China's controversial move to ban burqa in Urumqi - the capital of Muslim-majority Xinjiang province - is aimed at stopping the spread of religious extremism and safeguarding the rights of women, officials said today.
The ban, which was approved by the Standing Committee of the Urumqi People's Congress on Wednesday, is expected to come into effect on January 1 next year.
The ban followed a report by the Regional Bureau of Religious Affairs, which said the number of women wearing such clothing in Xinjiang, especially in southern areas, has increased significantly over the past few years.
"This reflects the deep and extensive spread of religious extremism imported from abroad and many women are forced to wear these clothes," the report has said.
Defending the move to ban burqa, Jin Wei, director of the Office of Religious Issues at the ruling Communist Party School, said it is beyond doubt that full-face veils are seen as restricting women's rights as they force women to cover their whole body, which shows that their bodies belong to men.
Pan Zhiping, a research fellow at the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, said the phenomenon of women wearing full-face veils has become prevalent only since 2012, but that this style of clothing is not a tradition of Uygurs, the Turkic speaking Muslims whose population was stated to be over 11 million.
The new legislation seeks to help the government prevent the spread of extremist ideas, Pan said.
The Global Times also quoted a government official saying, "Women in Urumqi will be banned from wearing full-face veils to prevent extremism from spreading in the region."
Xu Jianying, a professor with the Research Center for Chinese Borderland History and Geography at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said that similar laws might be implemented in other cities of Xinjiang as well.
Xinjiang has been on the boil for several years due to Uygurs resentment over increasing settlements of Hans, the majority ethnic community of China, from different provinces.
In recent years the province has become a hotbed for violent attacks as East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an al-Qaeda backed organisation, has become very active in the province that shares its border with Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, (POK) and Afghanistan.
The new restrictions came shortly after the announcement of Xinjiang's recently revised regulations on religious affairs, which bans citizens from practicing religion in government buildings and the distribution and viewing of videos about religious extremism or terrorism.
The regulations also prohibit people from wearing or forcing others to wear clothing or logos associated with religious extremism.
