Case Details and Biography of Tuniyaz Osman, Former Deputy President of the Xinjiang Aksu Prefecture Intermediate People's Court and Writer, Sentenced to 15 Years

On July 6, 2026, this outlet learned of the case details and biography of Tuniyaz Osman, the former deputy president of the Xinjiang Aksu Prefecture Intermediate People's Court and writer who was sentenced to 15 years, and hereby reports as follows:

Tuniyaz Osman:Born in 1965, a native of Baicheng County, Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; a resident of Qianjin Community, Lan'gan Subdistrict, Aksu City, Aksu Prefecture; his Uyghur name is Tuniyaz Osman; former deputy president of the Aksu Prefecture Intermediate People's Court, deputy secretary of the Aksu Prefecture Political and Legal Affairs Commission, and deputy director of the Autonomous Region Seismological Bureau; a judge, prolific writer, human rights advocate, and political prisoner detained in China.

After graduating from high school in September 1983, he was admitted to the School of Law of Xinjiang University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1988; he then began working at the Aksu Prefecture Intermediate People's Court and served as a judge; because he had already been very interested in human rights issues during his university years, his undergraduate thesis at the time of his graduation in 1988 was entitled “Protecting Human Rights Through Legislation,” and he graduated successfully. Thereafter, he continued to publish many commentaries and articles on local human rights issues, becoming a prolific writer well known in the field; one particularly noteworthy work is his book Understanding and Applying Civil Judicial Interpretations (in Uyghur), published by Xinjiang People's Publishing House in November 2003. It was one of the few works permitted to be published in Uyghur under the Chinese Communist Party's authoritarian rule, and mainly explained that even when atrocities occur, the law should still serve as the basic standard governing society; in addition, while serving as a judge, he often actively protected and defended the basic human rights of political prisoners arrested by the authorities during the harsh-strike campaign in Xinjiang; in the late 1990s, he was appointed president of the Aksu Prefecture Intermediate People's Court and concurrently served as deputy secretary of the Aksu Prefecture Political and Legal Affairs Commission, and thus had considerable influence in the prefecture; in 2012, during an exclusive interview on the Misranim forum (a media platform used by Uyghurs) entitled “A Journey to Aksu—Meeting with Bozkir,” he further explored the subject of basic human rights; in addition, he wrote multiple investigative reports, such as “Reflections Prompted by the Death of a Female Master's Student” and “The Moral Crisis Seen Through Police Cases,” exposing problems including social injustice, social inequality, and discrimination, and calling for greater legal awareness within the Uyghur community; however, although as a judge he consistently and firmly upheld judicial justice, professional ethics, and the transmission of Uyghur culture, because he maintained the position that political prisoners “should receive basic human rights protections,” he ultimately became a primary target of repression by the Chinese Communist Party authorities; after the 2009 Ürümqi protest incident, thousands of Uyghurs were arrested, and because he actively sought legal rights for detainees, the authorities labeled him a “defender of political prisoners.” He was subsequently removed from his judicial post and transferred to a government department completely unrelated to his professional expertise; it is understood that before his final arrest, he served as deputy director of the Autonomous Region Seismological Bureau; in September 2016, he was suddenly criminally detained without explanation, and has been out of contact ever since; the process of his subsequent arrest, prosecution, and trial was unknown to the outside world. It is only known that he was ultimately sentenced by the judicial authorities of Aksu Prefecture to 15 years in prison on an unspecified charge, with his sentence running until September 2031. He is currently believed to be serving his sentence at Aksu Prison (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region/Aksu Prefecture/Awati County/Aksu Prison, postal code: 843299).