As international public opinion focuses on the plight of Uighurs and other Muslim communities in Xinjiang, a Chinese court in Xinjiang yesterday, April 6, revealed for the first time that it had sentenced two former top Uighur officials to death with a two-year reprieve on “separatist” charges. The two men had held key positions in the political and legal systems and education systems of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
According to an April 6 release from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region High Court, the two former senior Uyghur officials sentenced to death were Shirzati Ba’edong, born in 1966 in Hotan, Xinjiang, and Shattar Sha’uti, born in 1948 in Toksun County, Xinjiang.
The 55-year-old Shirzati Bayudon, who comes from the political and legal system, has served as director of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region’s justice department, deputy secretary of the regional party committee’s political and legal committee, and deputy secretary-general of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region’s political consultative conference. According to Chinese official media, he is accused of using his position as a leading cadre of the Communist Party of China (CPC) as a cover for long-term secessionist activities, defecting to the “East-Iranian Movement” and illegally providing intelligence to people outside the country. He also gave 1.2 million yuan of his bribe money and a property to the East-Iraq Movement for its use. He also provided shelter for people serving prison sentences, deliberately concealed the fact that they had escaped, and harbored suspects….
Sattar Shawu, 72, is from the education system and was formerly secretary of the Communist Party and director of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Education Department. He was taken under compulsory measures in 2017 on “suspicion of taking bribes,” according to Chinese official media. But he was also accused of inciting the splitting of the motherland by organizing a system of textbook editors and reviewers to plant “pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism” and “ethnic separatism” in textbooks on the occasion of textbook reform. According to Chinese official media, this textbook was used throughout the country for 12 years and seriously “poisoned” the minds of Uyghur students.
The two former top Uighur Communist Party officials are now referred to in the Chinese media as “two-faced people. But there is no information on when they were sentenced to death by the court.
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