UHRP Deeply Concerned Over Reported 11-Year Sentence of Uyghur Singer Ablajan Ayup
December 8, 2022 | 7:00 a.m. EST
For Immediate Release
Contact: Omer Kanat +1 (202) 790-1795, Peter Irwin +1 (646) 906-7722
The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) demands Chinese authorities disclose the whereabouts and alleged charges brought against Uyghur singer Ablajan Ayup, following reports of his sentencing.
“Sentencing someone like Ablajan to more than a decade in prison demonstrates how far the Chinese government is willing to go to crush Uyghur cultural expression,” said UHRP Executive Director, Omer Kanat. “He must be released from whatever spurious charges were brought against him.”
The Human Rights Defenders Information Center (维权网) issued a notice on December 2, stating that the well-known Uyghur pop singer, Ablajan Ayup, was sentenced to 11 years in prison on unclear charges.
Ablajan was initially detained in Sanju Village of Hotan’s Guma County in March 2018 and taken to an internment camp. The Human Rights Defenders Information Center report notes that he was sentenced in December 2018 by the Hotan City District Court.
In a 2017 interview with the BBC, Ablajan publicly expressed his hope to build bridges between Han and Uyghur cultures in China.
Ablajan’s arrest and imprisonment is part of a pattern of systematic persecution of Uyghur musicians, artists, and other cultural figures. UHRP documented many of these cases in a report from 2021, The Disappearance of Uyghur Intellectual and Cultural Elites: A New Form of Eliticide, which recorded over 300 instances of internment, imprisonment, or otherwise forcible disappearance of intellectual and cultural producers.
Several cases of targeted intellectual and cultural producers have received wide coverage in the international press, such as Uyghur folklore expert Dr. Rahile Dawut, geographer and former Xinjiang University President Tashpolat Teyip, prominent Uyghur scholar and poet Dr. Abduqadir Jalaleddin, and former Xinjiang Medical University President Halmurat Ghopur.
The government’s attack on elites has been a critical weapon in a multi-pronged and brutal campaign of social re-engineering in the Uyghur homeland, and amounts to clear evidence of the government’s intent to destroy Uyghur cultural identity by imposing total control over intellectual and cultural production.
Read more:
On Human Rights Day UHRP Calls for the Release of Hundreds of Uyghur Intellectuals & Elites, December 10, 2021
312 Persecuted Uyghur Intellectuals and Artists Highlighted in New UHRP Research, December 8, 2021
Report: The Persecution of the Intellectuals in the Uyghur Region: Disappeared Forever? October 22, 2018
Report: Extracting Cultural Resources: The Exploitation and Criminalization of Uyghur Heritage, June 12, 2018