Harvard Law School Advocates for Human Rights Urge US President Biden to Demand Release of Uyghur Entrepreneur ( www.thecrimson.com )

Harvard Law School Advocates for Human Rights, a student group at HLS, sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden Monday urging him to demand that the Chinese government release tech entrepreneur Ekpar Asat — the brother of Rayhan Asat, the Law School’s first Uyghur graduate.

The letter was sent in advance of Biden’s meeting Wednesday with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco. House Republicans on the Select Committee on China had previously called on Biden to demand Asat’s release during the summit.

Asat traveled to America in February 2016 to participate in the International Visitors Leadership Program, hosted by the U.S. State Department. Three weeks after concluding the program and returning to China, in April 2016, Asat was detained by the Chinese government and placed in an internment camp in Xinjiang. In 2020, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of “inciting ethnic hatred and ethnic discrimination.”