A Uyghur college instructor charged in 2018 with four different "crimes" amid a crackdown by authorities on Uyghur educators and intellectuals is serving a 25-year sentence in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), sources in the region said.

The detention of Shawkat Abdulla first came to light two years ago when his younger brother, Parhat Abdulla, who lives in Norway, reported Shawkat's sentencing to the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database — a Norway-based project that records disappeared and extrajudicially detained Uyghurs in the XUAR. Few other details about his case were available, however.

RFA's Uyghur Service, which has been investigating the case over the past two years, recently learned further details about Shawkat's arrest and sentencing through sources in the XUAR.

According to the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database, Shawkat graduated with a degree in biology from Xinjiang Normal University in 1993, after which he began working as an instructor at Ili Normal College, a teacher's college in Ghulja city (in Chinese, Yining) in the Ili Kazakh (Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture. During the course of his 25-year career, he served in both academic and administrative capacities.

But authorities deemed Shawkat, who had received praise from the college's leaders in the past, a "suspect" in the summer of 2018 as they rounded up Uyghur educators and other intellectuals and took him away to "study" — a euphemism for detention in a "re-education camp." Authorities apprehended Shawkat in the middle of the night, placing a black hood over his head as they led him away.

Shawkat's family members did not know where he was being held and were unable to obtain information about him from relevant authorities in the prefecture. They went to the XUAR's capital Urumqi (Wulumuqi, in Chinese) to try to get information about his whereabouts, but did not find out anything.

Parhat Abdulla said he eventually learned from friends and acquaintances in Chinese provinces outside the XUAR that authorities had accused his brother of a series of "crimes" and sentenced him to prison.

Shawkat was widely known for his social activity and role as an organizer as well as for his accomplishments in the field of education, said a source familiar with the situation in Ghulja and the fate of Uyghur detainees there.

Government authorities also recognized these qualities in Shawkat, and for a time employed him as an administrative officer in the municipal branch of the Bureau of Education, said the source, who declined to be named.

But Shawkat's concern about "ethnic issues" concerning the Uyghurs while on the job displeased his Han Chinese superiors and colleagues at the bureau, and he was sent back to his former teaching position, the source said.

A 'sensitive' case

Authorities detained Shawkat during the early days of the mass internment campaign because he had expressed critical opinions and advocated for the protection of Uyghur schools when it came to the allocation of finances and facilities, this person said.

The "re-education camps" that China set up beginning in 2017 are believed to have housed 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslims, according to sources from the region. China says the camps are vocational training facilities set up to combat religious extremism and terrorism in the predominantly Muslim XUAR.

Authorities also have targeted Uygur educators at schools and other educational institutions in the region in an effort to wipe out Uyghur language and culture.

An Ili Normal College official refused to comment on Shawkat's case on the grounds that it was "sensitive," but he indirectly acknowledged that the instructor was being held in some form of state custody.

"We can't talk about this situation on the phone," he said. "It's sensitive for us. There's no way I can talk about it."

An official at the Bureau of Education in Ili prefecture said he was unable to give RFA any details about Shawkat when a reporter called to verify the information.

When RFA contacted the municipal branch of the education bureau in Ghulja for information about Shawkat, a female employee said her office was staffed entirely by ethnic Han Chinese.

A male employee at the Ghulja branch of the education bureau said all the employees were newly recruited young people and that they had no knowledge of what older individuals like Shawkat had done on the job.

The employee, who did not give his name, avoided answering questions when RFA pointed out that Shawkat was middle-aged and asked whether there was anyone by his name among former bureau workers who had been detained...RFA

https://www.crimeandmoreworld.com/new-details-emerge-about-uyghur-college-teacher-sentenced-in-chinas-xinjiang/

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