A local police official said that an elderly Uyghur who had been arrested in 2017 for studying religion as a youngster and for other religious “offenses” had died in prison from hypertension.
Abdurusul Memet, 71, from a hamlet in Kashgar county, said he was imprisoned because he had a beard, prayed, and learned the Quran from his father when he was 12 years old.
The Xinjiang Victims Database tweeted last week that Memet had been given a 13-year and 11-month prison term between November 1964 and March 1965 for acquiring knowledge of the Quran. Uyghurs and other members of Turkic minority groups jailed in Xinjiang, in northwest China, have their records compiled on this site.
The tweet, which was seen by 67,000 people in less than a week, claimed that Memet had been arrested and was being held in a prison in Urumqi, the provincial capital, to carry out his sentence.
A police official in Kashgar county who was contacted by Radio Free Asia stated Memet had passed away in mid-July while serving his term in a jail in Urumqi.
“Yes, there is a person named Abdurusul Memet who was arrested for learning the Quran when he was 12,” the officer said. “He died behind bars.”
The officer went on to add that Memet was detained in 2017 for “illegal religious activities” and has been serving his sentence in Urumqi.
“The reason for arrest was that he usually prayed namaz, had a beard, and learned the Quran when he was 12 years old,” he said, using the Arabic term for the Muslim prayers.
The police officer said that Memet’s remains had been given to his family and that he had died of hypertension despite having been in excellent health.
Memet’s name and details exist in the Kashgar police archives, which are part of the “Xinjiang Police Files,” a collection of 830,000 people’s personal information stolen from Xinjiang police computers.
A third party received the papers, and in May 2022, they were made public. They reveal how many Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples Beijing imprisoned in the Xinjiang region of northwest China in 2017 and 2018, at the height of one of China’s “strike hard” campaigns.
Beijing’s human rights atrocities in Xinjiang have been frequently denied by the Chinese government, but these documents provide fresh proof.
Unlike some of the other files of incarcerated Uyghurs, the documents kept by the Kashgar police do not contain a picture of Memet, but they do show that he had no criminal history prior to his 2017 detention.
Chinese authorities routinely accuse Uyghurs like Memet of fabricated crimes and coerce them into admitting that they committed them, according to Omir Bekali, a Uyghur of Kazakh descent who spent nine months in three “re-education” camps in Xinjiang on allegations of terrorist activities and now resides in the Netherlands.
By calling Xinjiang by the Uyghurs’ preferred name, “East Turkistan,” he was referring to the region where the Uyghurs and Kazakhs live. “The fact that Mr. Abdurusul was arrested for studying the Quran at the age of 12 illustrates how the fascist Chinese government is willing to engage in any unlawful actions and employ any means to eradicate the Uyghurs and Kazakhs of East Turkistan,” he said.