The mosque in recent years has expanded its minarets and dome roof and a court has ruled the additions illegal.
Chinese police have given protesters blocking the demolition of an ancient mosque a deadline to turn themselves in for “disturbing social order” and “criminal acts”.
Authorities deployed hundreds of police and made arrests in the predominantly Muslim town of Nagu after clashes erupted over the weekend over the planned destruction.
Officials in Nagu, in southwestern Yunnan province, recently pushed ahead with plans to demolish four minarets and the domed roof of the 13th-century Najiaying Mosque, a resident said Monday. , who requested anonymity for fear of retribution.
The mosque in recent years has expanded its minarets and dome roof, and a local court ruled the additions illegal.
Yunnan is home to a large enclave of the Hui, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group that has come under pressure in the face of a widespread outbreak. President Xi Jinping has ordered the Communist Party to “Sinicise” the country’s ethnic and religious minorities.
‘We will not allow them’
On Saturday, several officers wielding truncheons and riot shields repelled a crowd outside the mosque that threw objects at them, videos circulating on social media and witnesses said.
“They want to continue the forced demolitions so people here came to stop them,” a local woman who also asked not to be identified told the AFP news agency. “The mosque is the home of Muslims like us. If they try to subvert it, we certainly won’t let them.
“Buildings are just buildings – they don’t harm people or society. Why do they have to destroy them?”
Police made an unspecified number of arrests in the incident and several hundred officers remained in town on Monday, the two witnesses said.
A notice released on Sunday by the Tonghai government – which oversees Nagu – said it had opened an investigation into “a case that has seriously disrupted governance and social order”.
The notice ordered those involved to “immediately stop all illegal and criminal acts”, saying that anyone who refused to hand themselves in would be “severely punished”.
“Those who voluntarily surrendered [by June 6] and truthfully confessing the facts of violations and crimes may be given a lighter and mitigated punishment according to the law,” it said.
China has sought to tightly control religion since President Xi came to power a decade ago, and in his crackdown on Muslims, Beijing claims it is working to fight “terrorism and extremist thought”.
An estimated one million Uighurs, Hui, and other Muslim minorities have been detained in the western region of Xinjiang since 2017 under the government’s “re-education” campaign.
While the impact on communities outside Xinjiang has been milder, many have seen their mosques destroyed or “forced renovations” to conform to official ideas of Chinese aesthetics, said David Stroup, an expert on Hui at the University of Manchester in Britain.