A man from China’s ethnic Uighur minority has been sentenced to seven years in jail for watching a “sensitive” film about Muslim migration, according to Radio Free Asia.

Authorities claim Eli Yasin, from Chaghraq in Aksu, Xinjiang, is suspected of planning to go abroad with members of his family “to wage jihad”. But a local security chief for Yasin’s village says none of the accused are in any position to leave China, as they are impoverished and need to work on the family farm to help provide for children and younger relatives.

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“All of them were over 40 years of age,” said Hesen Eysa, security chief for Yasin’s Karasu village. “They had a farm, and they were struggling to survive and provide for their children’s education,” he told Radio Free Asia’s Uighur service.

“They showed no signs of opposing the government. At least I never saw any signs of this. As a security chief, I am having a hard time explaining these charges to the people in my village. None of this makes any sense. It is very unjust.”

Detained along with Yasin were his two sisters and their husbands, between them responsible for between three and five children per family.

The Chinese government says it faces a serious threat from Islamist terrorists and separatists in Xinjiang, which sits strategically on the borders of central Asia and where hundreds of civilians and police have died in deadly clashes and inter-ethnic rioting. But exiles and rights groups say China has never presented convincing evidence of the existence of a cohesive militant group fighting against the government, and that much of the unrest can be traced back to frustration at controls over the culture and religion of the Uighur people who make up the majority of the population in the far north-western province.