Authorities say the Aksu resident died of a heart attack, though family members and others believe he was tortured.<\/p>\n
2016-06-13<\/p>\n
A Uyghur man detained last year in northwestern China\u2019s Xinjiang region for watching a banned Islamic video on his cell phone has died in police custody, raising suspicions of torture at the hands of authorities, sources in the region and in exile say.<\/p>\n
Memet Ibrahm, who worked as a veterinarian and was aged about 40, was taken into custody on June 25, 2015 in Aksu (in Chinese, Akesu) prefecture, the Sweden-based East Turkestan Information Center said in a report released on May 12.<\/p>\n
He was moved to a detention center in Aksu\u2019s Kuchar (Kuche) county in September, and was reported by authorities to have died of a heart attack at the end of the year, according to the report.<\/p>\n
Speaking to RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service, Tohti Rozi\u2014village chief for Ibrahim\u2019s native Qitat village in the county\u2019s Alaqagha township\u2014said that county authorities had informed him of Ibrahim\u2019s death, telling him to order Ibrahim\u2019s family members not to conduct a funeral for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe police said that Memet Ibrahim had died of a heart attack, but no one in this county believes such simple explanations,\u201d Rozi said. \u201cThe police have given this explanation [for unexplained deaths] many times in recent years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably, the authorities refused to allow the family to perform a funeral ceremony so that they could keep Ibrahim\u2019s body away as much as possible from public view,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
‘I didn’t ask’<\/strong><\/p>\n Ekber Imin, chief of the veterinary hospital in Kanas village, where Ibrahim worked, told RFA that he knew that his colleague had been detained for watching \u201cillegal religious materials.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe police who handled his case came to my office to ask me what reading materials he was usually interested in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Ibrahim\u2019s wife and mother had also visited him at his work place and said that Ibrahim had died under torture, Imin said.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t ask how he had been tortured, or how they came to know about it, because nothing I could learn about this would help them deal with what they were facing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Also speaking to RFA, Kanas village security chief Eziz Qasim said that he had been assigned to watch Ibrahim\u2019s family home for 15 days after his body was returned.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t allow anyone except for direct family members to visit the house,\u201d Qasim said.<\/p>\n \u201cLuckily we didn\u2019t have to face any strong resistance to this, because of tightened security measures in our township.\u201d<\/p>\n Though Ibrahim\u2019s brother-in-law and the imam at his mosque were allowed to view Ibrahim\u2019s body following its return one week after his death, \u201cneither of them said anything about the body showing signs of torture,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n China has vowed to crack down on what it calls religious extremism in Xinjiang, and regularly conducts \u201cstrike hard\u201d campaigns including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material.<\/p>\n But experts outside China say Beijing has exaggerated the threat from Uyghur “separatists” and that domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence there that has left hundreds dead since 2012.<\/p>\n Reported and translated by Shohret Hoshur for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Authorities say the Aksu resident died of a heart attack, though family members and others believe he was tortured.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-2762","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\/2762","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=2762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2762"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=2762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}