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A Uyghur man who once served as a high-ranking government official in western China’s far-western Xinjiang region has died in prison four years after he was sentenced to death for “separatism” and “terrorism,” a prison official and a person with knowledge of the situation said.
Shirzat Bawudun is a former deputy secretary of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s Political and Legal Affairs Committee in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, or XUAR.
He was detained in November 2018 on suspicion of being “two-faced” and was officially arrested the following month after authorities determined he had committed a crime.
Bawudun and another high-ranking Uyghur official, Sattar Sawut, were given two-year suspended death sentences in 2021 in a stunning decision that critics said showed that even Uyghurs loyal to the Communist Party couldn’t escape persecution in Xinjiang.
It was unclear when Bawudun passed away. But a source familiar with the situation who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons told Radio Free Asia that when family members requested a video meeting with him in late July, authorities informed them that he had died in prison.
Relatives are shocked by the news of his death, which they described as mysterious, according to the source. During their last video call in March, family members didn’t observe any signs of illness or physical weakness, the source said.
Workers at the prison were notified of Bawudun’s death, but the cause wasn’t disclosed, a staff member at Turpan Dahiyan Prison in eastern Xinjiang told RFA last week.
The source familiar with the situation said authorities didn’t tell family members about how and when he died. They were only told that Bawudun died in prison and that they shouldn’t submit any more visitation requests, the source said.
Bawudun’s arrest came amid a campaign of extralegal incarceration that saw up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities held in a vast network of internment camps beginning in early 2017. Bawudun and Sawut were the first high-ranking government officials to be given death sentences.
Bawudun had also served as a director of the region’s High Court and was a member of the XUAR Political Consultative Conference.
According to the limited information shared by XUAR’s High Court in 2021, Bawudun was accused of “long-term planning to split the country,” “participating in the East Turkistan Islamic Movement” and “providing illegal intelligence to people outside” China.
Translated by Alim Seytoff. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.