Parents and children watch performance art that criticizes online rumors at Liaocheng University in Shandong Province on August 23, as the performer cuts a board with the words “online rumors.” Photo: CFP

 
The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has punished 256 people for spreading online rumors that jeopardized social stability and another 139 for spreading extreme religious ideas during a recent crackdown on Internet crimes, local authorities confirmed to the Global Times Tuesday.

Several people received admonitions, while 16 were put under criminal custody from June 26 to August 31, Hou Hanmin, deputy director of the publicity department under the region's Party committee, told the Global Times Tuesday. 

Most people involved in these online crimes are not well educated and some of them are unemployed, and spread extreme religious ideas gaining thousands of followers, Fan Guanghui, an official with the region's public security department, told the Global Times.

In one case in Hotan county, a farmer uploaded two gigabytes of e-books about secessionism.

The books were read 30,000 times, forwarded and saved about 600 times and downloaded about 14,000 times when the case was solved. The farmer was detained for allegedly inciting secession, the Xinjiang Daily reported Tuesday.

Local police in Kashi said that overseas hostile forces have never stopped infiltrating and inciting residents to take up extreme religious ideas through the Internet and that the online spreading has become a great threat to ethnic unity and social stability.

In Kashi, teenagers make up the majority of Net users and have a greater chance of being exposed to extreme religious ideas, said local police.

Since July, a high school student in Kashi had uploaded a large number of audio and video files about extreme religious ideas and terrorism, which have been reviewed 5,100 times, the newspaper said.

Police said the student had been influenced by improper online documents.

"Online rumors and extreme religious ideas in multi-ethnic neighborhoods can easily cause social conflicts and distort the real religions," Xiong Kunxin, an ethnic studies professor at the Minzu University of China, told the Global Times.

Hou noted that an Internet real-name system should be established to prevent online crimes.

According to a recent judicial explanation issued by the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the offense of online defamation will be regarded as "serious" if a post containing fabricated information is read 5,000 times or forwarded  more than 500 times. This means that the person who posted the rumor will be punished under the Criminal Law, facing up to three years in prison if sentenced.