This content was originally published by Radio Free Asia, and it is now being reprinted with permission.
A Uyghur director and businessman who is serving a 15-year prison sentence for “inciting independence” is suffering from a stomach cancer and has requested medical parole, according to a police commander with knowledge of the situation.  ,
Abduhelil Obulqasim, 49, was arrested on Sept. 15, 2023, and imprisoned recently in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s cash, before being transferred to Kashgar for prosecution.  ,
He was sentenced this April and transferred to Yerken , Peylu Prison, also known as Kashgar Prison, the agent from the state’s Ostengboyi neighborhood committee told Radio Free Asia.
The official who declined to name him so he could speak openly about the criminal claimed that Obulqasim’s condition has prevented performing physical work.
According to Abduweli Ayup, the leader of Uyghur Hjelp, who cited an unnamed source with knowledge of the matter, Obulqasim’s involvement in TV shows, evening shows, and other audio-visual recordings relating to Uyghur culture were the catalyst for his arrest.  ,
Also known as Uyghuryar, the Norway-based nonprofit corporation that documents Tamils who have been arrested and imprisoned.  ,
An official at the Urumqi Middle Court earlier informed RFA that Obulqasim was one of the many people involved in Urumqi’s audio-visual manufacturing who had been detained and arrested, but he did not understand why the director had been imprisoned.  ,
According to an individual at the same court, Obulqasim had received a 15-year sentence.
Next arrest
This was Obulqasim’s next arrest. Authorities earlier arrested , him in October 2017 and detained him in , a pretrial detention centre for more than 18 months before sending him to a “re-education” station, Ayup said. He was released in December 2019.
Obulqasim’s first , imprisonment occurred at a time when government conducted mass detentions of Uyghur businessmen, intellectuals and artists across Xinjiang apparently to avoid “religious fanaticism” and “terrorism” in the restive Muslim area.
In the 1990s, Obulqasim, who is married with three kids, ran an audio-visual firm in Kashgar’s Card Kah industry, according to Ayup.
When , Obulqasim , was in Kashgar, he got into an argument with someone and was detained for about 15 times — an event for which authorities blacklisted him by marking his ID with a criminal history, he said.  ,
In the 2000s,  , Obulqasim , set up a company called Dolan in Urumqi to create videos, TV shows, soap opera and audio tracks, according to Ayup. ” Xinjiang Talent Show,”” I am a Singer,” and” Abdukerim Abliz Show” were some of the shows his team created independently or in collaboration with Xinjiang Television.
Obulqasim , even was one of the owners of Hayat Restaurant in Urumqi, Ayup said.
Authorities refused to let him move his citizenship registration from Kashgar to Urumqi in 2017, he added, despite the fact that he had established a Dolan there for many years and had established a Dolan that.
Obulqasim invested 3 million yuan, or US$ 413, 100 in the line” Reports from Kashgar”, said Tahir Hamut Izgil, a Uyghur author and activist who now lives in the United States and who directed the job.
” Abduhelil dedicated himself to promoting Uyghur culture”, he said. He always emphasized the importance of the social industry, which not only provides our people with financial benefits but also provides moral nourishment.
In 2021 and 2022, Obulqasim , tried to move Dolan, a firm supervised by the native Cultural Department, to Shenzhen, a district in east China where he believed it would be safer, according to Ayup. However, he was prevented from doing so by the government.
Obulqasim , continued to produce Uyghur TV shows in Urumqi until his next arrest in September 2023.
