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.