The brother of World Uyghur Congress president Dolkun Isa has been jailed for life by authorities in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), a police officer from the region told RFA. Hushtar Isa, based in Aksu (in Chinese, Akesu), was reportedly detained in 1998 and sentenced to two years in prison. At the beginning in 2017 of the XUAR mass internment campaign, under which authorities are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a network of detention camps, he was re-detained while working at a driving school because he was a former prisoner, said the officer, who declined to give his name.
“He was sentenced to life,” the officer told RFA on May 25.
Another police officer contacted by RFA said that Hushtar Isa had been working at the Yong’an Driving School, and that he was currently in prison. Five others from the school had been detained with him, two of whom had already been sentenced to prison terms, he said. The officer said he could not provide information about the identities of the other three. The news came the same day that Chinese authorities issued a statement denying the claim that Dolkun Isa’s mother, Ayhan Memet, had died in a “re-education” camp, and claiming that their family was living peacefully.
