Human rights activists are scrambling to prevent the imminent deportation of a Uighur man to China, where they say he faces torture.
Ablikim Yusuf, 53, who has been living in Pakistan, posted a desperate video on Facebook asking for help from the overseas Uighur community. He says in the video, translated and circulated by activists on Saturday: “I am currently being held in Doha airport, about to be deported to Beijing, China. I need the world’s help. I am originally from Hotan.”
PLEASE SHARE, A MAN’S LIFE HANGS IN THE BALANCE.
— Arslan Hidayat (@arslan_hidayat) August 2, 2019
‘Ablikim Yusuf’ a #Uyghur from Hotan prefecture of #Xinjiang aka #EastTurkestan. Currently he is being held by Qatar authorities at Doha airport and he is to be deported to #China where he’ll likely face a severe punishment. pic.twitter.com/elV0PW4zfJ
After the video was shared widely on social media and the campaign gathered momentum, Ablikim was given leave to stay in Qatar for an additional 24 hours, said his lawyer, Kimberley Motley.
However, he still faces the threat of deportation to China on Sunday. “We are desperately trying to convince another government to accept him,” she said.
China has come under growing international pressure for its treatment of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the far western region of Xinjiang, where as many as 1.5 million have been detained in secretive internment and re-education camps.
According to activists advocating for Ablikim, he left Xinjiang in 1997 for Pakistan. They said he had left Pakistan on 31 July and was stopped while trying to reach Bosnia. He was brought to Doha International airport, where he was told he would be deported.
A representative for Qatar Airways confirmed that Ablikim was booked for a flight departing Doha for Beijing at 11:20am local time on 3 August.
“Sending Ablikim back to China would most definitely mean sending him to either concentration camps or prison or worse, his death,” said Salih Hudayar, the founder of the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, a political and human rights group based in the US.
He and other activists were camped outside the Qatari embassy in Washington in the early hours of Saturday morning.
“It would also encourage other countries that China is pressing to deport Uighurs, which in turn would encourage China to continue its brutal campaign of persecution. We are shocked that Qatar would even consider this, given it claims to be a defender of Muslim rights,” he said.
On Thursday, a senior Xinjiang official said the majority of those kept in the camps, which China describes as voluntary vocational training centres, had been released. Uighurs with relatives still in Xinjiang expressed incredulity and anger.
Critics said such statements obscured the fact that ex-detainees had been shifted into forced labour, kept in other forms of police custody, and continued to be heavily surveilled.
