Last year, Radio Free Asia said its Uyghur Service learned that Abduhelil Hashim, a 59-year-old businessman from the county-level city of Ghulja (in Chinese, Yining) in the XUAR’s Ili Kazakh (Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture, had been detained and subsequently sent to Qara Bughra Prison in the prefecture’s Kunes (Xinyuan) county for “religious extremism.”

The charges stemmed from Hashim having received religious education from a neighbor 40 years prior, when he was still a minor – enough to be considered a potential extremist under China’s tough policies on Uyghurs and their faith, reported the news portal.

Hashim’s Kazakhstan-based nephew Abduwahab Hakim told RFA that he received news of his uncle’s death on social media, but hadn’t heard anything about him from relatives in Ghulja for days.

According to Hakim, he received a message from his relatives confirming Hashim’s death on May 2 after he sent them a video of a nezir, or wake, he held in his home in Kazakhstan after learning of the situation.

“I sent a video message of [a nezir] I’d had with relatives who came by. I showed them what we’d had to eat, told them that relatives had come to visit. Then they confirmed the death by saying, ‘May your heart and soul find peace and comfort,’” Hakim said.

“My father [Hashim’s brother] is here [in Kazakhstan]. They said, ‘Your father should take care of himself. He shouldn’t stress himself out. This is how fate goes.’”