To Whom It May Concern, What Follows Is Public Testimony Data Exported
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To whom it may concern, What follows is public testimony data exported from the Xinjiang Victims Database (shahit.biz) on Wed, 29 Sep 2021 07:11:10 +0000. A total of 160 victims with the following criteria is considered: List: Deaths (2017-) The vast majority of testimonies presented come with supplementary materials - video, audio, pictures, and documents - the links to which are included here and which also may be consulted by accessing the testimonies via the original interface at www.shahit.biz. In compiling this information, all efforts have been made to faithfully and accurately convey that which has been put forth by the testifier. In many cases, the information was imported from public sources. In others, it was submitted to us directly by the testifier. Despite our best efforts and most professional intentions, it is inevitable that some human error is nevertheless present. Many testimonies were inputted by non-native English speakers and still require proofreading. Finally, the majority of these testimonies have not gone through rigorous corroboration and as such should not be treated as fact. We hereby leave the way in which this data will be used to the reader's discretion. Sincerely, the shahit.biz team 167. Qaliolla Tursyn (哈力尤拉·吐尔逊) Chinese ID: 652522194905040055 (Dorbiljin) Basic info Age: 71 Gender: M Ethnicity: Kazakh Likely current location: Tacheng Status: sentenced (20 years) When problems started: Jan. 2018 - Mar. 2018 Detention reason (suspected|official): challenging authority|--- Health status: deceased Profession: law Testifying party (* direct submission) Testimony 1: Berikbol Muqatai, a Kazakhstan citizen since 2008. (brother-in-law) Testimony 2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|16|20|24: Akikat Kaliolla, a musician from Dorbiljin County, now a Kazakhstan citizen. (son) Testimony 11*|12*: Akikat Kaliolla, as reported by Gene A. Bunin. (son) Testimony 13: Akikat Kaliolla, as reported by Agence France-Presse. (son) Testimony 14: Akikat Kaliolla, as reported by Global Voices. (son) Testimony 15|21: Akikat Kaliolla, as reported by Apple Daily. (son) Testimony 17|23: Akikat Kaliolla, as reported by Radio Free Asia Mandarin. (son) Testimony 18: Akikat Kaliolla, as reported by China Aid. (son) Testimony 19: Akikat Kaliolla, as reported by The Believer. (son) Testimony 22: Akikat Kaliolla, as reported by National Public Radio. (son) About the victim Qaliolla Tursyn was a legal consultant and a retired cadre from the Culture and Sports Department (文体局). Being literate in Chinese, he often helped people file legal complaints. Address: 3 South Progress Road, Dorbiljin Municipality, Dorbiljin County, Xinjiang (新疆额敏县额敏镇前进南路3号). Chinese passport: E23021968. Victim's location According to what Akikat has heard, he may have been in Wusu Prison at the time of his death [as he had been sentenced and this is generally where people from Tacheng with heavy sentences are sent]. When victim was detained First detained on March 15, 2018 and held in some sort of detention. Akikat reports that his father was allegedly taken to a hospital in handcuffs in April 2018 [before presumably being sent back to detention]. Akikat mentions that his father was held in various detention facilities, including the camp in Turgun Village, before being transferred to Wusu Prison. That Qaliolla had been sentenced Akikat only learned in late January 2019, when Akikat's wife was told by Chinese consular officials in Kazakhstan that the victim had been sentenced to 20 years in prison [in his interview to The Believer, Akikat says that they got an official letter stating that he had been sentenced in October 2018 - this may be a mistake]. Dorbiljin County authorities allegedly reported that Qaliolla died on December 5, 2020 (another source reports this as December 14), though Akikat does not believe this, thinking that his father had died long before. Akikat alleges that his father was buried at Wusu Prison, instead of his body being returned to his family. Likely (or given) reason for detention At the beginning of March 2018, local authorities in Dorbiljin County beat to death a 43-year-old ethnic Kazakh man named Zhumakeldi Ahai {2841}, after which Zhumakeldi's relatives begged for Akikat's father to write a formal complaint, which the latter did and sent to Beijing. However, the letter was intercepted and the victim arrested. Victim's status Reported to have died in custody. The alleged official claim was that he died of coronary heart disease. (Even prior to his detention, Qaliolla Tursyn suffered from liver cirrhosis, heart disease, and rheumatic arthritis. He had difficulty walking, his teeth had all fallen out, and he had previously had