BEIJING: The capital of China’s restive western region of Xinjiang has introduced a law banning veiled robes in public amid measures taken by Beijing to curb Muslim extremism, authorities announced on Thursday.

The law in the predominantly Muslim region comes as Beijing intensifies a campaign against religious extremism that it blames for the violence that has left hundreds dead in the past 20 months.

“This fits into the larger pattern, keeping up with the trend in the past five years that has really intensified in the last year by the government to try to forcibly reshape and standardize the type of garment among the Uighur females,” said James Leibold, a scholar of ethnic policies at Australia’s La Trobe University.

Xinjiang is home to the Turkic-speaking Uighur minority Muslims, who have complained of China’s repressive rule and economic disenfranchisement under a government dominated by the majority Han Chinese.

In clamping down on violence in Xinjiang, authorities are targeting what they call manifestations of religious extremism among Uighurs, such as beards and women’s veils.

Published in Dawn, December 12th, 2014