A Uyghur butcher serving a seven-year jail sentence in southern Xinjiang for advising mates to not drink alcohol or smoke at a gathering has been launched alive and returned to his household, sources with data of the state of affairs mentioned.
It marks the primary time that one of many roughly 100 jailed Uyghur residents from Xaneriq village had been launched alive, mentioned an Uyghur from the world who now lives overseas, however who didn’t give his identify for worry of retribution.
Authorities freed Mahmudjan Muqeddem, 46, who hails from the Tawaqchi neighborhood of Xaneriq village, on April 11, he mentioned. The village lies in Kashgar Yengisheher county in Kashgar prefecture.
A police officer from the Yenitam neighborhood in Xaneriq confirmed that Muqeddem, a butcher and farmer, had served seven years in a jail in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Area, and was launched on April 11.
The officer’s colleagues instructed him that Muqeddem was arrested on suspicion of non secular radicalization for advising his mates to not drink or smoke at an occasion previous to 2016.
Initially, he was “educated” in a camp for 2 years, however in 2019, he was sentenced and transferred to jail, they mentioned.
“The explanation for arrest is that he stopped others from smoking and consuming,” mentioned the officer. “He’s not a non secular determine.”
Extremist behaviors
Abstaining from alcohol is one in every of 75 totally different actions and behaviors recognized by the Chinese language authorities as an indication of potential non secular extremism. It’s listed in brochures distributed in some elements of Xinjiang to coach the general public on the right way to determine excessive non secular actions.
It is usually a trigger for jailing Uyghurs, who as Muslims abstain from consuming alcohol, as half of a bigger effort by Beijing to eradicate Uyghur tradition and faith.
Xaneriq village consists of 23 smaller communities with a complete inhabitants of 31,000 individuals, averaging round 1,400 individuals in every neighborhood.
About 800 individuals dwell in Tawaqchi neighborhood, of which greater than 100 had been in jail, with some serving indefinite sentences in internment camps, the Uyghur expatriate mentioned.
Since 2017, six others imprisoned had been launched useless, he mentioned, although RFA couldn’t independently affirm this.
Muqeddem’s launch has supplied some hope to others from the village’s Tawaqchi neighborhood nervous out the destiny of their imprisoned kin, the expat mentioned.
However as a result of the butcher was thought-about to have dedicated one of many mildest “crimes” amongst these arrested, his launch additionally brought about concern in regards to the destiny of these serving sentences for extra critical offenses, he added.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
