XINJIANG: A Uyghur lecturer from a university in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region has been sentenced to prison for “disregarding” the national language, a media report said.

The 65-years-old Dilmurat Awut hails from Ghulja county, the Washington-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported.

Awut, who was deputy Chinese Communist Party secretary of the school’s Marxism Institute, used his native tongue whenever his students had difficulty mastering the course material when presented in Mandarin.

Awut, who taught at Ili Pedagogical University, was probed on allegations in 2017. He was sentenced to prison for teaching in the Uyghur language, the report said. “Dilmurat taught us philology,” said Behtiyar Nasir, who is now the deputy inspector general of the World Uyghur Congress. “He was medium height and white-faced. A friendly teacher.”

A former Ghulja teacher recalled that Awut had been questioned several times on suspicion of “opposing the national language.” “Dilmurat Awut was investigated a few times by the Chinese authorities for not speaking in Chinese in school,” he said.

Dozens of rights groups say the Chinese government has committed widespread and systematic policies of mass detention, torture, cultural persecution, and other offenses against Uyghurs and members of other Turkic groups in Xinjiang that amount to crimes against humanity.

This report of Dilmurat Awut comes a day after RFA reported that a computer teacher from a university in the Xinjiang region has been detained by Chinese authorities since 2017 for failing to sign an oath of allegiance to the Communist Party of China. Abdureshid Hamit, who also worked at Ili Pedagogical University, was charged with failing to sign the oath of allegiance, RFA reported. (ANI)