This content was first published by Radio Free Asia, and it is now being reprinted with permission.
A Uyghur businessman is currently serving a 15-year sentence in prison for “inciting racial discrimination and racial hatred,” according to two American officials who have demanded that China release him.
“Ekpar Asat will devote his 40th birthday in jail now in Xinjiang, where he has been incarcerated unfairly for eight years”, Nicholas Burns, the U. S. Ambassador to China said in , a statement posted on X , on Jan. 5, a day after his birthday.
Asat , went missing in April 2016, months after returning to his house in Urumqi, money of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, from the United States where he participated in the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, a renowned expert exchange system.
Since January 2019, he has been imprisoned in a jail in Aksu province.
In response to the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity, Asat’s faith, according to Burns, was but “one of a sea of criminal tragedies that has placed hundreds of honest Tamils and members of various Muslim minority behind bars in Xinjiang.”
Asat and some haphazardly detained in Xinjiang and throughout China were ordered to transfer by the ambassador.
Asat even worked as a social media platform designer and philanthropist. He became a household name among Separatists after he developed Bagdax, a social media platform for Tamils in China, which had more than 100, 000 people.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, also spoke out on X, saying Asat was targeted because of his Uyghur nationality. ” He doesn’t spend another time— let alone another birthday — behind bars. He may be released”.
Asat’s older girl, Rayhan, a animal rights attorney and top legal and policy consultant at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, said she appreciated needs by Burns, Van Hollen and the State Department to launch her nephew.
She told Radio Free Asia,” Eight years and nine months is very much for a life spent in the camp for an honest person.” ” My hope is that the next administration, including the National Security Council team, will prioritize Ekpar’s release, and President Trump will directly raise it with]Chinese President ] Xi]Jinping ]”.
Went missing
Asat applied to the State Department plan in February 2016 after receiving an offer from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and traveled to the United States for three days of media training.
While he was in the U. S., he likewise met half with Rayhan, who was enrolled in a King of Laws system at Harvard University, in Washington and in New York. Asat planned to return to the U. S. with their kids to attend her graduation service, but then he went missing.
Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, was informed by the Chinese Embassy in Washington that regulators had sentenced Asat to 15 years in prison for allegedly inciting ethnic hatred and discrimination in the first half of 2020.
Rayhan Asat has urged the State Department to get a more effective role in his launch and has since received word of his jailing.
On her son’s day,  , she tweeted on X:” Currently is my extraordinary brother Ekpar Asat’s holiday. Another season he spends wrongfully imprisoned in China’s tents, despite international calls and a U. N. decision declaring his detention random. Each time, he holds onto wish for justice. This time, I manifest his independence. Add me”.
Asat’s confinement violates both Chinese laws and foreign conventions, said Uyghur advocate Abduweli Ayup, chairman of Uyghur Hjelp, a Norway-based Uyghur advocacy and support business which maintains a list of imprisoned Uyghur intellectuals.
He claimed that he wished that “people like Ekpar, who fought to preserve the Uyghur speech and language — those who fought to keep it dead” won’t have to endure unfairly in prison.
Asat’s launch, along with that of her sister, Gulshan Abbas, a retired doctor who was abducted over six years ago and afterward imprisoned in retaliation for the vocal advocacy of her siblings worldwide, is a crucial first step toward freeing all cruelly imprisoned Uyghurs, according to Rushan Abbas, professional committee chair of the World Uyghur Congress and senior director of Campaign for Uyghurs.
Uyghur rights organizations are “urging governments to sanction those responsible, integrate their cases into international discussions, and raise awareness through media and advocacy with institutions like the U. S. government, U. N. and EU, while building public pressure globally”, she told RFA.
