Police in Xinjiang refuse to allow family visits for a webmaster held in a pre-Ramadan crackdown.<\/p>\n
2017-02-03<\/p>\n
Chinese authorities have rejected a request for a visit by the terminally ill mother of a webmaster for a popular Uyghur website who has been held incommunicado since his arrest in March, RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service has learned.<\/p>\n
Tursunjan Memet was one of at least five bloggers and website administrators arrested last year in a crackdown on popular Uyghur websites before the month-long Islamic fasting month of Ramadan.<\/p>\n
Memet, an active blogger and one the chief administrators for the Misranim website, was detained on March 29 when authorities took him from his house in Korla (in Chinese, Kuerle), the capital city of Bayingholin in the Mongol Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang, his father told RFA.<\/p>\n
Memet Qari told RFA that six plainclothes police came to their home, arrested his son, and confiscated some of his books and his desktop computer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they left, they warned us: \u2018Don\u2019t say anything about the detention of Tursunjan. Don\u2019t say anything to anybody, even your close relatives. Keep silent. Otherwise, it will not be good for your son and your family\u2019,\u201d he told RFA.<\/p>\n
Since the arrest, the elder Memet and his wife have been unable to talk to their son, even though Tursunjan\u2019s mother is terminally ill, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy wife, who is on her deathbed, told me that she wanted to speak with our son,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is her final request. I am so sorry. I called several times and told them of my wife\u2019s final request, but the Aksu police flatly refused to allow it.\u201d<\/p>\n
To Chinese authorities in Aksu, Tursunjan Memet is a criminal, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTuyghun Juzhang, the deputy director of Aksu prefecture\u2019s security bureau, told me without mercy: \u2018Your son is a political prisoner. He is accused of the crime of instigating ethnic hatred and separatism. None of your family members, not even your sick wife, can meet or speak with your son until he is taken to trial\u2019,\u201d he told RFA.<\/p>\n
Along with Memet, police also detained Ablimit Ghojabdulla, Omerjan Hesen, Ababekri Muhtar, and Akbarjan Eset in the crackdown.<\/p>\n
Muhtar is the founder of the Misranim website and is a well-known social activist. Eset is the founder of the popular Uyghur website Baghdax.<\/p>\n
Both were both detained by police before the Ramadan month that ran last year from June 6 to July 5. Muhtar was released later in the summer. Iit is unclear if Eset is still in custody.<\/p>\n
Cases linked<\/strong><\/p>\n Hesen was detained by Chinese police in Aksu prefecture in March 2016. A native of Aksu, he worked as journalist, writer, and translator at the radio and television station in Aksu and was an official in Aksu\u2019s forestry bureau.<\/p>\n Hesen is well-known as a writer and social activist in Xinjiang\u2019s Uyghur community.<\/p>\n On May 31, he was expelled from the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and removed from his position for \u201cbreaking party discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n The party\u2019s expulsion announcement accused Hesen of publishing essays attacking the CCP and the government\u2019s ethnic and religious policies.<\/p>\n \u201cIn his writings, he distorted the history of Xinjiang in order to instigate ethnic hatred and attack China\u2019s unity and territorial integrity,\u201d the notice said.<\/p>\n Memet Qari told RFA that his son and Hesen are still being held in Aksu Prefecture\u2019s central detention center.<\/p>\n \u201cMy son Tursunjan\u2019s case is linked with Omerjan Hesen,\u201d he said. \u201c\u201cThe writer\u2019s penname is \u2018Bozqir,\u2019 and he and my son have been held at the Aksu central detention center since last year.\u201d<\/p>\n The elder Memet told RFA that the authorities \u201ctold me that my son has a lose relationship with Omerjan Hesen.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey explained to me that my son had helped to publish a paper on the Misranim website written by Omerjan Hesen Bozqir,\u201d he added. \u201cAccording to their explanation, Omerjan Hesen\u2019s paper instigated ethnic hatred and separatism.\u201d<\/p>\n Rights groups accuse Chinese authorities of heavy-handed rule in Xinjiang, including violent police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people.<\/p>\n China regularly vows to crack down on what it calls the \u201cthree evils\u201d of terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n But experts outside China say that Beijing has exaggerated the threat from Uyghur separatists, and that domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence that has left hundreds dead since 2012.<\/p>\n Reported and translated by Eset Sulaiman for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Police in Xinjiang refuse to allow family visits for a webmaster held in a pre-Ramadan crackdown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-3372","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\/3372","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=3372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3372"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=3372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}