{"id":3848,"date":"2017-07-25T03:21:20","date_gmt":"2017-07-25T03:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2017\/07\/25\/china-detains-12-year-old-uyghur-boy-return-xinjiang-egypt\/"},"modified":"2017-07-25T03:21:20","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T03:21:20","slug":"china-detains-12-year-old-uyghur-boy-return-xinjiang-egypt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/china-detains-12-year-old-uyghur-boy-return-xinjiang-egypt\/","title":{"rendered":"China Detains 12-Year-Old Uyghur Boy on Return to Xinjiang From Egypt"},"content":{"rendered":"
RFA<\/a><\/div>\n
Authorities in China\u2019s northwest Xinjiang region forced a 12-year-old ethnic Uyghur boy to undergo political reeducation and have detained him since arresting his parents, who returned home from Egypt to \u201cregister\u201d themselves with the government nearly five months ago, according to official sources.<\/div>\n
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Thousands of Uyghurs, many of whom are students studying at Cairo\u2019s prestigious Al-Azhar Islamic University, have voluntarily traveled to Xinjiang from Egypt since the beginning of the year when Chinese authorities detained many of their relatives and threatened them with \u201csevere punishment\u201d if they did not return.<\/div>\n
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In February, Memet Abla, 39, and his wife Buzorigul Rishit, 36, took their 12-year-old son Hezritieli Memet home from Egypt to Yopurgha county, in Xinjiang\u2019s Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture, where they were promptly arrested by local authorities, two officials from the county\u2019s Yekshenbe Bazaar recently told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service.<\/div>\n
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With his parents in detention, Memet was placed in the custody of the local government for surveillance, according to Abduqadir Abdureyim, a police officer at the Yekshenbe Bazaar station.<\/div>\n
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\u201cThere are many from our village who have returned from Egypt, but I only remember one clearly\u2014a 12-year-old boy named Hezritieli Memet,\u201d Abdureyim said.<\/div>\n
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\u201cHe came back with his parents in February. His father\u2019s name is Memet Ablet. This family is from the 8th neighborhood of the No. 3 township in our village.\u201d<\/div>\n
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According to Abdureyim, Abla used to run a business in the Xinjiang capital Urumqi, but had relocated to Egypt late last year to undergo religious education.<\/div>\n
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\u201cThey stayed there for only three months and voluntarily returned following our government\u2019s call [for Uyghurs in Egypt] to return home and report themselves,\u201d he said.<\/div>\n
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\u201cI do not know where Memet Ablet and his wife are at the moment, but I know their son Hezritieli Memet had gone through political reeducation at the county Education Center. Then, he was turned over to the custody of the village authorities for detention.\u201d<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
The official reason for Abla and Rishit\u2019s arrests was not immediately clear.<\/div>\n
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Hesen Basit, party secretary of Yekshenbe Bazaar\u2019s No. 6 township, told RFA he couldn\u2019t confirm that Memet was being held, but said that the boy had been politically reeducated.<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
\u201cIf he is detained, it is probably to prevent him from talking about his overseas experiences or to find out what he saw in Egypt, in case he didn\u2019t disclose it to the authorities,\u201d he said.<\/div>\n
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Punished on return<\/div>\n
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Last week, an activist told RFA that more than 200 Uyghurs detained in Egypt for deportation to China are being held by the country\u2019s national intelligence service, and London-based rights group Amnesty International said the agency\u2019s involvement was a clear indication that Beijing had ordered the roundup.<\/div>\n
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The Uyghurs, many of them religious students at Al-Azhar, have been detained since July 4, rounded up in restaurants or at their homes, with others seized at airports as they tried to flee to safer countries, sources told RFA in earlier reports.<\/div>\n
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Dozens of Uyghurs are believed to have already been deported home to China, where rights groups say they face a serious risk of arbitrary detention and torture.<\/div>\n
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Media reports have quoted officials as denying that Egyptian authorities were targeting Uyghurs and saying that those arrested were brought in for \u201calleged irregularities in their residency papers,\u201d but Uyghur exile groups and students say the detentions were ordered by China on allegations that they had \u201cjoined extremist organizations.\u201d<\/div>\n
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In March, sources told RFA that 17 Uyghurs had been blacklisted and punished after returning to Kashgar\u2019s Yopurgha county from Egypt.<\/div>\n
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Chinese authorities detained the father and brother of one student who had yet to return to Yopurgha\u201422-year-old Ibrahim Memet\u2014in February as part of a bid to force him to return, his mother said at the time.<\/div>\n
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\u201cPolice told us to convince our son to return from Egypt, but we couldn\u2019t contact him,\u201d she said.<\/div>\n
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\u201cAs a result, my husband [Memet Naway] was detained in early February and, 20 days later, my older son [Turghun Memet] was as well. Currently, they are undergoing political reeducation at the county Education Center.\u201d<\/div>\n
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The ruling Chinese Communist Party blames some Uyghurs for a string of violent attacks and clashes in China in recent years, but critics say the government has exaggerated the threat from the ethnic group, and that repressive domestic policies are responsible for violence that has left hundreds dead since 2009.<\/div>\n
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 <\/p>\n

China regularly conducts \u201cstrike hard\u201d campaigns in Xinjiang, 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.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RFA Authorities in China\u2019s northwest Xinjiang region forced a 12-year-old ethnic Uyghur boy to undergo political reeducation and have detained him since arresting his parents, who returned home from Egypt…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-3848","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\/3848","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=3848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3848"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=3848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}