Twenty suspects convicted of orchestrating and participating in terrorist and separatist activities with the help of high-technology were given sentences ranging from five years to life by two local courts in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Tuesday.

The convicts, involved in five cases, were sentenced by courts in the city of Kashi and in the Bayingol Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture, the Xinjiang Daily reported Wednesday.

The suspects advocated terrorist and separatist actions, which they disseminated via the Internet, mobile phones and mass storage devices, according to the intermediate people's court of Kashi in the region.

The use by terrorists and separatists of new forms of media has become a trend and surveillance of these activities should be tightened, Pan Zhiping, a researcher at the Office of Xinjiang Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in an interview with the Global Times Wednesday.

"The police have already set up an Internet security brigade and it has solved some problems," Pan said.

"The supervision of virtual private network (VPN) services is needed as they are easily accessible," he told the Global Times.

A VPN allows users to access prohibited overseas websites.

Terrorists in Xinjiang, who have close links to the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, have staged murderous attacks in China.

The movement, which is also recognized by the US and the UN as a terrorist organization, has set up bases outside China to train terrorists and then sneak them into the country, where they sometimes carry out suicide missions.

The Kashi court convicted 19 suspects in four cases of spreading audio and video recordings related to the East Turkistan Islamic Movement and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, gathering illegally to advocate religious extremism such as jihad and hijra.

They were also convicted of training terrorists, purchasing weapons, testing explosives, plotting to ambush frontier police officers and raising funds for their extremism.

The Bayingol intermediate people's court convicted a man of subversion and sentenced him to 10 years in prison for launching an online chat room that advocated separatism.

Xiong Kunxin, a professor of ethnic studies at the Minzu University of China, told the Global Times Wednesday that as separatism is frequently influenced by groups in Central Asia, and China should implement an international cooperation program to prevent such crimes.