Uyghur School Director, Brother of RFA Reporter Jailed For 14 Years After Stint in Xinjiang Camp Radio Free Asia

A Uyghur academic director and prolific translator who is the brother of an RFA reporter has been sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence following two years spent in an internment camp in China s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) for religious extremism, according to officials.

Ahmetjan Juma, whose brother Mamatjan Juma is the deputy director of RFA s Uyghur Service, went missing from his home prefecture of Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) in 2017 and was added to a list of disappeared Uyghur intellectuals compiled by the Norway-based Uyghuryar Foundation.

The academic director of the No. 1 Middle School in Kashgar s Kona Sheher (Shufu) county, who was known for his excellent literary translations, vanished around the same time that authorities in the XUAR rolled out a campaign of mass incarceration that has since seen up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities held in a vast network of internment camps throughout the region.

While Beijing initially denied the existence of the camps, China in 2019 changed tack and began describing the facilities as boarding schools that provide vocational training for Uyghurs, discourage radicalization, and help protect the country from terrorism.

But reporting by RFA and other media outlets indicate that those in the camps are detained against their will and subjected to political indoctrination, routinely face rough treatment at the hands of their overseers and endure poor diets and unhygienic conditions in the often-overcrowded facilities. Former detainees have also described being subjected to torture, rape, sterilization, and other abuses while in custody.

via www.rfa.org

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