Photo courtesy of a family member
Chinese authorities have sentenced the brother and sister of a prominent exiled Uyghur scholar and linguist to several years in jail in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), government and police officials in the region told RFA last month.
The confirmation of the sentence comes on the heels of an RFA report confirming that scholar Abduweli Ayup’s niece, Mihray Erkin, had died at the Yanbulaq internment camp while being investigated by state security police in Kashgar (in Chinese, Kashi) prefecture.
Abduweli Ayup is the founder of Uyghur Hjelp, a Norway-based Uyghur advocacy and aid organization which maintains a list of detained Uyghur intellectuals.