China targeting Uighurs with more prosecutions, says HRW
BEIJING: China has dramatically increased its prosecution of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang through the formal court system, handing out long prison terms for dubious charges such as “picking quarrels” and giving gifts to overseas relatives, a rights group said on Wednesday.
These criminal convictions are in addition to the detention of an estimated one million Uighurs and other mainly Muslim minorities in “political education” camps in Xinjiang.
More than 250,000 people in the northwestern region have been formally sentenced and imprisoned since 2016, according to Human Rights Watch.
“Despite the veneer of legality, many of those in Xinjiang’s prisons are ordinary people who were convicted for going about their lives and practising their religion,” HRW researcher Maya Wang said in a statement.
HRW said criminal sentences in the Xinjiang region had spiked between 2017 and 2019 during a crackdown on Uighurs and other mainly Muslim minorities.
Xinjiang courts sentenced nearly 100,000 people in 2017, up from less than 40,000 in 2016, the organisation said, citing government data.
The rights group said police, prosecutors and courts had been placed under pressure to “deliver swift and harsh punishment” in the name of counterterrorism, causing many to be imprisoned without committing any genuine offence.
Prior to 2017, around 11% of the sentences carried prison terms of over five years. In 2017, 87% did.
A Chinese foreign ministry official rejected the findings of the report on Wednesday, saying HRW “has always been full of prejudice on issues related to China”.