Jailed Uyghur businessman dies in Xinjiang under mysterious conditions

Washington DC [US], May 14 (ANI): A jailed businessman in China's Xinjiang province, belonging to the Uyghur minority community, has been confirmed to have died in a prison hospital under mysterious circumstances.
According to the Washington-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) news service, 59-year-old Abduhelil Hashim from the Ili Kazakh Prefecture had been detained and subsequently sent to prison for "religious extremism."
According to Hashim's Kazakhstan-based nephew, he received a message from his relatives confirming his uncle's death on May 2. However, they did not provide any further details about what had caused it.
As per the nephew, just two days before Hashim died, his uncle and aunt had been able to "meet" in a video conference, and that he had appeared to be in good spirits.
The mysterious circumstances surrounding his uncle's fate led his nephew to believe that he may have died as the result of possible mistreatment while in prison, Hakim told RFA.
Upon detailed inquiry, an employee at the prison told RFA that Hashim had died in the Yengi Turme hospital, and was unsure of the details. He acknowledged that he was not there at the time of his death.
"Even though we know about this, we don't necessarily know things like where the person was from or what they'd done," he said.
China has been rebuked globally for cracking down on Uyghur Muslims by sending them to mass detention camps, interfering in their religious activities and sending members of the community to undergo some form of forcible re-education or indoctrination.
Beijing, on the other hand, has vehemently denied that it is engaged in human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang while reports from journalists, NGOs and former detainees have surfaced, highlighting the Chinese Communist Party's brutal crackdown on the ethnic community. (ANI)