Biography:

Gulmira Imin is a Uyghur Muslim and former web administrator for the Uighur-language website Salkin. Ms. Imin was also a government employee in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in northwest China. Xinjiang is home to the majority of the country’s Uyghur Muslim population.

Ms. Imin was born in 1978 in Aksu in Xinjiang and graduated in 2000 from the Chinese-Uyghur translation department of Xinjiang University. In spring 2009, Ms. Imin became the moderator of Salkin, a Uyghur-language culture and news website to which she had previously contributed poetry and short stories. Many of her online writings criticized government policies.

On July 5, 2009, Ms. Imin participated in a major demonstration protesting the deaths of Uighur migrant workers in Guangdong Province.  Initially peaceful, the protests turned violent, with about 200 people, including ethnic Han Chinese, killed during the uprisings and confrontations with police. On July 14, 2009, Ms. Imin was arrested in Aksu after authorities alleged she had organized the protests, posted an announcement for them on Salkin, and leaked state secrets by phone to her husband in Norway.  Her family was not notified of the arrest and was unaware of her location until the October 2009 airing of a China Central Television documentary that depicted Imin in prison garb.

On April 1, 2010, the Urumqi Intermediate People’s Court sentenced Ms. Imin to life in prison under Articles 103, 111, and 296 of China’s Criminal Law on charges of “splittism, leaking state secrets, and organizing an illegal demonstration.” She alleges she was tortured and forced to sign documents while in detention.  She reportedly was not allowed to meet with her lawyer until the trial. Her appeal subsequently was rejected. Ms. Imin is currently detained in the Xinjiang Women’s Prison (Xinjiang No. 2 Prison) located in Urumqi, where she is allowed one family visit every three months.

According to reports in June 2021, Chinese authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have reduced her life sentence to 19 years and 8 months after she signed a written statement of remorse in 2017. Chinese authorities videotaped her 2017 statement, which activists and her supporters say was likely forced, and later showed the video in prisons and re-education camps, according to a policeman worked in Kashgar’s Yanbulaq Prison as well as in an internment camp in Opal

Biography:

A Dao, resident of Gia Xieng Village, Ro Koi Commune, Sa Thay District, Kontum Province, is a Protestant pastor of the Montagnard Evangelical Church of Christ (MECC). He took over as the lead pastor of this church after his predecessor, Pastor A Ga, fled to Thailand in 2013 (in July 2019, A Ga met with U.S. President Donald J. Trump during the second Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom).

A Dao has also advocated for religious freedom for his fellow church members in Vietnam’s Central Highlands and elsewhere. In August 2016, he attended the conference on Freedom of Religion in Southeast Asia and the ASEAN Civil Society Conference / ASEAN People's Forum in East Timor. At these events, he presented the plight of MECC and asked the international community for help.

A Dao was arrested on August 18, 2016, shortly after his return to Vietnam. On April 28, 2017 was sentenced to 5 years in prison for “helping individuals to escape abroad illegally” under Article 275 of the country’s Penal Code. During interrogation, he was reportedly tortured in order to extract a confession. He denied the charge and claimed his innocence.

He continues to suffer mistreatment in detention. For example, in the morning of September 1, 2018, his wife, Ms. Nguyen Thi Tuoi visited him in Gia Trung Prison of Gia Lai Province. The guards allowed a very brief visit, much shorter than in the past. His face was bruised, with traces of blood. She learned that in August 2018 the prison guards had been using other inmates to beat him. His health was poor as a result of frequent beatings.

Pastor A Dao’s health has deteriorated as a result of the harsh treatment typically reserved for prisoners of conscience. It was reported that he was tortured in late 2019. Without viable means of livelihood, his wife had to sell their land and move in with her own relatives after sending their two school-age children to live separately with different relatives. His son is now 16 years old, while his daughter is 6 years old.

On September 18, 2020, Dao was released from prison nearly a year before his expected release date. 

Biography:

Dennis Ole Christensen is a Danish citizen, carpenter-by-trade, and entrepreneur imprisoned for his religious activity as a Jehovah’s Witness. Since the Russian Supreme Court declared Jehovah’s Witnesses an extremist organization and banned its activities in 2017, authorities have consistently targeted, arrested, and imprisoned Jehovah’s Witnesses under the banner of counter-extremism for their peaceful religious activity.

On May 25, 2017, police, including members of the Federal Security Service (FSB), raided a Jehovah’s Witness worship service in Oryol, western Russia. Dennis, who reportedly gave a sermon during the service and unlocked the building where the service took place, was arrested and charged with “organizing the activities of an extremist organization” (Article 282.2 (1) of the Russian Criminal Code).  Prosecutors produced wire-tapped phone call transcripts and secret witnesses that implicated Dennis on having discussions about a religious publication, helping organize worshipers to maintain the upkeep of their place of worship, and persuading people to worship with him. On February 6, 2019, the Zheleznodorozhny District Court found Dennis guilty and sentenced him to six years in prison at a penal colony. On May 23, 2019, the Oryol Regional Court rejected Dennis’s appeal and upheld his sentence. 

In June 2020, after more than 1,000 days in detention, a judge from the Lgovsky District Court of the Kursk Region replaced the remaining time of Dennis’s sentence with a fine of 400,000 rubles. Instead of being released following the court decision, however, state prosecution challenged the ruling. In September 2020, the Kursk Regional Court reversed the prior court’s decision to release Dennis and instead sent his case back to the court for a new trial.  In October 2020, the Lgovsky District Court upheld Dennis’s original 2019 sentence, citing his refusal to work in the colony, which Dennis asserts was because of health issues. In February 2021, the Kursk Regional Court upheld the Lgovsky District Court’s October 2020 ruling. Dennis is scheduled to be released in May 2022.

While imprisoned, Dennis has been forced to live in a “punishment cell” on three separate occasions for allegedly violating prison rules. In June 2020, Dennis was placed in a small, poorly ventilated cell reserved for violent offenders for 15 days after being accused of entering the dinning hall at the wrong time, not wearing his jacket to dinner, getting up late, and talking to other prisoners. In mid-July 2020, Dennis was placed in a punishment cell again for 5 days, citing his refusal to work for health reasons. In September 2020, Dennis was put in a punishment cell again after being accused of refusing to work. These arbitrary remands into punishment cells served as the court’s basis to uphold his original sentence. He is currently being held at Penal Colony No. 3 in the Kursk Region.

In September 2019, Dennis contracted pneumonia, reportedly as the result of inhumane living conditions. In May 2020, Dennis’s health continued to deteriorate after prison authorities “lost” his medical records and refused to provide him with necessary medical care. Dennis also suffers from an unspecified neurological issue that causes pain when performing specific types of labor.

On May 24, 2022, Dennis was released from prison after completing his sentence. The next day, he returned to Denmark.