China denying passports to restrict critics, minorities

Hand your passport to police or it will be cancelled, read the notice to all 4.4 million residents of far-northwestern China's Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture.
The demand would now seem outrageous to most Chinese, who more than a decade since passport restrictions were eased have become increasingly accustomed to traveling abroad for tourism, study or work.
Yet the story is vastly different for groups targeted by the ruling Communist Party, which has long denied passports to dissidents who might embarrass the party overseas.
By denying them opportunities for jobs, education and overseas connections, the withholding of passports has become one of the party's most potent weapons against dissent, both real and imagined.

The notice in Ili, part of the vast Xinjiang region bordering Central Asia, set a May 15 deadline for residents to hand in passports "for safekeeping." It gave no reason for the demand.
The order raised eyebrows because Xinjiang is home to China's minority Uighurs, Turkic Muslims who are culturally and linguistically distinct from the country's Han majority.

China is eager to avoid the appearance of discrimination against ethnic minorities, including Uighurs and Tibetans, and an officer at police headquarters in the prefectural seat of Yining said the order applied to all ethnic groups. The officer, who like most Chinese bureaucrats declined to be identified by name, said passport holders would be required to reapply and submit documents stating their reason for traveling and ensuring their good reputations if they wished to get them back.

Uighurs and Tibetans, who together number about 16 million inside China, have increasingly complained about difficulties obtaining passports, including the need for government approvals that members of the majority Han group aren't subject to.
Permission is often limited to those participating in government-backed exchanges, or in the case of Uighurs, Muslims performing the pilgrimage to Mecca. The government-backed Chinese Muslim Association said about 14,500 Chinese Muslims went on the haj last year, but didn't say how many were Uighurs.
While the government says only that the restrictions are to maintain social order, minority activists and critics of the one-party communist system believe politics are the real reason.

For Tibetans, already severe restrictions were tightened further in 2012 when hundreds of Buddhist pilgrims were detained and interrogated after attending a religious event in India presided over by the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled religious leader who is reviled in Beijing, say overseas activists.