Prominent Uyghur scholar andlinguist-in-exile Abduweli Ayup's niece is confirmed to have died last yearunder detention by state security police in China's Xinjiang region, informedofficial sources.According to reports,Mihray Erkin, a graduate of Shanghai'sJiao Tong University, had gone on to become a researcher at Japan's NaraInstitute of Science and Technology.
He returned to Xinjiang in August 2019after authorities in Kashgar put her parents under pressure to call her home.Erkin was believed to have died while in detention in one of the vast networkof internment camps in Xinjiang , where up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and otherMuslim minorities have been held since 2017.According to the source, the dayafter Erkin's burial, police told family members that if they spoke out aboutthe death, they would be imprisoned for "disclosing state secrets"and "defaming the police."
The police in charge of Erkin's case hadattributed her death to 'a disease' that her family had 'hidden from them' andadded a falsified medical record to the official report as proof. police forcedher family members to record a video testimony confirming that Erkin sufferedfrom a 'disease' and had 'died at home,' although the video was never releasedfor reasons that remain unknown. Another official confirmed that she had beendetained "for some time" at the detention centre before her death.After years of denying the existence of the internment camps in Beijing, Chinain 2019 described the facilities as residential training centres that providevocational training for Uyghurs, discourage radicalisation and help protect thecountry from terrorism.
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