Case and biography of Zharqynbek Qasymbai, a Kazakh retired government official from Bole City, Xinjiang, sentenced to 10 years

On July 18, 2026, this outlet learned the details of the case and biography of Zharqynbek Qasymbai, a Kazakh retired government official from Bole City, Xinjiang, who was sentenced to 10 years. They are reported as follows:

Zharqynbek Qasymbai: Born on January 1, 1961, he is from Bole City, Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang, and is ethnically Kazakh. His Kazakh-language name is Zharqynbek Qasymbai. He is a resident of the Leyuan residential community on Tuanjie Road, Bole City; a retired government official; an immigrant to Kazakhstan; and a political prisoner detained in China.

He was originally an outstanding public official and Communist Party member in Bole City, Xinjiang, and worked in the local agricultural department for 36 years; during that period, because of their hard work, he and his wife, who worked at a primary school, both received government awards multiple times; after retiring, in 2014 he moved to Kazakhstan with his wife and two of their children; in March 2017, when he returned to China to complete visa renewal procedures, his passport was suddenly confiscated by the Xinjiang authorities of the Chinese Communist Party on May 10, after which the police sent him to a “de-extremification training center” for detention on the grounds that he had “spread religious extremist ideas and encouraged Xinjiang Kazakhs to immigrate to Kazakhstan”; on June 20 of the same year, Bole City police formally arrested him; one month later, in August 2017, his family learned that a local court had sentenced him to 10 years in prison for “inciting ethnic hatred and ethnic separatism” and “religious extremism,” with his sentence running until May 2027;

Regarding his swift arrest and conviction, his family received only the indictment against him, which indicated that he had traveled to Kazakhstan multiple times, sold state secrets, assisted his wife and son in traveling to Kazakhstan, and posted some information in a WeChat group about how to immigrate to Kazakhstan, thus making these important charges against him, but they did not receive his criminal judgment; it is understood that before and during his trial, the authorities did not allow him or his family to hire lawyers, did not allow anyone to observe the proceedings, and further prohibited disclosure of information about the case; one of his sons, Jumadan Zharqynbek, unable to bear seeing his father wrongly imprisoned, sought help from the president of Kazakhstan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and social elites in the autumn of the year he was arrested, but only six months later, the Chinese side not only failed to release him, but also directly stopped paying his wife's pension from her former employer, the Central Primary School in Dalet Town, Bole City; his employed daughter, because she went around hiring lawyers for her father, was also forcibly sent by the police to a “political study center” for education; his relatives are deeply concerned about his health because he suffers from high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes. The prison where he is currently serving his sentence is unknown.