URGENT ACTION

UYGHUR BUSINESSMAN IMPRISONED IN SECRET TRIAL
Abuduaini Kadier, a Uyghur businessman who was secretly tried and sentenced to seven years in prison, is believed to have been detained in connection with a 2016 holiday he took to Egypt in which he paid for several other Uyghurs’ air fare. No information about his condition or even the charges against him have been shared with his family to date, and without regular access to family and legal representation, there are grave concerns for Abuduaini Kadier’s condition and wellbeing.

TAKE ACTION: WRITE AN APPEAL IN YOUR OWN WORDS OR USE THIS MODEL LETTER

Director Wang Jiang
Prison Administration Bureau of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
No 380, Huanghe lu,Urumqi
830000, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
People’s Republic of China 

Dear Director Wang:	

I am writing to express my concern about Abuduaini Kadier (阿布都艾尼．卡德尔), a businessman in Kashgar, Xinjiang, who I just learned was secretly tried and sentenced to seven years in prison in July 2017. He is the father-in-law of Yiliyasijiang Reheman (依力亚斯江·热合曼), who went missing in July 2017 after the Egyptian government detained and handed over hundreds of Uyghurs to the Chinese government for repatriation.

Abuduaini Kadier is understood to be currently imprisoned in Yining Municipal Prison. However, his family members outside China have had no regular contact with him since he first went missing four years ago. It is believed that Abuduaini Kadier’s imprisonment is connected to his decision to go to Egypt on holiday in 2016 and his purchase of air tickets for other Uyghurs to accompany him. 

With no information about the charges against Abuduaini Kadier or the conditions under which he has been held, and without access to his family and a lawyer of his choice, I am deeply concerned about his wellbeing.

I call on you to:
•	Release Abuduaini Kadier unless there is sufficient, credible and admissible evidence that he committed an internationally recognized offence and is granted a fair trial in line with international standards;
•	Pending his release, allow him regular access to his family and a lawyer of his choice, and ensure he is not subjected to torture and other ill-treatment.

Yours sincerely,

Additional information

Abuduaini Kadier started an electric vehicles business in Kashgar, Xinjiang in 2007. Before he was sentenced in July 2017, he was reportedly put into a “transformation-through-education” facility between April and June 2017. There was no official information about his detention, about which his family only learned through a source in July 2017.
Abuduaini Kadier is also the father-in-law of Yiliyasijiang Reheman, who went missing in July 2017 while studying in Egypt. In July 2017, the Egyptian authorities started rounding up hundreds of Uyghur people in Egypt and handing them over to the Chinese government. Yiliyasijiang Reheman and his family tried to flee Egypt, but they didn’t make it onto the plane. He has not been seen or heard since and his wife believes that he was sent to a “transformation-through-education” facility.
Xinjiang is one of the most ethnically diverse regions in China. More than half of the region’s population of 22 million people belong to mostly Turkic and predominantly Muslim ethnic groups, including Uyghurs (around 11.3 million), Kazakhs (around 1.6 million) and other populations whose languages, cultures and ways of life vary distinctly from those of the Han who are the majority in “interior” China. 
In March 2017, the Xinjiang government enacted the “De-extremification Regulation” that identifies and prohibits a wide range of behaviours labelled “extremist”, such as “spreading extremist thought”, denigrating or refusing to watch public radio and TV programmes, wearing burkas, having an “abnormal” beard, resisting national policies, and publishing, downloading, storing, or reading articles, publications, or audio-visual materials containing “extremist content”. The regulation also set up a “responsibility system” for government cadres for “anti-extremism” work and established annual reviews of their performance. 
It is estimated that up to a million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim people have been held in the “transformation-through-education” centres. The Chinese authorities had denied the existence of such facilities until October 2018, when they began describing them as voluntary, free “vocational training” centres. They claim that the objective of this vocational training is to provide people with technical and vocational education to enable them to find jobs and become “useful” citizens. China’s explanation, however, contradicts reports of beatings, food deprivation and solitary confinement that have been collected from former detainees. 
China has rejected calls from the international community, including Amnesty, to allow independent experts unrestricted access to Xinjiang. Instead, China has made efforts to silence criticism by inviting delegations from different countries to visit Xinjiang for carefully orchestrated and closely monitored tours.
PREFERRED LANGUAGE TO ADDRESS TARGET: Chinese, English

PLEASE TAKE ACTION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE UNTIL: 20 July 2020 
Please check with the Amnesty office in your country if you wish to send appeals after the deadline.

NAME AND PREFFERED PRONOUN: [Abuduaini Kadier] (he/him)

And copies to:

HIS EXCELLENCY MR LIU XIAOMING
Embassy of the People's Republic of China
49-51 Portland Place W1B 1JL
020 7299 4049
Monday-Friday 09.00-12.30, 14.00-17.00
www.chinese-embassy.org.uk