
A 57-year-old native of Manas (Manasi) county in Xinjiang’s Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Hasiyet Ehmet, has been missing since Chinese authorities kidnapped her in May 2017.
According to report, government officers from the county’s No. 3 police station entered Hasiyet’s home, slapped her and put a black hood over her head, refusing her request to put on other clothes and gather her medicine before they took her away.
Hasiyet had been sentenced to 14 years in prison for teaching children the Quran and hiding two copies of Quran when Chinese officials were confiscating them, and later getting caught.
Hasiyet Ehmet, an #Uyghur women from #Xinjiang has been prisoned for 14 years. Her only crime was teaching kids #Quran & hiding two copies when authorities were confiscating them.
The #Chinese Communist Party #CCP wants all to worship Xi Jinping and no one else.#UyghurGenocide https://t.co/LX153SztPe— Red Lantern Analytica (@RLAnalytica) January 8, 2022
A Manas county court official confirmed that Hasiyet Ehmet had been sentenced to 14 years.
“It was because of teaching kids the Quran and hiding two copies of Quran when authorities were confiscating them, and later getting caught,” the official said. “These were the reasons for her sentences.”
Hasiyet’s spouse was convicted of “separatism” charges and sentenced to life in prison in 2009, nine years before her arrest.
She had stopped teaching children two years before her arrest because of health problems and had refrained from attending public events, but still, Hasiyet was arrested and punished.
Over the years, Chinese authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have tortured a number of Uyghur Muslims as part of a campaign to monitor, control, and assimilate members of the Islamic community in an effort to stop religious extremism and terrorist activities.
The government of China has disputed numerous and documented complaints that it has abused Muslims in Xinjiang, claiming that the camps are vocational training institutes.