China has reprimanded 15 Xinjiang officials for violations that include adhering to religious faith, state media said on Tuesday, amid a crackdown on what the government calls illegal religious activities in the unruly western region.
Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur people who speak a Turkic language, has been beset for years by violence that the Chinese government blames on Islamist militants and separatists.
One official in the southern city of Kashgar, where a state-backed imam was killed last month, had "worshipped openly," the official Xinhua news agency said, behavior which violated rules that state workers not be religious.
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