringing everything that is religious into line aims to establish "a unified national identity" which is the base of sacrosanct social stability, "the only source of legitimacy for power", affirms the German researcher.
Risks of social and diplomatic unrest
But this sacrifice of all cultural and religious particularism on the altar of national unity is not without risk.
The challenge of reshaping the mentalities of all these minorities, with a lot of support from re-education centers and discriminatory policies, is far from won.
If it fails, it “can radicalize communities that feel they no longer have a place in Chinese society, leading to an increased risk of longer-term social tensions,” Katja Drinhausen believes.
In the more specific case of the Utsuls, discriminatory measures can also generate diplomatic tensions with certain countries in Southeast Asia.
Malaysia, for example, has very close ties to this community.
The grandmother of the former Malaysian prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, belonged to this minority.
This politician “has also visited the island of Hainan several times” to mark his attachment to the family heritage, underlines Dru Gladney, the American anthropologist.
Even Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, has "cultivated relationships with this community," the South China Morning Post said.
“As China tries to expand its sphere of influence in Southeast Asia, such a discriminatory religious policy can be very counterproductive and fuel anti-Chinese sentiment in these countries,” Dru fears. Gladney.
For some 10,000 Muslims, Beijing seems ready to jeopardize its great diplomatic ambitions on the international scene.
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