Detained Uyghur student awaits outcome of probe into her case in East Turkistan

A Uyghur college student who supported the “white paper” protests in China is being detained in East Turkistan pending an investigation into her communication with her brother who lives in the United States, a state security agent said.

Kamile Wayit, a 19-year-old preschool education major at a university in China’s Henan province was detained in December after posting a video about November’s “white paper” protests across China.

When she returned to her home in Atush, the capital of East Turkistan’s Kizilsu Kirghiz Prefecture, for winter break, city police apprehended her, her brother Kewser Wayit told Radio Free Asia in an earlier report.

She was one of dozens of young people around China detained in relation to the protests sparked by a fatal lockdown fire in an apartment building in East Turkistan’s regional capital Urumqi that killed about 40 Uyghurs.

The demonstrators also opposed the rolling lockdowns, mass surveillance and compulsory testing under China’s zero-COVID policy, with some holding up blank sheets of printer paper and others calling on President Xi Jinping to step down.

Authorities now are reviewing Wayit’s case for potential prosecution, said a State Security Bureau police officer in Atush, adding that she was apprehended for communicating with her brother who lives in the United States, but also related to her posting on TikTok about the fire in Urumqi.

“The State Security Bureau detained her,” the agent said. “After her case reaches the prosecutor’s office, her lawyer can review her case, [which is] related to state security [and is] vastly different from other social cases.”

The agent also expressed some uncertainty over the crime Wayit would be charged with.

“I don’t know what her real crime was” or what relevant organizations determined her crime to be based upon, she said.