Local longtime campaign: Huseyin Celil

Huseyin Celil is a Canadian citizen from our chapter’s area and a Uyghur human rights activist originally from China who promoted the rights of China’s Uyghur minority.  In 2001, he fled China after being in jail for supporting the religious and political rights of the Uyghur people. The United Nations recognized him as a refugee.

Huseyin Celil (pronounced “Je-lil”) arrived in Canada with his wife Kamila and their child in October of 2001. After they settled, two more boys were born and Huseyin became a Canadian citizen in 2005. In March 2006, when Kamila was pregnant with their fourth child, the family travelled to Uzbekistan to visit her family. That’s when things started to go badly wrong. The police in China found out that Huseyin was in Uzbekistan, and asked the Uzbek police to arrest him. They did, and then sent him to China.

The Chinese authorities falsely accused Huseyin of serious offences because of his activities in support of Uyghur rights. They held Huseyin in a secret place. He was not given access to a lawyer, his family, or Canadian officials. The Chinese authorities threatened and tortured him and forced him to sign a confession. They refused to recognize Huseyin’s status as a Canadian citizen, and they did not allow Canadian officials to attend his trial. The trial was not conducted fairly, and he was sentenced to life in prison in China, where he remains today.

Huseyin was held in solitary confinement for much of the time in the early years of his imprisonment. He lacked healthy food and was in poor health. His mother and sister, who live in China, were occasionally allowed to visit him. In 2016 China started a brutal crackdown on Uyghurs in Xinjiang province where his family lives and where he was imprisoned. No one has heard from Huseyin or his family since 2016.

Kamila and her children in Canada don’t know if they will ever see Huseyin again. Kamila needs her husband, and the boys need their father back.

Huseyin has been in prison since 2006 after an unfair trial. Please take action now to ensure that Huseyin is not subject to more years of unfair imprisonment.

We will be writing letters for Huseyin at our next in-person Write for Rights workshop on December 14th at the Central Branch of the Hamilton Public Library (details here).