DHAKA: Schools in China’s mainly Muslim Xinjiang region, where a series of attacks has left hundreds dead in recent months, said they would actively discourage religious practice at home.

China’s state-run media reported on Wednesday, according to The Straits Times.

Principals at more than 2,000 kindergartens, primary schools and secondary schools in Kashgar, near China’s border with Pakistan, signed a pledge to ‘defend schools against the infiltration of religion’, according to a report by the Global Times, which is close to the Communist Party.

Party members, teachers and underage students should not practise religion either at school or at home, it quoted a Kashgar education official as saying.

Xinjiang is home to more than 10 million Muslims, mostly members of the Uighur minority, some of whom chafe under Beijing’s rule. Children younger than 18 are banned from entering mosques throughout the region.

BDST: 1756 HRS, OCT 29, 2014