Uyghur hatter and his wife confirmed to have died in prison in Xinjiang

A Uyghur hatter and his wife detained in 2017 amid mass arrests in Xinjiang of members of the majority Muslim minority group by Chinese authorities have been confirmed to have died in prison while serving their sentences, people with knowledge of the situation said. couple.

Haji’ahun and his wife Mehpiremhan, residents of Maralbeshi county in Kashgar prefecture, were each sentenced to 10 years in Tumshuq prison in 2019 for “illegal” religious activities, according to the sources.

The prison housed other people arbitrarily arrested during the 2017 crackdown on prominent and common Uyghurs alike, imprisoning them in “re-education” camps and prisons for alleged extremist behavior, such as previous travel or contacts abroad or religious activities.

China has been subjected to harsh international criticism for its serious abuses of the rights of predominantly Muslim Uyghurs, including forced labour.

The US government and several Western parliaments, including the German Bundestag, have declared the abuses to amount to genocide or crimes against humanity.

Tumshuq prison authorities released the bodies of several jailed Uyghurs who had secretly killed their families a week before Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, in late April, according to an émigré. of Maralbeshi in an earlier RFA report.

Based on that information, RFA confirmed that the body of the Uyghur motorcycle repairman Mettursun Metinyaz He was one of those returned to his relatives. The Maralbeshi County resident had been jailed in early 2017 for completing the hayythe Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, years before.

Maralbeshi police contacted by RFA also confirmed the return of the bodies of dead prisoners to their families a week before the Eid holiday, but said they did not know the exact number or causes of death.

An employee of a police station in Maralbeshi’s country, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said the number of inmates who have died in Tumshuq prison has been unusually high and that the hatter was among those who died. before Eid.

The staff member also said a rumor had been circulating that inmates who died before the holidays had eaten contaminated food at the prison, although RFA could not determine the accuracy of the information.

Another employee at a police station in Maralbeshi confirmed that Haji’ahun, who was 70, and his wife, who was 60, died together in prison where they had been serving time since their sentence in 2019.

“They were an old couple. They both passed away,” she said.

Translated by the Uyghur Service. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Paul Eckert.