China: two senior officials sentenced to death for separatism in Xinjiang

Two former senior Uyghur officials were sentenced to death for

in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region (northwest), local authorities announced Tuesday evening April 6.

These sentences were accompanied by a two-year suspension - in practice this sentence is commuted to life imprisonment.

The two officials respectively headed the justice and education administrations in the region which is the subject of tension between the Muslim majority (mainly Uyghur) and the Han minority (ethnic Chinese).

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Several countries, including the United States, evoke a

against the Uyghurs.

Human rights organizations accuse Beijing of having interned more than a million Uyghurs since 2017 in political re-education centers.

The communist regime denies this figure and assures that they are

intended to keep the Uyghurs away from Islamism and separatism, after a series of attacks which have been attributed to them.

In this context, former Xinjiang Minister of Justice Shirzat Bawudun was found guilty of conspiring with the Islamic Movement of East Turkestan (Mito) after meeting with a member of that organization in 2003 while he was working. at the time in the police, said the new China agency.

Mito is on the list of UN terrorist organizations but was removed from that of the United States last November, with Washington saying it doubts the movement continues to exist.

East Turkestan is generally the name given to Xinjiang by the Uyghurs in exile advocating independence.

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The justice also accuses Shirzat Bawudun of having carried out

.

For his part, the former regional education minister, Sattar Sawut, was found guilty of incorporating into Uyghur-language textbooks apologies for separatism, terrorism and religious extremism, according to the website. of local government.

These manuals have been in use for 13 years.

China does not publish the number of death sentences passed each year or the number of executions, but Amnesty International says the country is the first in the world for the use of the death penalty, with thousands of convictions and executions each year .