The Rafto Foundation has today received information through the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) that Alim Abdureyim, the youngest son of the 2004 Rafto Prize Laureate, Uyghur human rights defender and former prisoner of conscience, Rebiya Kadeer, was sentenced on Monday November 27 to seven years in prison on charges of tax evasion, and fined RMB 500,000 (USD 62,500). Rebiya Kadeer visited Bergen, Norway on the occasion of the Rafto Foundation´s 20th Anniversary in the beginning of November. (29-NOV-06)
Text: HRH F, Nina Luhr based on Uyghur Human Rights Project´s website
The court also found Alim´s brother, Kahar Abdureyim, guilty of tax evasion and fined him RMB 100,000 (USD 12,500), although Kahar was not sentenced to prison. It is not yet known whether the brothers intend to appeal against the sentence or the fines.
Another of Ms. Kadeer´s sons in detention, Ablikim Abdureyim, was seen by sources close to UHRP being carried out of Tianshan District Detention Center on a stretcher on November 26, apparently in need of medical attention. The reasons for his condition were not immediately clear, although it is feared Ablikim may have been beaten or tortured as a consequence of his mother, Ms. Kadeer, being elected to the position of president of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) on November 26.
Ms. Kadeer learned from sources in Urumchi that the Chinese authorities were willing to be lenient with her sons if she did not run for the presidency of the WUC. Ablikim is still awaiting trial on charges of ´subversion´, although the details of the allegations against him are not publicly known. “My sons are completely innocent of all charges against them,” said Ms. Kadeer, who is also president of the Washington, DC-based Uyghur American Association. “The announcement of the sentence – and the treatment of Ablikim in detention – is obviously linked to my election as president of the WUC. The timing is more than cynical and less than human, and it shows the world yet again what the Chinese government and Communist Party does to its opponents and how little it cares for international opinion,” said Ms. Kadeer.
Alim and Kahar Abdureyim were both put on trial on October 27, 2006. The court announced at the time it would pass sentence within 10 days of the trial but it appears sentencing was postponed most probably to coincide with the World Uyghur Congress, held in Munich from 24 – 27 November.
In a related development, Rushangul Abdureyim, sister of Alim and Kahar Abdureyim was released from a form of house soon after the trial, and informed she was no longer under suspicion of involvement in the charges against her brothers. Under the conditions of the house arrest imposed on June 14, Ms. Abdureyim was not allowed to leave her home, and there were at least seven police officers stationed in her house at all times.
