China condemns 2 ex-Xinjiang officials in separatism cases

BEIJING (AP) — A former education official and a former legal official in Xinjiang have been sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve in the latest national security cases China has brought against bureaucrats it accuses of trying to split the country. Almost all of the officials targeted have been members of the Turkic Uyghur ethnicity, a largely Muslim minority targeted in a campaign China defends as preventing terrorism. Three other education officials received life in prison, and two textbook editors were sentenced as well. The court said the textbooks had ethnic separatist and extremist content and were used for years. A son of one of the editors said the textbooks had been approved and China was trying to erase history.