Abdurihim Heyit, born on June 1, 1964, in Kashgar City, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, is a renowned Uyghur poet and musician. He is a former performer with the Beijing Central Nationalities Song and Dance Troupe and the Xinjiang Song and Dance Troupe.
Known for his mastery of traditional Uyghur songs, particularly his skill on the dutar, and his deep passion for ethnic history and culture, he is widely beloved by the Uyghur people and enjoys high recognition among the Uyghur community in Xinjiang as well as in countries such as Turkey; In April 2017, he was criminally detained by Kashgar police in Xinjiang for “Islamic extremist tendencies” after writing the song “Father,” whose lyrics mentioned “martyrs of war.” He was later formally arrested on suspicion of “endangering national security”; That same year, without an indictment from the procuratorate, he was sentenced by the Kashgar City Court in Xinjiang to eight years in prison for “endangering national security,” with his sentence set to expire in 2025; In February 2019, following reports by foreign media that he had died in a Xinjiang re-education camp, Chinese authorities immediately responded that he was still alive and in “good health”; beginning in 2019, he was granted a sentence reduction and released early.
His previous place of detention is unknown.
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