A Uyghur prison guard has been sentenced to seven years in jail for divulging information about the condition of prominent Uyghur political prisoner Ilham Tohti, people with knowledge of the situation said.
Gopur Abdurreshit, 51, was arrested on Feb. 1 for disclosing information about Tohti, an economist and professor who is serving a life sentence on separatism-related charges, said a person familiar with the matter who declined to be identified for fear of reprisals.
Tohti, now 54, taught economics at Central University for Nationalities in Beijing. Some of his research focused on Han Chinese-Uyghur relations, and he advocated for the implementation of greater regional autonomy in Xinjiang, where 12 million Uyghurs live.
Authorities arrested Tohti in January 2014 and prosecutors accused him of promoting Uyghur independence. After a two-day show trial, a court sentenced him to life in prison in September of that year.
Little has been known about Tohti’s condition since his family last saw him in 2013 or communicated with him in 2017.
Solitary confinement
Abdurreshit, who worked at Prison No. 1 in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, oversaw Tohti for six years, said Abduweli Ayup, founder of Uyghur Hjelp, a Norway-based nonprofit organization, also known as Uyghuryar, that documents Uyghurs who have been arrested and imprisoned.
During that time, he revealed information about Tohti’s condition to others, including details of his solitary confinement, his limited exposure to sunlight for just 15 minutes per week, and news about his deteriorating health, Ayup said.
“Gopur communicated information about Ilham Tohti’s deteriorating health, including his white hair,” Ayup said.
A police officer who declined to give his name so he could speak openlysaid Abdurreshit warned other inmates that Tohti had been put in solitary confinement for violating prison rules.
That information reached the relatives of those inmates, raising wider concern about Tohti’s well-being.
Authorities arrested Abdurreshit for “intentionally spreading sensitive and negative information,” Ayup said.
Another police officer in Korla, Abdurreshit’s hometown, who received his verdict document, told Radio Free Asia that he relayed the court ruling and sentence to the guard’s family, though he did not know the full reason for his arrest.
“There are rumors that he advised other inmates to learn from Ilham Tohti’s mistakes and warned them to follow orders to avoid trouble,” he said.
Since Abdurreshit’s arrest, authorities have been monitoring his parents and younger brother, he added.
Don’t share secrets
A prison supervisor declined to answer questions about Abdureshit, but said there wasan ongoing discussion about “not sharing secrets and learning from his mistakes.”
Abdurreshit joined the military in the mid-1990s and attended a military academy in Urumqi, called Wulumuqi in Chinese, Ayup said. After retiring, he became a police officer and began working at the Prison No. 1 in Urumqi.
“The majority of the officers are Chinese, and he is the only Uyghur officer who has remained for an extended period,” Ayup told RFA.
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Human rights groups and U.S. lawmakers have repeatedly demanded that Beijing free Tohti, one of the most well-known Uyghur political prisoners.
This month, Amnesty International called onChinese authorities to release Tohti during the Mid-Autumn Festival,celebrated in China as a time for family reunions.
Since his imprisonment, Tohti has received several international awards, including the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize and the Sakharov Prize. Earlier this year, two U.S. lawmakers nominated Tohti for the Nobel Peace Prize. U.S. lawmakers also nominated him for the same prize in 2019.
Tohti’s daughter, Jewher llham, who lives in the United States, told RFA in July that her family has not received news about his health since they last communicated with him in 2017.
She said the international community should not forget about her father whose case was “one of the first and one of the harshest cases” of Uyghurs being arrested and jailed.
“By supporting my father’s release, I believe it will help bring hope to the Uyghur community who are deeply traumatized and devastated,” she said.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.