Okan (奥坎) — Media Profile & Archive
This archive preserves the source records for Okan (奥坎), an ethnic Kazakh imam sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment in Xinjiang. See the person profile for the summary.
Case records
June 2017 — Radio Free Asia (via CECC Political Prisoner Database, record 2017-00306). According to RFA reporting of June 14–15, 2017, in early 2017 authorities in Kaba (Habahe) county, Altay (Aletai) prefecture, Xinjiang, sentenced well-known ethnic Kazakh imam Okan to ten years’ imprisonment in connection with performing traditional Kazakh funerary rites. Public security authorities reportedly secretly filmed the funeral ceremony. Okan’s whereabouts and the precise charges he was convicted of remained unreported. The CECC database (published November 5, 2017) records him as: Okan / 奥坎 / Aokan, Kazakh, Muslim imam, male, detained in Xinjiang, 10-year sentence. CECC China: List of Political Prisoners Detained or Imprisoned as of November 5, 2017 (record 2017-00306) (the CECC list is a U.S. government publication).
Source chronology
August 31, 2026 — 维权网 Issue 131 monthly report: 《中国大陆在押政治犯、良心犯月度报告》(2026年8月31日)第131期. “判刑10年，44人：奥坎（哈萨克）、萨尔克提江（哈萨克）、……” — 奥坎 listed first in the forty-four-person ten-year-sentence band, and in the report’s A–Z name index (“奥坎（哈萨克）、”). https://www.chinahrc.org/content/43092/ (also wqw2010.blogspot.com mirror)
The English edition of Issue 131 renders the same band as “Sentenced to 10 years, 44 people: Aokan (Kazakh), …” — a translation of the Chinese original; the A–Z index uses the spelling “Okan (Kazakh)”. Both spellings correspond to the single Chinese form 奥坎.
Source provenance and limitations
The case narrative (imam, funerary-rites context, 2017 sentence) comes from RFA’s June 2017 reporting as preserved in the CECC database; no court document or official statement on the case has been located. The 2026 in-custody listing comes solely from 维权网’s monthly report, which describes its roster as an incomplete list that may contain errors. Okan’s whereabouts after 2017 are unverified beyond the 2026 roster listing.
Person profile: Okan (奥坎)