Leaving behind a wife and a 5 year old child, Ghalipjan was from the Pichan region in Xinjiang, and had been detained for no apparent reason in China’s detention camps since 2017.
Leaving behind a wife and a 5 year old child, Ghalipjan was from the Pichan region in Xinjiang, and had been detained for no apparent reason in China’s detention camps since 2017.
A Uyghur man has reportedly been beaten to death by a drunk Chinese police officer while being detained in one of China’s horrendous detention camps that are scattered across the northwestern province of Xinjiang. These detention camps are said to hold more than one million ethnic minority Muslims in what China calls “re-education camps”.
Ghalipjan, 35, died last year while being detained in these internment camps. The detention camp had reportedly informed his mother that he had died from an undiagnosed heart condition. When relatives went to see his body at the hospital, the authorities apparently refused to allow them to inspect his body, which remained covered. Chinese officials also conducted his burial the same night, while not allowing his family members to wash his body or prepare his burial in an Islamic way.
Leaving behind a wife and a 5 year old child, Ghalipjan was from the Pichan region in Xinjiang, and had been detained for no apparent reason in China’s detention camps since 2017.
Speaking anonymously to Radio Free Asia, the head of the Ayagh neighborhood committee claimed, despite Chinese officials denying any involvement, that Ghalipjan had in fact been beaten to death and murdered by drunk Chinese officials from the Labai Square Police Station:
He was beaten to death … [by] a [Han Chinese] police officer. The officer came to work after drinking alcohol and beat him without any reason.”
Radio Free Asia also attempted to contact the head of the Bazarliq District Police Station in Turpan city, but was told by the answering officer that he had been instructed to not “answer any questions from any organizations” in regards to the death of Ghalipjan.
While Ghalipjan’s family still mourn his death, never being able to give him a proper Islamic burial, this death highlights the consistent impunity that China has when it comes to the treatment of Uyghur and other ethnic minority Muslims in the country. The genocide being conducted by China against its minority Muslim population has seen the largest mass incarcerations since the Holocaust, mass rape and sterilizations, and indiscriminate detentions and extrajudicial killings. As Ghalipjan’s death remains unanswered for, governments must do better to stop China’s genocide against its ethnic minority Muslim population.
