Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on May 25, 2017, that village chiefs from Barin township, in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture’s Peyziwat (Jiashi) county had recently said that hundreds of the Islamic holy books printed before 2012 had been seized since authorities issued an order recalling them on January 15, 2017. Emet Imin, the Party Secretary of Barin’s No. 1 village, told RFA that authorities had confiscated 500 books in the recent campaign sweep of households beginning in January, “most of which were Qurans published before 2012.” 

Authorities in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region are confiscating all Qurans published more than five years ago due to “extremist content,” according to local officials, amid an ongoing campaign against “illegal” religious items owned by mostly Muslim ethnic Uyghur residents. The Qurans were appropriated as part of the “Three Illegals and One Item” campaign underway in Xinjiang that bans “illegal” publicity materials, religious activities, and religious teaching, as well as items deemed by authorities to be tools of terrorism—including knives, flammable objects, remote-controlled toys, and objects sporting symbols related to Islam, they said.