Authorities in China’s unruly western region of Xinjiang have reduced the sentences of 11 people jailed for threatening state security after declaring the success of a deradicalization program, Xinhua news agency reported.
Hundreds of people have been killed in violence in Xinjiang in the past few years. The government blames the unrest on Muslim militants who want to establish an independent state called East Turkestan for minority Uighurs, a mostly Muslim people from Xinjiang who speak a Turkic language.
Seven of the convicts had their life sentences reduced to jail terms ranging from 19.5 years to 20 years, including people convicted of instigating “secessionist activities” or participating in terror attacks, Xinhua said late on Tuesday.
The other four had their jail terms cut by six months from initial sentences ranging from eight years to 15 years, it added.
A spokesman for the main Uighur exile group dismissed the report as “political propaganda.”
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Chairman Shohrat Zakir was quoted by Xinhua as saying that the region’s jails had been very successful in recent years at their deradicalization efforts, with a “majority” of convicts becoming law-abiding citizens.
Efforts need to continue in this regard with a focus on those convicted for harming state security, he added.
Xinhua said this had been accomplished by inviting religious leaders and scholars to talk to prisoners about “correct religious belief.”
The report said one of the convicts, Memet Tohti Memet Rozi, had close contact with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, the group Beijing blames for much of the violence in Xinjiang, and the Taliban in Afghanistan, where he helped train people from Xinjiang to become militants.
“I could not hold back my tears when I learned of the commutation,” Xinhua quoted him as saying. “I’m now split with all separatists and terrorists and will strive to become a law-abiding citizen.”
Reuters was unable to reach officials in Xinjiang for comment, or any family members of the convicts to verify their stories.
World Uyghur Congress spokesman Dilxat Raxit said news of the commutations was designed as a “political propaganda tool” to cover up the government’s use of the term extremist to repress the Uighur people.
“Be aware that China is using the so-called commutations to mislead the international community and continues to use antiterrorism to step up its repression,” he said in an e-mailed statement.
In other developments, Sichuan Province has ordered shopkeepers to hand in portraits of the Dalai Lama, state-run media said yesterday, quoting Beijing experts likening the Nobel laureate to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
Sichuan, which includes several ethnically Tibetan areas, set up a “law enforcement squad” of cultural bureau personnel, police and other officials to enforce the drive, the Global Times newspaper reported.
The aim was to “crack down on pornography and illegal publications, which include portraits of the Dalai Lama” ahead of the Lunar New Year, it quoted Gou Yadong, director of the provincial publicity department, as saying.
People were more than welcome to put on show pictures of the country’s past and present leaders, he added, referring to former heads of the Chinese Communist Party.
The Global Times also cited Lian Xiangmin (廉湘民), of the China Tibetology Research Center in Beijing, as saying that for Chinese, hanging the Dalai Lama’s picture has the same effect as displaying Hussein’s image would have for people in the US.
Beijing brands the Dalai Lama a dangerous separatist, despite his repeated statements condemning violence, and in Tibet it tightly controls images of him as part of what many Tibetans see as official repression of their religion and culture.
Additional reporting by AFP
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