20 January 2024

Twenty years ago, Ayshemhan Abdulla, a Uyghur housewife, made a decision she believed was in the best interest of her three teenage children by enrolling them in a local home-based religious school. At the time, she sought to ensure that her two daughters and one son received Islamic education consistent with their Uyghur Muslim identity in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in far-western China.

However, her decision would later lead to a harsh consequence. In 2014, the Chinese government launched its “strike hard” campaign in Xinjiang, which imposed severe restrictions and penalties on Muslim Uyghurs. This campaign involved arbitrary arrests, a crackdown on ethnic customs and religious practices, and a campaign promoting modernity at the expense of Muslim Uyghur traditions. Authorities destroyed mosques, restricted religious practices, banned Islamic clothing and long beards for men, prohibited Islamic names for children, and forbade fasting during Ramadan.

Caught in the sweep of this campaign, Abdulla was arrested and sentenced to 21 years in prison in 2017 for sending her children to the religious school, according to a security chief from her village in Qarayaghach township.

For each child she sent, she received seven years in prison.

Authorities also took Abdulla’s children to a camp and held them for more than a year, but later released them.

Other women in Qarayaghach met a similar fate.

Halide Qurban, a Uyghur from the same village as Abdulla, received 18 years in prison, 14 years for sending her two children to a religious school and four years for illegal praying activity, the village security official said.  

She died in prison because she had diabetes.

Many other Muslim Uyghurs over 60 were also arrested by China and sentenced to harsh prison sentences for sending their children to religious schools, though they had done so more than a decade ago.