Halmurat Ghopur

CHINA: PROMINENT UYGHUR INTELLECTUAL GIVEN TWO-YEAR SUSPENDED DEATH SENTENCE FOR ‘SEPARATISM’

October 1, 2018:

Authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have given a two-year suspended death sentence to a prominent Uyghur intellectual for exhibiting “separatist tendencies,” according to an official source, RFA reported on September 28, 2018.
Halmurat Ghopur, president of the Xinjiang Food and Drug Administration’s Department of Inspection and Supervision in the regional capital Urumqi, was taken into custody in November 2017 and is being held in an unknown location for “acts against the state,” sources in exile told RFA’s Uyghur Service earlier this year.
RFA recently received information that Ghopur was featured, along with four other high-ranking Uyghur intellectuals who were sentenced to punishments of either death or life in prison, in an officially produced “political study” film, which was made required viewing for all government cadres in the XUAR.
Ghopur, who is also the former president of Xinjiang Medical University Hospital in Urumqi, is said in the film to have been given a suspended death sentence for plotting to “create a Muslim Caliphate” in the region by 2030, sources said.
Some of the intellectuals allegedly profiled in the film were affiliated with the Xinjiang Association of Literature and Art, and RFA contacted the director of the group’s political department who confirmed Ghopur’s punishment.
“[He was sentenced for] attempting to split the country and using his position as a lecturer to carry out anti-government propaganda,” the director said, speaking on condition of anonymity.