surgery on his leg for a comminuted fracture. According to what Akikat heard, he has been tortured in detention, which is likely to have made these conditions worse.) How did the testifier learn about the victim's status? Akikat has learned about his father's condition from numerous sources, some of which are firsthand but which he cannot disclose for fear of their safety being compromised [they have, however, been verified by shahit.biz staff]. Some information has been obtained from people having returned to Kazakhstan from Dorbiljin County. The fact that Akikat's father was sentenced to 20 years was reported to Akikat's wife by the officials at the Chinese consulate in Almaty orally. There is still no written verdict. In a mid-2020 call with Akikat, his mother told him that while she was in a holding cell - before being officially detained - she heard the authorities beat Qaliolla Tursyn until he screamed. Venera yelled at the authorities, telling them not to hit him, while one of Akikat's older brothers shouted "Stop! You're going to kill my father!" Chinese authorities in Dorbiljin County have allegedly confirmed Qaliolla's death, but it isn't clear who exactly confirmed the news and how. Additional information Because of the victim's complaint letter, his two sons were detained also and sent to camp. His wife was allegedly detained soon after for asking about their detention. All three were released at the end of December 2018. It is possible that the victim was subjected to forced labor at Wusu Prison [if he was held there], as the Zhongxin LLC (乌苏众鑫农工贸有限责任公司) is based there and labor has been documented at the facility. Media coverage of the story: https://www.yahoo.com/news/kazakh-families-torn-apart-chinas-xinjiang-crackdown-032511957.html https://globalvoices.org/2019/02/09/i-wont-stop-kazakh-man-seeks-justice-for-family-caught-in-chinas-xin jiang-crackdown/ https://uat-xinjiangcamps.appledaily.com/尋親者/阿黑哈提-哈力尤拉/全文 https://www.chinaaid.net/2018/07/blog-post_40.html https://hk.appledaily.com/news/20201227/25QBOW4MMFB5VC7FO5I2NR4M7Y/ https://www.npr.org/2021/03/03/973198171/family-disappears-amid-chinas-detention-of-mostly-ethnic-u yghurs https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/shaoshuminzu/ql2-10102019072505.html https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/shaoshuminzu/ql1-01072021075222.html Some court cases that the victim was involved in: https://susong.tianyancha.com/38d4abf8fe0848f293e91a77ba4301ee http://archive.is/DRaLf Akikat's story in The Believer (https://believermag.com/weather-reports-voices-from-xinjiang/): I’ll tell you a story that describes my father well. I met and fell in love with a girl from Kazakhstan. We planned to move there together and get married. I was living in China and we were both teaching at the music school in Ürümqi where we’d met. She was famous, actually, a famous traveling musician, at least in the world of traditional Kazakh music. I’d admired her long before we met. It was a dream to have such a girlfriend! Before the wedding, when it came time to celebrate the qyz uzatu, the girl’s farewell, we were still living in China. My father is old—he’s seventy now—and in bad health, so in the end he couldn’t come to Kazakhstan for the wedding. But he attended the first wedding, as we call it, the girl’s farewell, and as a gift for my wife-to-be he brought two small books on China’s Main Law and Criminal Law. Now you should memorize the laws of China, he told her. You are married to a Chinese citizen. Both of you must know the laws of China and Kazakhstan. You see, he was so confident in the law, in the Chinese judicial system, but in the end he experienced the full and exact nature of that system—he got it exactly. Before he retired, my father had worked for the Ministry of Culture. He was an educated man living in a place where the literacy rate was still low, and Chinese script in particular was not widely known. This was in Tacheng, which Kazakhs call Tarbagatai. In retirement, he spent his days helping people fill out papers in Chinese. Mostly, they were writing complaints. He wasn’t a lawyer but he knew the laws very well, so he helped people file complaints and petitions with local authorities. That’s just how he was. With us, he was strict but loving. Education was everything to him. After I was born, he never spent a night outside the home. He was at my side while I studied; my brothers too. He sent the three of us to the Chinese-language school. You have to study, he would tell us. You have to learn calligraphy. He taught us both Kazakh and Chinese script. He devoted himself entirely to raising us. When I first showed an interest in music, he bought the family a piano. If he didn’t have the money, he borrowed it. We never heard a word about money in the house. We were always provided for.