September 2026 marked the deaths of three documented victims. Renowned archaeologist Abduqeyyum Hoja passed away early in the month, at the age of 85, after spending the last decade of his life paralyzed and bedridden following a stroke. Musajan Ehmet, a businessman and former television personality from Ghulja, was reported to have died early this month at a prison in Kuytun. Finally, Shi Tingfu, a rights defender from Nanjing who was detained in Xinjiang while helping fruit farmers with petitions and sentenced to 3 years for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, died at the Bingtuan Shahe Prison last week, just months before his scheduled release.
Born in Ghulja in 1941, Abduqeyyum Hoja was among the first generation of Uyghur archaeologists, with his research and publications covering a number of topics that spanned Uyghur history, culture, literature, and ancient written languages (including Old Turkic, Old Uyghur, and Chaghatay). Participating in a number of archaeological investigations, he also conducted research on the ruins of Kroran and rock paintings in Cherchen.
In addition to his work being inherently sensitive, Abduqeyyum’s family would be subjected to intense scrutiny following his daughter’s, Gulchehra’s, immigration to the United States in 2001 and subsequent influential journalism as part of Radio Free Asia’s Uyghur service. Records from the Xinjiang Police Files show that Abduqeyyum was already labeled as having connections to “terrorism” as early as 2014, while the China Daily reported that Gulchehra had been added to the online fugitive registry in May 2017 “on suspicion of taking part in terrorist organizations”. After suffering a stroke, Abduqeyyum spent the final decade of his life paralyzed and mostly bedridden, and was reportedly only briefly detained during the mass incarcerations of 2017-2019, with several police reports from Urumqi suggesting him to be under close surveillance. Multiple people in his family were detained, however, with his son, Qeyser, spending a prolonged period incarcerated before being forced to appear in a state-media report. The news of Qeyser’s death, allegedly from a heart condition, surfaced just last month.
In a chain of tragedies, Abduqeyyum passed away a month later, on September 3, 2026. He was 85.
Born in 1970, Musajan Ehmet was a businessman from Ghulja City’s Kepekyuzi Township, where he was popularly known for his early television work as one of the apprentices of the late Hisam Qurban, a famous prankster, and as a frequent presenter on radio and television programs.
He was detained in 2017, likely for his connections to Egypt (one of the “26 sensitive countries“) – having sent his son to study there and having visited his son there himself – and for having one child above the official birth quota. However, it is also suspected that he was simply targeted for being an influential figure in Uyghur society, as many others have been. Musajan reportedly received a 20-year sentence, and was sent to a prison in Kuytun to serve it.
On September 7, 2026, it was reported that he had recently died there, with Radio Free Asia confirming the news. A prayer gathering was held for him at a mosque in Istanbul’s Sefaköy neighborhood on the 8th. He was 56.
For Shi Tingfu, a member of the Han Chinese majority and a native of Nanjing, detention in Xinjiang was more a matter of happenstance – he was detained in the Bingtuan city of Aral in January 2024 for helping local fruit farmers submit their grievances to the state and for disclosing them to foreign media (some of the documents outlining the grievances were published by the Epoch Times). Afterwards, he was sentenced to 3 years for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and transferred to the Bingtuan Shahe Prison in Aral.
Being a Christian and a lifelong rights defender, this was far from Shi Tingfu’s first run-in with the authorities. Starting in 1995, he was detained and/or beaten multiple times while attempting to defend his and others’ rights, with his son also being implicated and injured while the perpetrators, often children of high-ranking officials, went untouched. In 2017, he was detained and sentenced for publicly commemorating the Tiananmen massacre in front of the Nanjing Massacre Memorial. In March 2025, rights groups outside China recognized Shi Tingfu with the Cao Shunli Memorial Award.
Like Cao Shunli, a human rights activist who died in police custody over a decade ago, Shi Tingfu also lost his life in detention. On September 22, 2026, less than four months before his scheduled release date, the prison authorities in Aral informed Tingfu’s family that he had died that day, allegedly from a heart attack. He was 67.