Xinjiang
The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) government has continued to expand a program of rewarding ethnic minority households that have fewer children than allowed under the region's regulation on population and family planning, building on initiatives throughout China to reward fewer births while intensifying a regional focus on ethnic minority households. Among various population planning reward programs in place in the region, a program in place since 2007 has rewarded rural ethnic minority couples that have fewer than the three children permitted under the XUAR Regulation on Population and Family Planning (Article 15), based on a description of the program posted September 4, 2008, on the Zepu (Poskam) county, Kashgar district, government Web site.
The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) government accelerated steps to promote Mandarin-centered "bilingual education" in the past year, in accordance with targets set in mid-2010 to universalize "bilingual education" in the region's schools. Following a central government and Communist Party-led Work Forum on Xinjiang in May 2010, which set state objectives for the region's economic and political development, XUAR officials announced that they would "basically universalize" "bilingual education" in XUAR schools by 2015 with the goal that ethnic minority students "basically have a skilled grasp and use" of spoken and written Mandarin by 2020, according to May 28 reports from China News Service (via China Xinjiang) and China Daily.
Authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have continued widespread censorship campaigns in 2010 and 2011, according to recent reports. The censorship work in the XUAR hews to a countrywide campaign to "Sweep Away Pornography and Strike Down Illegal Publications," but with special emphasis on religious and political items and "reactionary materials" that authorities deem are from organizations connected to the "three forces" of terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism.
The Aqsu Intermediate People's Court in Aqsu municipality, Aqsu district, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), sentenced Uyghur Web site administrator Tursunjan Hezim (Hézim) to seven years' imprisonment in July 2010, according to a March 6, 2011, Radio Free Asia (RFA) report. Authorities did not notify his family of the charges, according to a source cited in the report, but the sentence follows the detention and imprisonment of several other Web site administrators and staff (1, 2) after demonstrations and riots in the XUAR starting on July 5, 2009.
Hiring practices that discriminate against non-Han groups have continued in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). As documented by the CECC in recent years (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), job recruitment announcements from the region have reserved positions exclusively for Han Chinese in civil servant posts, state-owned enterprises, and private-sector jobs, including those advertised on government Web sites. The practices contravene provisions in Chinese law that forbid discrimination.
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The following text was retrieved from the Xinjiang Education Department Web site on April 13, 2011.
The Urumqi Intermediate People's Court sentenced Uyghur journalist and Web site administrator Memetjan (Memet, Muhemmetjan) Abdulla to life in prison on April 1, 2010, in connection to a translation he reportedly posted on the Internet and interviews he gave with foreign media in advance of the July 2009 demonstrations and riots in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), according to new information in December 20 and December 21, 2010, reports from Radio Free Asia (RFA).