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On the evening of 12 June 2013, according to court documents, three “Chinese intruders” were arrested by the Indian army in Sultan Chusku, a remote and uninhabited desert area in the mountainous northern region of Ladakh.

The three Thursun brothers – Adil, 23, Abdul Khaliq, 22 and Salamu, 20 – had found themselves in an area of unmarked and disputed borders after a 13-day journey by bus and foot over the rugged Himalayan terrain through China’s Xinjiang province, which borders Ladakh.

The men told army officials that they had fled their family home near the city of Kashgar in Xinjiang after the Chinese authorities intensified their crackdown on Uyghur Muslims and took several of their relatives into detention centres.

More than a million Uyghurs in Xinjiang appear to have been imprisoned in “re-education” camps and subjected to torture over the past decade for just attending a mosque or wearing a hijab.

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Latief U Zaman Deva, a former senior government official in Indian-administered Kashmir, of which Ladakh was part until 2019, believes the three men are victims of discrimination.

“Jailing these three violates the law. This is one of many examples where the current government demonstrates how it deals with a particular community: Muslims,” Deva says.

“The law being used against them is intended for people involved in anti-national activities or serious offences, not for persecuted people seeking refuge.”

Shafi says he will continue to fight for their release. “India has given refuge to tens of thousands of people from different persecuted communities at different stages of history. Even thousands of persecuted Tibetans live here and run their government in exile.

“If the government doesn’t want them to live here, they can release them and allow them to travel to a country which can offer them asylum. I hope they will be free one day – that is the goal of my life.”