Tahir Imin, a 42-year-old Uyghur dissident living in the United States and a former political prisoner in China, tells VOA that he has just learned that six of his Xinjiang business associates have been convicted of try to divide the country.
“I learned from two sources that the verdicts, handed down in early 2024 by the Urumqi Intermediate People’s Court, were related to their relationship with me,” Immin told VOA. One got 15 years, while others got 12.
Issues in Xinjiang are tightly controlled, making it very difficult to get information about court cases. Imin – Washington-based founder The Uyghur era and a member of the Uyghur Human Rights Project in Washington – said his sources could not share the documents for fear of retaliation from the Chinese government. He said that among those accused is the nephew of a senior party official in Xinjiang.
Urumqi Central District is the capital of Xinjiang, home to about 12 million people, most of whom are Muslim Uyghurs. The US and other countries have accused China of genocide in Xinjiang, where more than 1 million Uyghurs are believed to be held in what Beijing describes as vocational training centers.
China says the measures are necessary to combat extremism, terrorism and separatism. Some people have been arrested because of their religion or their connections with people from overseas who speak out about China’s policies in Xinjiang.
Reached for comment on the case, Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA that he had not heard of the cases cited by Imin.
“China is a law-based country where laws must be followed and those who break the law must be held accountable,” Liu said in an email to VOA. “If the sentence is related to charges of ‘attempting to divide the country,’ please refer to Article 103 of the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China.”
Article 103 of China’s Criminal Law states that people who “organize, plan, or carry out a plan to divide the State or undermine national unity” face imprisonment for life or at least 10 years.
Sentences of 12 to 15 years for Imin’s former associates suggest they could have been charged under this article.
Not the first time
Imin believes the news about his former friends is part of China’s broader strategy of international pressure against activists like him.
He said that this is not the first time this has happened to him.
He said: “First, I found out that 28 members of my family were sentenced to prison because of their relationship with me. “I am very concerned about my daughter, who was forced to scold me, and my estranged wife, who was forced to divorce me.”
Immin told VOA that he has not heard from his wife or daughter in years and has no way of knowing if they are alive or free.
“That leaves me with a constant sense of guilt and regret,” he said.
Imn and six business partners – Ismail Kerim, Elqem Ilham, Dawut Osman, Yashiq Ahmed, Nurmemet Imin and Rashidin Gheyret – founded Xinjiang Ottuz Oghul Import and Export Trading Co., Ltd. in 2014.
Imin left China in March 2017, first moving to Israel before settling in Washington. After moving to the United States, he lost touch with his former colleagues and began to speak out against the alleged abuses in Xinjiang. As a result, his partners stopped meeting with him, leaving him unable to know what will happen to the company they once shared.
VOA was able to find information about his foreign firm on Chinese company research websites. According to Alibaba’s 1688 website, the company and its partners registered with the Urumqi Municipal Administration for Market Regulation on May 14, 2014, and Tahir Imin was listed as the representative and chairman and other defendants. in administrative functions.
Imin said that his former friends all had separate businesses, and their joint venture was operating as a joint venture.
“We were all educated and focused on business and community development,” Imin said. “The motto of our company was development, cooperation and social responsibility.”
Family relationships
Ilham, one of the convicted former business associates, is the nephew of Kaiser Abdukerim, the current vice chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, according to Imin.
VOA could not confirm the relationship between Ilham and Abdukerim. Despite several calls to a number listed on the Xinjiang government website, the calls went unanswered.
Abdukerim has long been a vocal supporter of the Chinese government’s policies in Xinjiang. At the United Nations General Assembly in 2018, as president of Xinjiang Medical University, he defended the government’s policies, calling for social progress even as allegations of mass incarceration and human rights abuses continued. increase.
In March 2023, as vice chairman of Xinjiang, Abdukerim told CGTN that international criticism of Xinjiang was an attempt to interfere in China’s internal affairs.
Access is restricted
According to information collected by the Xinjiang Victims Database, which lists people affected by China’s policies in Xinjiang, all of Immin’s colleagues were arrested in July 2021 on charges of collusion. They later went to trial in March 2023. Immin’s news of their sentencing is the latest on their status.
According to Gene Bunin, curator of the Xinjiang Victims Database, access to court judgments and legal documents is severely restricted and the government now requires users who want to access them to use Chinese platforms such as WeChat or AliPay.
“One reason is that, even if they are available, they are [Chinese authorities] in general he did not put any of the hard cases, which are the majority of criminal cases for Xinjiang,” Bunin told VOA.
He said that in a study he conducted in 2018, only 7,000 out of 70,000 criminal cases in Xinjiang had convictions.
“This rate, of about 10%, was very low in the country, as in most provinces/districts at least 60-70% of the sentences were imposed,” said Bunin. “Of the 7,000 that appear, almost all of them were for common crimes that would be noticed anywhere in the world (drunk driving, theft, robbery, rape, murder, etc.) ), except for political/religious cases.”
According to a Human Rights Watch report released in 2022 that was based on Xinjiang government data, more than half a million people have been prosecuted since 2017.
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