A prominent Uyghur historian and expert in Uyghur place names is serving a 17-year prison sentence for his writings, people with knowledge of the situation said. Ghojaniyaz Yollugh Tekin, 59, was an educator at the Aksu Education Institute in the city of Aksu in the north of China’s far-western Xinjiang region. His research and publications focused on Uyghur toponymy — the linguistic evolution of place names and the historical and geographical reasons for the names.
A police officer who works in the village where Tekin is from in Aksu prefectur’s Uchturpan county, told Radio Free Asia that the intellectual had been sentenced to 17 years and is serving his sentence in Hotan, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of Aksu city.