Authorities in Xinjiang are sentencing high-ranking Uyghurs to long prison terms as part of their anti-Muslim campaign.
As per recent reports, authorities in Xinjiang have sentenced the prominent Uyghur intellectual, Halmurat Ghopur, to death with a two-year suspension for “separatist tendencies.” Formerly, the director of the Xinjiang Food and Drug Administration’s Department of Inspection and Supervision and the principal of Xinjiang Medical University Hospital in Urumqi, he was arrested in November 2017. In another case, Sattar Sawut, the head of the Education Department of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, was sentenced to life in prison on the charges of ethnic separatism.
Bitter Winter received information about the arrests and sentencing of more Uyghur officials in the past year.
A staff member of the Lop County United Front Work Department (UFWD), Tursun Imin, purportedly, did not prohibit or report “reactionary remarks” while at a funeral service four years ago. In December 2017, he was expelled from the Communist Party and was subsequently sentenced to twenty years in prison.
In May 2018, Wlam Qadir Memet, the director of the Lop County Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, was arrested for accompanying his mother 23 years ago to Hajj, the 3-day Islamic pilgrimage festival in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Accused of being “two-faced,” he is currently awaiting sentencing.
The Chinese government applies the term “two-faced” to describe the Communist Party members who are accused of having religious beliefs or ethnic tendencies.
Some commentators have observed that, by eliminating high-ranking officials and intellectuals of Uyghur ethnicity, the Chinese Communist Party is preventing the rise of a possible spiritual leader.
Reported by Li Zaili