Ulnur Bozhykhan

Ulnur Bozhykhan was born on June 28, 1988, in the village of Kensu in the Kunes county of the Ili-Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang Autonomous Region (East Turkestan). In 2018, she was accused of having contacts with dissidents and was taken to a transformation through education camp, where she was tortured and raped. In 2019, after a campaign on her behalf by the independent Kazakh human rights organization Atajurt, she was allowed to move to Kazakhstan. She told her story, as told to her husband, author Turarbek Kusainov, in February 2022 in Bitter Winter.