Free Ikram Nurmehmet!

ICFR Calls for the Immediate Release of Uyghur Filmmaker Ikram Nurmehmet

The ICFR expresses its support and deep concern for Uyghur filmmaker Ikram Nurmehmet, whom the Chinese authorities have sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison on politically motivated and unfounded claims of “actively participating in terrorist activities”.

According to sources closer to the trial, Nurmehmet’s case is based on a false confession that was forced out of him under torture, as he was held captive by the authorities in a dark room for twenty days straight. The ICFR strongly condemns the treatment and proceedings of the authorities, and calls on the Chinese government to release Ikram Nurmehmet immediately.

The core of the accusations against Ikram is the time he spent in Turkey, between 2010-2016, as a student of film at Marmara University in Istanbul. Returning to China upon graduation, he went on to become a prolific director of commercials and short films. His 2020 film, Elephant in the Car, about two Uyghur men and a Han Chinese woman sharing a cab and driving around Beijing at night, was nominated for the Golden Firebird Award at that year’s Hong Kong International Film Festival.

The Chinese authorities have now used Ikram’s study abroad time as the pretense for their persecution of the 33-year-old filmmaker, starting with having him surrender his passport in 2018. The government’s bewildering treatment of Ikram, leading up to his eventual arrest in 2023, has been documented by several international newspapers, including Der Spiegel.

Says Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch: “More than seven years after the Chinese government began its abusive ‘Strike Hard Campaign’* in Xinjiang, the authorities continue to prosecute young Uyghurs like Ikram Nurmehmet on politically motivated charges. Ikram Nurmehmet and the hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs who have been wrongfully imprisoned should be immediately freed.”

Ikram Nurmehmet is currently being held in Ürümqi No. 1 Detention Center, along with four other Uyghurs that he has been sentenced along with. The ICFR urgently calls on the international film industry to raise visibility for our Uyghur colleague, and help amplify our demands on the Chinese authorities to release and stop persecuting Ikram Nurmehmet, so that he may go back to sharing his and the Uyghur community’s stories through his films.

The International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk

* _{The ‘Strike Hard Campaign’ particularly targeted Uyghurs and other Turkic citizens of Xinjiang by making “foreign ties” to a list of 26 “sensitive” countries, including Turkey and other Muslim majority nations, a punishable offense.}