Uyghur student Atikem Rozi was sentenced in 2014 to four years in prison on charges of separatism for contributing to the Xinjiang news website Uyghurbiz. She was being held in Xinjiang Women’s Prison in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, but CPJ has been unable to determine whether she was released on schedule in 2018.
In 2021, she appeared wearing a prison uniform in a propaganda video on the state-run English-language China Global Television Network called “The War in the Shadows: Challenges of Fighting Terrorism in Xinjiang.”
2014 XINJIANG CRACKDOWN
At least seven students were detained in early 2014 and charged with participating in alleged separatist activities led by Ilham Tohti, a scholar and the founder of Uyghurbiz, during a secret trial held that November, according to Tohti’s lawyer Li Fangping and a post by Uyghurbiz’s official Twitter account (Twitter later changed its name to X). Uyghurbiz, also known as Uighur Online, which Tohti started in 2006, was published in Chinese and Uyghur, and focused on social issues.
Tohti was sentenced to life imprisonment. The seven students were sentenced to between three and eight years in prison each, according to the Global Times, a state-run newspaper.
Two, Akbar Imin and Mutellip Imin, were released in 2019 and 2021, respectively, according to Chinese-language human rights news website China Political Prisoner Concern, but the status of the others remained unclear, and several human rights organizations believe the students could be among those sent to political re-education camps or kept in prison after their sentences ended.
“It’s hard to say what happens to people after sentences end,” Gene A. Bunin, curator of the Xinjiang Victims Database, told CPJ. “A lot of people were re-sentenced for ‘disturbing supervision order.’ Those who got out in 2017-2018 were often forwarded to camp.”
As of late 2024, CPJ could not determine Rozi’s health or whereabouts, or whether she had legal representation.
The Xinjiang governmental service and the Xinjiang region prison administration did not respond to CPJ’s requests for comment sent in late 2024.