Uyghur college student serving 13-year sentence for using VPN

A Uyghur university student named Mehmut Memtimin, who was arrested by police in northwest China’s Xinjiang region more than five years ago, is serving a 13-year prison sentence, a policeman involved in his detention said.

Their crime: using a virtual private network, or VPN, to bypass official Internet sensors and view “illegal information,” according to a police officer linked to Xinjiang University who asked to be identified only as Abduweli.

“The reason for his arrest was that he posed a threat to national security by using a VPN,” Abdulweli said. “He was sentenced to 13 years and is serving his sentence in Tumshuq prison,” in Maralbeshi county of Kashgar prefecture.

Memtimin was a computer science student at Xinjiang University’s Institute of Information and Technology in Urumqi.

His arrest came at a time when authorities were imprisoning Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in “re-education” camps and prisons for alleged extremist behavior, such as previous travel or contact abroad or religious activities. Many were imprisoned in Tumshuq prison.

Many Chinese citizens use VPNs to evade censors, but are rarely arrested and punished for doing so.

Memtimin was forcibly detained by police in his hometown of Qaghiliq, some 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) from Urumqi, according to information compiled by independent investigator Gene Bunin.

Bunin, who spent nearly five years in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region researching the Uyghur language, heads the Xinjiang Victims Databasea platform that collects records of Uyghurs and other Turkic minority peoples detained there.

Your information, based on data from the Xinjiang Police Archives leaked and publicly disclosed in 2022, indicates that Memtimin was arrested at noon on December 7, 2017.

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.