According to reports, an Uyghur woman abducted from her home in China’s Xinjiang region in the middle of the night more than four years ago was sentenced to 14 years in prison for providing Islamic instruction to children in her neighbourhood and hiding copies of the Quran.
Hasiyet Ehmet, aged 57 and a native of Manas (Manasi) county in Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang, has not been heard from since she was kidnapped by Chinese officials in May 2017.
After RFA (Radio Free Asia) first reported on Hasiyet’s case, a source with knowledge of the situation told RFA’s Uyghur Service that authorities have sentenced the woman to 14 years in prison — seven for teaching the Quran and giving religious lessons to local children and another seven years for hiding two copies of the sacred text during a period when police began confiscating religious books from Manas county residents.
According to sources tracking the incident, officers from the county’s No. 3 police station had stormed into Hasiyet’s home and placed a black hood over her head, ignoring her plea to put on different clothing or fetch her medicine before taking her away. Hasiyet Ehmet was sentenced to 14 years in prison, according to a Manas county court official.
“It was because of teaching kids the Quran and hiding two copies of Quran when authorities were confiscating them, and later getting caught,” the official said. Hasiyet’s spouse was convicted of “separatism” charges and sentenced to life in prison in 2009, nine years before her arrest.
Hasiyet had stopped teaching children two years before her arrest because of health problems and had refrained from attending public events, but still, she was arrested and punished.
Persecution of Uyghur Muslims in China
For years, Chinese authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have tortured a number of Uyghur Muslims as part of a campaign to monitor, control, and assimilate members of the Islamic community in an effort to stop religious extremism and terrorist activities.
Since 2017, 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities are reported to have been incarcerated in a network of detention centres in Xinjiang. Beijing has disputed numerous and documented complaints that it has abused Muslims in Xinjiang by claiming that the camps are vocational training institutes. The strategy of the Communist Party of China (CCP) is to strip Uyghurs of their religious and ethnic identity and assimilate them into the dominant Han Chinese ethnicity. While Uyghur Muslims are often subjected to re-educational programs, forced labour, and digital surveillance, their children are indoctrinated in orphanages.
Censorship, propaganda, and disinformation by Beijing to deny accusations of widespread mistreatment of Uyghurs
To counter damning international reports, the CCP censored all Western news detailing the atrocities perpetrated against the Uyghurs in the detention camps. Several international journalists who covered the Uyghurs’ captivity were expelled from China, while academics, activists, and survivors who tried to reveal China’s deception were ridiculed and hounded. Those who spoke out against the unlawful arrest of Uyghurs in China were either silenced or imprisoned.
The crackdown on Uyghur Muslims was followed by a propaganda effort in which detention camps were depicted as “vocational training” education centres, complete with staged media tours for official sources interviewing “graduates” who praised the system.
Simultaneously, the CCP’s disinformation arm swung into action, dismissing Uyghur persecution as a figment of Western fiction and sowing confusion about the size of the “education centres” and the abuses suffered by the detainees, while also portraying Beijing as a victim of violent extremism and Western propaganda.
Initially, the CCP kept its Xinjiang internment camps for Uyghur Muslims a secret. When word of their existence began to circulate in the international media, China’s immediate reaction was to deploy censorship to limit its dissemination in Chinese media while strongly denying their existence.
When overwhelming evidence to the opposite became clear, China reversed course and started a propaganda campaign claiming they were just “education centres” where the ignorant Uyghur people might learn useful skills.
The Taliban appraisal of China and disdain for Uyghurs
Soon after US forces left war-torn Afghanistan, the Taliban said that China is a “friend” of Afghanistan and that it hopes China would help in the country’s restoration.
Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesman, told the South China Morning Post that the extremist Islamic organisation currently controlled 85 percent of Afghan land and will ensure the safety of Chinese businessmen and employees.
During the interview, Shaheen stated that the Taliban had convinced China that it will not host Uyghur terrorists from China’s Xinjiang province, some of whom had previously fled to Afghanistan to avoid Chinese persecution.
China is concerned that, under Taliban administration, Afghanistan might become a base for the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a separatist group linked to Al-Qaeda that is conducting an insurgency in China’s Xinjiang autonomous region. Uyghur Muslims live in the northwest Xinjian area, which shares an 8-kilometer border with Afghanistan.
