Uyghur brothers in Indian prison for 10 years

NEW DELHI, India – Three Uyghur brothers who fled China have been languishing in an Indian prison for nearly a decade.

Surprisingly even after serving their 18-month sentence for crossing the border without permission, they have still been in prison since 2013.

They now fear imminent deportation to Xinjiang, where they will be tried again and possibly killed.

On the evening of June 12, 2013, Indian border officials arrested brothers Adil, Abdul Khaliq, and Salamu in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir for crossing the border illegally.

They were arrested near Sultan Chusku post on the India-China border.

They were handed over to police which prosecuted them in a court in Ladakh.

 The court sentenced them to 18 months imprisonment for illegal border crossing.

Their lawyer said that after completing their sentence, the authorities, not knowing what to do with them, booked them under the Public Safety Act (PSA).

This is a preventive detention law used in Jammu and Kashmir to detain political activists.

Under this law, a person can be detained without a trial.

The siblings told their lawyer that they were from Kargilik in Xinjiang. They had fled the region after being persecuted by Chinese authorities.

Lawyer Muhammad Shafi Lassu said the authorities had misstated their ages. In fact, they were 16, 18, and 20 years old, respectively, at the time of their arrest.

Lassu, a lawyer in Ladakh had fought their case voluntarily.

They told the lawyer that they had no idea about international border rules.

“When I met them in jail, I could see they were naive young boys and while interacting with them, they tried to make me understand how they feared they would also be put in a detention center and because of that they tried to flee,” the lawyer told TV channels. 

“They were pleading with me in their broken words to get them released,” he added.