Chinese corruption watchdog targets Uygur supporter of crackdown on ‘religious extremism’

A mid-ranking Chinese official who supported a crackdown on “religious extremism” in the far western region of Xinjiang is under investigation for alleged corruption, the region’s anti-graft body said on Tuesday.

Enwaer Tursun, 52, deputy secretary general of Xinjiang’s people’s congress, its lawmaking body, was under investigation for “serious violations of law and [Communist] Party discipline”, the Xinjiang Commission for Discipline Inspection said.

Tursun was promoted to the people’s congress in 2017. He was the mayor of Kashgar from 2013 to 2016, just two years after a series of terror attacks in the ancient Silk Road city left about a dozen civilians dead.

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In 2014, Tursun was quoted as praising a Kashgar court for imposing heavy sentences on 22 people convicted of various offences, including disturbing public order and “illegal preaching”. According to state media, Tursun said religious extremism had “seriously affected people’s thoughts and hindered normal life”.

“[Tursun’s] downfall is the result of a crackdown of what the authorities called ‘two-faced men’,” a Xinjiang cadre said, using a party reference to officials who pay lip service to Beijing’s orders.

“Besides being corrupt, the leaders believed he was not firm in carrying out policies on ethnic minorities and religions when he was the mayor and head of the Kashgar’s united front work department,” the cadre said.

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Tursun is the second Uygur cadre to fall from grace in recent weeks. Last week, Nur Bekri, the region’s former chairman who was later promoted to head the National Energy Administration in Beijing, stood trial in Shenyang, Liaoning province, accused of taking 79.1 million yuan (US$11.5 million) in bribes. State news agency Xinhua said the court would announce its verdict soon.

Tursun, a business graduate born in Hotan county, spent most of his three-decade career in Xinjiang’s south, particularly Kashgar prefecture, where Uygurs make up most of the population.