China Punishes Muslim Leaders
(Reuters | Beijing | February 18, 1994)
A court in China's largely Muslim far west gave long prison terms to four rival Islamic clerics whose succession battle last year climaxed in an army massacre that killed 20 followers, officials said Friday.
The May 1993 bloodbath at a Ningxia province mosque and this month's trial have gone unreported in state media due to acute sensitivities in a vast region that was hit by anti-Chinese riots in 1993, Chinese sources told Reuters.
Ningxia is an ostensibly autonomous ethnic Hui region, but like big neighbors Qinghai, Xinjiang and Gansu, it is kept under tight control by the Chinese Communist Party.
All have large Muslim and non-Han Chinese ethnic minority populations and have been the focus of increased concern in Beijing amid rising Islamic fervor across Central Asia.
The May massacre was the culmination of a violent power struggle between rival factions of an officially tolerated Islamic sect called Zheherenye, the sources said.
"Hundreds of followers battled around a mosque at Xiji, using homemade guns, explosives, clubs and knives as well as real firearms," one source said on condition of anonymity.
"The central government sent in the People's Armed Police, which stormed in with guns blazing," he said. "By the time the battle was suppressed, they had gunned down 20 followers."
The clash is believed to be unrelated to the army's storming of a mosque October 7 in the Qinghai capital Xining that crushed what Beijing maintains was a political rebellion.
Court officials reached by telephone in Ningxia confirmed that four clerical "ringleaders" were convicted om a four-day trial that ended February 7. Chinese sources said the defendants, all surnamed Ma, were ethnic Hui Muslim clerics from archrival subsects who had been battling to succeed Zheherenye Imam Ma Tengai, who died in June 1991 leaving no leader of the sect's 100,000 followers.
Ma Fuli and Ma Ruchen were sentenced to life in prison, Ma Jie got 20 years and Ma Liesun 15, the court officials said. The officials declined to cite specific charges or comment further pending the defendants' appeals to the Ningxia Supreme Court. Several other Muslims still face trial in the case. For security reasons, the trials were held in Ningxia's largely Chinese capital Yinchuan, far from heavily Islamic Xiji in the province's southern Guyuan district.
Chinese sources said a Guyuan Intermediate Court judge meted out harsh prison terms to demonstrate Beijing's resolve to crush religious instability and disobedience.
"It's almost certain the central government will let the verdicts stand," one Chinese source said on condition of anonymity. "Someone must be held accountable for the May 1993 incident," the source said. The verdicts have left followers of the Zheherenye sect even more divided and angry, Chinese sources said.
Soon after the massacre and the suspects' arrest, Zheherenye members marched on Yinchuan and petitioned Ningxia's government to free Ma Liesun and install him as Ma Tengai's successor in the sect and in the National People's Congress.
They maintain Beijing has shown insufficient respect for the late imam and demanded that his corpse be properly entombed as China has done for other religious leaders, including Tibet's pro-Beijing Buddhist figurehead, the Panchen Lama. Followers also are demanding that Beijing finance the rebuilding of their main mosque in Wuzhong, which has been in ruins since it was ransacked by Chairman Mao Tse-tung's radical Red Guards during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.
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