No word has been received about her children, who were with her when she was detained.<\/p>\n
2015-06-26<\/span><\/p>\n A young ethnic Uyghur woman detained by Chinese police in February while attempting to flee the country to join her husband in Turkey has died in police custody in her native Xinjiang, according to sources in the region and in exile.<\/p>\n Tursungul, 32 and described as healthy before she was taken into custody, died shortly after being taken to the Shaptol Township police station in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture\u2019s Peyziwat (Jiashi) county, a Uyghur living in Turkey told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service, citing sources in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n \u201cShe died within a week and was buried somewhere by the police,\u201d said the man, who had successfully escaped to Turkey with Tursungul\u2019s husband some time before.<\/p>\n \u201cAuthorities told her relatives that she had died suddenly due to heart failure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Hoping to be reunited with her husband, who had gone ahead of her to Turkey, Tursungul had traveled to southern China with her 15-year-old daughter and infant son, RFA\u2019s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n \u201cThey hid in one place after another, watching for an opportunity to cross the border,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n ‘She died so young’<\/b><\/p>\n Tursungul was detained by police in February in an area bordering southern China\u2019s Guangdong province, the source said, adding that after being held and questioned for about a month, she was taken to her hometown of Shaptol by officers from the Peyziwat County Police Bureau.<\/p>\n \u201cShe died so young,\u201d the source said, adding that neither he nor her husband have received word about the fate of their children from their sources in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know if they are alive or not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The couple\u2019s 16-year-old son was detained by police in Shaptol in January and is also missing, he said.<\/p>\n Though news of Tursungul\u2019s death was first received in March, reporting on the case was briefly delayed owing to concerns for the safety of sources in her native county.<\/p>\n Reached for comment, officers of the Shaptol Township Police Station and other local authorities refused to speak about the case, with one township official telling RFA, \u201cThis is not my responsibility. Don\u2019t ask me this kind of question.\u201d<\/p>\n Uyghur exiles and rights groups have frequently criticized Chinese authorities\u2019 heavy-handed rule inXinjiang\u2014including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people\u2014which they say has forced hundreds to flee abroad, often through Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n Chinese authorities have meanwhile blamed an upsurge of violence in Xinjiang since 2012 on terrorists and Islamist insurgents seeking to establish an independent state.<\/p>\n Reported and translated by Eset Sulaiman for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No word has been received about her children, who were with her when she was detained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-1912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1912"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=1912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}