Taken away at 14 for being her parents’ daughter, the youngest face in the Xinjiang Police Files reportedly died in a Chinese prison at 23.
by Ruth Ingram
Rahile Omer was 14 years old when she was taken away by Chinese security services. Nine years later, she is dead.
She was the youngest of more than one million Uyghurs arrested in 2017-2018 and swept into camps. For offenses such as praying, wearing long dresses and growing a beard, detainees were rounded up amid a madness of mass arrests and herded into what the Chinese government termed “vocational training schools.”
The teenage girl’s face stares out from the roll of 2,884 images leaked, in total more than 5,000 photos and 10 gigabytes of confidential internal Chinese police files obtained by researcher Adrian Zenz, a fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, in 2022.
Official documents show that Rahile had committed no crime. Her only felony was guilt by association with her parents who had been detained before her. They reportedly later died in prison.
We don’t know much about Rahile. She was born in a small farming village named Suluq in Lengger Township, Konasheher County, near the southwesternmost tip of Xinjiang Region, on the western edge of the Tarim basin; just southwest of the fabled Silk Road city of Kashgar.
Her house would have been one of many mud-walled traditional courtyard homes along poplar-tree-shaded lanes. She would have played with friends in the intersecting dusty paths, along which would have flowed small channels of fast-flowing water. Life would have revolved around the village school and local mosque, and seasons would have come and gone tending small holdings, farmland, fruit trees, possibly cotton and crops mandated by the Chinese government. Summer evenings would have been enjoyed as a family lounging on the huge bed-shaped “kang” under a spreading vine dripping with sweet fruit. Friends and neighbors would have been frequent visitors enjoying huge dishes of fresh pulao or homemade noodles. Her father would have grabbed a huge sweet melon and carved it into chunks for the visitors allowing the juice to drip onto the sand below.
We don’t know anything about her education but we know that her father, a local official, would have no doubt encouraged his daughter to attend school and study hard.
But whatever hopes and dreams they might have had for Rahile ended abruptly when she was arrested in 2017.
Records show that she was first taken to the Konasheher Opal “training center,” where she stayed from 2017 to 2019, and was transferred to the Toqquzaq detention center until 2021. It was then that she was officially sentenced to 12 years in prison and transferred to a Peyzivat County jail. No record of a trial, legal representation or formal indictment has been forthcoming.
Local officials said she had been detained on suspicion of “illegally gathering to disturb social order,” a common accusation used to detain Uyghurs. She was described as “having not reformed” after two years of “training” and mention was made of praying in her dormitory.
Her death has been shrouded in unknowns. Rumors that she had died have been circulating recently in the Uyghur community, but this week a call by reporters from Radio Free Asia to her village police station confirmed the worst. Han officers said she had died about a month ago at the age of 23. Thoughts were that she had had a heart attack, but there have been no medical reports or a death certificate. Another officer thought she had died two months before.
Mamtimin Ala, president of the East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE), has condemned her death. He said that her story reflected the “suffering of an entire people.” “Her face speaks, silently and solemnly, the unspeakable truth of this crime: a genocide and a crime against humanity,” he said.
Prominent Uyghur human rights lawyer Rayhan Asat said on X, “While the world is watching, this beautiful teenager, who was 14 years old when she was taken away for the camps, has now been confirmed to have passed away. She was sentenced to 12 years which means she died in prison. Her death is on the CCP.” She demanded accountability.
Rahima Mahmut, head of UK-based campaigning group, Stop Uyghur Genocide, told Bitter Winter that her death was “heartbreaking beyond words.”
“Over the past nine years, we have heard countless heartbreaking stories of Uyghurs losing their brothers, sisters and loved ones in detention, many only in their twenties or thirties, with Chinese authorities claiming heart attacks or other medical conditions as the cause of death.
“Rahile Omer was the youngest detainee identified in the leaked Xinjiang Police Files. I had hoped that by now she would have been released. I am devastated to hear reports that she has died after nine years in detention.
“She was just a child when she was taken away. She should have been growing up, going to school, enjoying her youth and building her future, like any other child. Instead, her childhood, freedom, and future were stolen from her. We must not allow her to become just another name among the countless Uyghur lives lost.”
Ruth Ingram is a researcher who has written extensively for the Central Asia-Caucasus publication, Institute of War and Peace Reporting, the Guardian Weekly newspaper, The Diplomat, and other publications.
