Xinjiang city urges terrorists to surrender within 30 days

Authorities in Hami, Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, urged suspects of separatism, extremism and terrorism to turn themselves in within 30 days for leniency.

Local authorities listed 18 situations in which suspects should give themselves up, according to a notice published on the official WeChat account of Hami Cyberspace Affairs Commission on Sunday.

Those situations include recruiting people to establish terrorist groups or colluding with overseas terrorist groups, helping terrorists make weapons or explosives and raising funds or providing other needed help for terrorists.

People who receive training from terrorist groups, or purchase maps, GPS, compasses, telescopes, ropes, tents or other training materials, and help download or provide links of audio, video, and text related to terrorism or offer VPN for overseas websites should surrender, said the notice.

Those who send minor children or students to learn religious doctrine or advocate using the Koran to regulate normal life should also turn themselves in, and those who get married or divorced using religious rites, commit bigamy or interfere with family planning policy in the name of religion should surrender, according to the notice.

The Hami authorities also urged those who forbid others from watching television programs or induce others to boycott national preferential policies, such as rejecting government-subsidized housing or calling for a ban of all things Han, to give themselves up.

All related suspects who surrender themselves within 30 days of the notice will be eligible for lesser punishment. They should turn themselves in to authorities by visiting police stations, procurators, courts, or by letter, telegram or phone, according to the notice.

Xinjiang’s Kashgar Prefecture also released a similar notice in 2017 urging people who are influenced by terrorism to surrender, and the notice said that people who reported terrorism or violence-related information could receive up to 5 million yuan ($720,000) as a reward, according to the notice on Kashgar University’s website.

Such notice served to deepen the campaign of cracking down on terrorism and separatism in Xinjiang, as regional vocational training centers have achieved great success in antiradicalization of Xinjiang society, Li Wei, a counter-terrorism expert at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing, told the Global Times on Monday.