A court in northwest China's Xinjiang region has sentenced a Muslim school teacher to nine years' jail for reporting on its suppression of ethnic Uighur Muslims, an overseas Uighur rights group said yesterday.
Abdulghani Memetemin, 40, was sentenced on 18 charges, including leaking state secrets, Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the Germany-based World Uighur Congress (WUC) told reporters.
Since 1999, Memetemin had provided information to the Germany-based East Turkestan Information Center (ETIC) -- a group affiliated with the WUC and run by exiled Uighurs to publicize human rights abuses against Uighurs in China.
Memetemin was sentenced on June 24, 2003 in a secret trial by the Intermediate People's Court in the city of Kashgar, but due to the secrecy involved and the difficulty in obtaining information, the WUC did not learn of the judgement until this month, Raxit said
"Abdulghani Memetemin is accused of threatening the integrity of the state by separatist means, violating state secrets, and sending them outside the country," according to a copy of the Kashgar court judgement obtained by the WUC.
Information Memetemin provided to the ETIC included China's stepped up military exercises against separatists in Xinjiang following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US; authorities' confiscation and burning of Uighur history books and orders for Uighur women to stop wearing head scarves.
Memetemin, whom ETIC said was a volunteer reporter, also informed the ETIC about the detention of a well-known Muslim cleric, and discrimination by employers against Uighurs for adhering to Islamic religious practices.
He also reported about Uighur farmers forced to work for free for three months to build government projects, school children forbidden from adhering to Muslim fasting, and difficulties faced by laidoff workers.
Memetemin did not have access to any state secrets, Raxit said. The information he provided was public information also reported by Chinese-controlled media or seen by the public on the streets, he said.
"The information he gave to us helped inform the outside world about what was happening in Xinjiang. It was all open information, but his work was necessary because of the fact that the Chinese government refuses to let foreign reporters report freely in Xinjiang," Raxit said.
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