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A Uyghur woman has been sentenced to 20-year imprisonment for speaking to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during his visit to China's Xinjiang region in 2012, said a media report citing the woman's husband.
The woman, who spoke for an hour with then Turkey Prime Minister Erdogan during his visit to Urumqi in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in April 2012, was arrested for her transgression in 2017 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence, Radio Free Asia reported citing her husband. Notably, Turkey shares linguistic and cultural ties with Uyghurs, more than 50,000 of whom have emigrated or escaped to the Middle Eastern country from Xinjiang amid China's crackdown on the ethnic minority. Meryem Emet, an Uyghur woman married to a Turkish citizen, was targeted by Chinese security forces for her hour-long conversation with Erdogan and later imprisoned, the media outlet quoted her husband, Abdullatif Kucar, who lives in Istanbul with their two children. "When Erdogan went to Urumqi, my wife met him, and afterwards, they [Chinese authorities] took her away many times for interrogations," he said. "They have all sorts of excuses to make in order to imprison people who have committed no crime," he said referring to the Chinese authorities. Her arrest in 2017 was part of a wider crackdown by Chinese government authorities on Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang and drew the attention of the UN human rights office (OHCHR) and international human rights organizations. Xinjiang government authorities were on high alert at the time of Erdogan's 2012 visit and became uneasy when accompanying Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, attended Friday prayers at the Noghay Mosque in Urumqi, exciting many local Uyghurs. Emet was later taken to an internment camp in Kuchar county in southern Xinjiang's Aksu prefecture. However, authorities forced her husband to leave the country before her arrest, and he went to Turkey, leaving his two children in state boarding schools in Urumqi, where they stayed for nearly 20 months. When the Chinese government allowed Kucar to travel to Urumqi in December 2019 to collect the children to take them to Turkey, he found them malnourished and traumatized, one of his relatives said. Kucar, who was allowed to travel to Urumqi in December 2019, went to met Emet who acted like a "statue" and did not respond, making her husband concerned about her wellbeing, the media outlet reported citing a relative, who added that the Chinese government sentenced Emet to 20 years for "marrying a foreigner" and meeting and speaking with Erdogan. Kucar, who has returned to Turkey with his children said that his kids have now regained the Uyghur and Muslim identities they lost while living in the Chinese government-run orphanages. Many Uyghurs who are now Turkish citizens have been unable to get their family members out of Xinjiang, Radio Free Asia reported citing rights activists in Turkey. According to human rights experts, family separations are part of the Chinese government's efforts to eradicate Uyghur culture and language, along with systematic abuse, including arbitrary detentions on trumped-up offences, against members of the predominantly Muslim minority group. The US and some Western countries have declared the abuse of Uyghurs as genocide and crimes against humanity, however, China has repeatedly rejected these claims. (ANI)
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