This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.
Two American officials called for China to release a Uyghur entrepreneur who recently marked his 40th birthday in prison, where is he serving a 15-year sentence for “inciting ethnic discrimination and ethnic hatred.”
“Ekpar Asat will spend his 40th birthday in prison today in Xinjiang, where he has been incarcerated unjustly 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, weeks after returning to his home in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, from the United States where he participated in the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, a prestigious professional exchange program.
He has been held in solitary confinement since he was moved to a prison in Aksu prefecture in January 2019.
Burns said Asat’s conviction was but “one example among a sea of judicial tragedies that has placed thousands of innocent Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities behind bars in Xinjiang amid the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity.”
The ambassador called on China to immediately release Asat and others arbitrarily detained in Xinjiang and throughout China.
Asat was also a philanthropist and social media platform developer. He became a household name among Uyghurs after he developed Bagdax, a social media platform for Uyghurs in China, which had more than 100,000 users.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, also spoke out on X, saying Asat was targeted because of his Uyghur ethnicity. “He shouldn’t spend another day — let alone another birthday — behind bars. He must be released.”
Asat’s older sister, Rayhan, a human rights lawyer and senior legal and policy advisor at the Washington-based Atlantic Council, said she appreciated demands by Burns, Van Hollen and the State Department to release her brother.
“Eight years and nine months is too long a time for an innocent person’s life to be wasted in the camp,” she told Radio Free Asia. “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
In February 2016, Asat traveled to the U.S. for three weeks of journalism training as part of his acceptance into the State Department program, to which he had applied at the encouragement of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
While he was in the U.S., he also met twice with Rayhan, who was enrolled in a Master of Laws program at Harvard University, in Washington and in New York. Asat planned to return to the U.S. with their parents to attend her graduation ceremony, but then he went missing.
In early 2020, the Chinese Embassy in Washington informed Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, that authorities sentenced Asat to 15 years in prison on charges of inciting ethnic discrimination and ethnic hatred.
Since news of his jailing, Rayhan Asat has advocated for her brother’s release and called on the State Department to take a more active role to free him.
On her brother’s birthday, she tweeted on X: “Today is my remarkable brother Ekpar Asat’s birthday. Another year he spends unjustly imprisoned in China’s camps, despite global calls and a U.N. ruling declaring his detention arbitrary. Each day, he holds onto hope for justice. This year, I manifest his freedom. Join me.”
Asat’s detention violates both Chinese laws and international conventions, said Uyghur activist Abduweli Ayup, founder of Uyghur Hjelp, a Norway-based Uyghur advocacy and aid organization which maintains a list of detained Uyghur intellectuals.
He said he wished that “people like Ekpar, who worked to preserve Uyghur language, culture and identity — those who fought to keep the Uyghur voice alive — won’t have to suffer unjustly in prisons.”
Rushan Abbas, executive committee chair of the World Uyghur Congress and executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs, said securing Asat’s release, along with that of her sister, Gulshan Abbas, a retired doctor abducted over six years ago and later imprisoned in retaliation for the outspoken advocacy of her siblings abroad, is a crucial first step toward freeing all unjustly detained 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.
