Uyghur women jailed in Xinjiang for 'religious crimes' from decades ago

Hundreds of thousands of female Uyghur religious leaders are estimated to have been arrested and imprisoned in Xinjiang since 2014, with some elderly women detained for practices that took place decades ago, according to an analysis of leaked Chinese police files.

- Jessie Lau

There is growing evidence of the abusive treatment of the Uyghur Muslim population of Xinjiang, an autonomous region in north-west China, with their traditions and religion seen as evidence of extremism and separatism.

New analysis of leaked police files found more than 400 women - some more than 80 years old - had been sentenced by Chinese police for wearing religious clothing and acquiring or spreading religious knowledge.

Most were sentenced for studying the Qur'an, said researchers from the US-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, who used analysis of the files to extrapolate that hundreds of thousands of women were likely to have been detained.

In 2017, Patihan Imin, 70, was sentenced to six years in prison.

Her "crimes" included studying the Qur'an between April and May 1967, wearing conservative religious dress between 2005 and 2014, and keeping an electronic Qur'an reader at home.

Another woman, Ezizgul Memet, was charged with illegally studying scripture with her mother for three days "in or around" February 1976, when she was just five or six years old. She was detained on 6 July 2017 and sentenced to 10 years in prison.