China: Uyghur man sentenced to death, 3 others get life term for keeping history books

The Chinese government sentenced a man belonging to the ethnic Uyghur community to life imprisonment last year for possession of textbooks on historical resistance movements. According to AP, it was revealed that the accused from the Ughyur Muslim community were involved in possession of previously accepted narratives in China, which included two drawings based on a 1940s movement. 

Since the narrative of the current government has changed, individuals' having historic textbooks is seen as an offense by the Xi Jinping government. Moreover, the Chinese regime has deprived students of learning about their heritage and has changed the history of the community and the nation. Notably, China has always been accused of committing genocide in Xinjiang against Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic communities. As a result, the US, along with its allies, has staged a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics.

Chinese govt sentences 1 Uyghur man to death

According to various media reports, more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities who reside in the Xinjiang region have been forcefully kept in detention camps, which the Communist regime calls "re-education camps." The minority groups living in China have often been subjected to extreme exploitation, forced labor, rapes of girls and women, and assaults, among other activities. However, the Chinese government has always denied the accusations and said the camps were established for job training.

The attack on textbooks clearly shows that the Communist Party is aiming to control and reshape the Uyghur community. This comes as the Chinese government, in the name of ethnic unity, pushes a more assimilationist policy on Tibetans, Mongolians, and other ethnic groups that scales back bilingual education. A historian of Uyghur nationalism at the University of Sydney, David Brophy, said, "There's much more intense policing of Uyghur historic narratives now. The goalposts have shifted, and rather than this being seen as a site of negotiation and tension, it's now treated as "separatist propaganda."

Last year, in April, an Uyghur official, Sattar Sawut, who headed the Xinjiang Education Department, was sentenced to death by the court, saying he led a separatist group to create textbooks filled with ethnic hatred, religious extremism, and violence that caused people to carry out violent acts in ethnic clashes in 2009. In a documentary released by CGTN, all the details about the textbooks were then presented, which displayed hidden threats in the Xinjiang region.