A court in Kashgar on Monday publicly announced sentences for 22 suspects involved in illegal religious activities in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a movement to combat religious extremism.
The offenders fell into three categories: imams unauthorized to preach sermons, people engaging in illegal religious activities after being removed from religious posts, and religious personnel who committed crimes, the China News Service reported on Tuesday.
They were sentenced to between five and 16 years in prison on charges of inciting ethnic hatred and ethnic discrimination, sabotaging the implementation of laws by utilizing superstition, illegally organizing crowds to disturb social order, picking quarrels and provoking trouble, spreading criminal methods and rape.
Kashgar citizens were invited to the court to attend the public sentencing. "The public sentencing is an important way of cracking down on violence and terrorism in religion," said Enwer Tursun, deputy secretary of Kashgar's Party committee.
Xu Jianying, an expert of Xinjiang issues with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Tuesday that such public sentences could intimidate potential extremists.
As part of its ongoing fight against extremism and terrorism, the Kashgar government has set up 24 teams composed of 120 people including Party members, officials from judicial organs and religious personnel to explain policies, laws and Islamic doctrines in every household, village, community, school, company, market and mosque, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Friday.
Xu added that illegal preaching has contributed substantially to the spread of extreme thoughts in Kashgar.
About 5 percent of underground preaching programs are initiated every year by "three forces" of terrorism, separatism and extremism in a bid to separate Xinjiang from China through jihads, Liu Zhongkang, deputy head of the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, was quoted by the China News Service as saying in 2013.
It is estimated that, if an underground preaching program enrolls seven to eight people, its graduates can eventually train 700 to 800 religious extremists, according to the China News Service.