Hawzah News Agency-Police have ordered some low-end hotels in the Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou not to allow guests from five Muslim-majority countries to stay, though China’s foreign ministry said it had never heard of the policy.

Three hotels with rooms costing about 150 yuan ($23) a night told that they had received police notices from as early as March telling them to turn away people from Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Afghanistan.

 “I’m not clear of the reason. We just can’t take them,” one hotel worker said by telephone.

All of the five countries have been beset by terrorist attacks in the past few years, or in the case of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have been in states of war.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said he was not aware that such an order had been issued in Guangzhou.

 “I’ve never heard that there is this policy being followed in China,” Lu told a daily news briefing.

Guangzhou is the capital of the export powerhouse province of Guangdong and is home to a sizable foreign population, many of whom are traders from Africa.

China has a Muslim population of its own, many of whom live in the violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang where the government says it faces a concerted campaign from extremists.

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