The so called Xinjiang police detain ethnic Kazakh who sang Quranic recitations at Muslim wedding

Chinese authorities in East Turkistan detained an ethnic Kazakh man for performing Quranic recitations – including at a Muslim wedding, Radio Free Asia has learned.

Kusman Rehim, 56, was detained on July 14 after performing readings from the Quran in a melodious art form revered across the Islamic world, the head of the Kazakhstan-based rights group Atajurt, said in an interview on Thursday.

"Kusman Rehim was arrested on July 14," Atajurt chief Bekzat Maksutkhan said. "The main reason was that the police found a Quran in his home."

"Also, he had performed Quranic recitations in people's homes during Eid al-Adha [June 27-July 1] and taken part in a Muslim wedding," Bekzat said.

The arrest comes against a backdrop of renewed attacks on religious worship under Chinese President Xi Jinping, with Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and other religious adherents forced to submit to party control and the censorship of their religious lives under the government's "sinicization" program.

However, recitations of the Quran have been banned since 2017, when China began the mass incarceration of Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in "re-education" camps across East Turkistan.

Authorities claimed that normal Islamic customs like the wearing of beards and veils and Quran study groups were evidence of "religious extremism."