Uyghur father jailed for 20 years for sending son abroad and for visiting Turkey

Nuraxun Rozi jailed for 20 years after visiting his teenage son who was studying in Egypt in 2015, including a stop in Turkey.
Sixteen months after his return, authorities sent him to a detention camp in April 2017 during the height of mass internment of Uyghurs in “re-education” camps under Chinese authorities’ guise of providing vocational training to prevent religious extremism and terrorism, his son said.
Nuraxun, now 49, was later sentenced to 20 years in prison in August 2018 for sending his child abroad to study, helping his son while he was in Egypt, and for traveling abroad, his son said.
Nureli, his son, who had not previously disclosed his family situation to the media to avoid complicating his father’s case, said he recently decided to reveal it after realizing that his silence was useless.
'SENSITIVE COUNTRIES'
In their monitoring of Uyghurs’ activities, Chinese authorities previously identified more than 20 countries, including predominantly Muslim ones such as Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, as “sensitive countries” and arrested those who visited them, imprisoning most for five to 10 years.
While Nureli was in Egypt, he saw other Uyghur students being sent back to China in 2016, and the following year he lost contact with his family. Fearing that he would be targeted, Nureli went to Turkey in 2018
In 2019, Nureli took and passed the exam for prospective mechanical engineering majors at Suleyman Demirel University in Isparta, Turkey, and graduated this year.
He works as an engineer at Yalcinlar Aluminum, where he had interned during his senior year of college.

rfa.org