A court in western China has reduced the sentences of 11 Uighurs convicted of terrorism and endangering state security, including a naturalised Canadian preacher whose life term had been sharply criticised by Ottawa.
The official Xinhua News Agency characterised the sentence reductions for the Uighurs at Xinjiang's First Prison as a sign that authorities in the restive western region were making progress de-radicalising Islamist militants and separatists using a softer touch.
The rare move of clemency, announced after the prisoners took courses and repented their crimes last week, comes at a time when the Chinese government is tightening its grip over the region, expanding its security campaign and ordering cultural assimilation projects and religious restrictions that members of the Turkic-speaking Uighur minority have deemed oppressive.
Among the 11 prisoners with reduced terms is Huseyin Celil, a preacher from Ontario whose life sentence in 2007 sparked a diplomatic row between China and Canada. After fleeing China and gaining refugee status in 2000, Celil lived in Canada until he was arrested in Uzbekistan and extradited to China.
China refused to recognise his Canadian citizenship and convicted him of organising on behalf of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement militant group.
Aside from the reduction of life sentences to fixed terms, four prisoners, including a man convicted of contacting the ETIP and the Taliban to set up training bases in Afghanistan, saw their lengthy prison terms reduced to six months, Xinhua said in a report on Monday.
The new duration of Huseyin Celil's sentence has not been announced, said San Francisco-based activist John Kamm, who has pressed for Celil's release on behalf of the Canadian government since 2009.
But Kamm lauded the decision, telling The Associated Press today that commuting Celil's sentence represented "a step in the right direction" and should prompt other Xinjiang prisons to consider mass clemency.
The Canadian Embassy in Beijing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress exile group, called the commutations a "political propaganda tool" meant to divert attention from Beijing's repressive policies.
