Sayragul Sauytbay

Sayragul Sauytbay (~1977 - ) is a Chinese doctor, headteacher and whistle blower for the Kazakh Chinese people. She left China illegally and then she told the media about the Xinjiang re-education camps where people are re-educated in China. Sweden offered her political asylum after Kazakhstan refused. She was chosen as an International Woman of Courage in March 2020.

Sauytbay was born in about 1977 in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in China. She is an ethnic Kazakh Chinese national and she became an employee of the Chinese state.

She married Uali Islam and they had a son and a daughter.

On 13 July 2018, Sauytbay appeared in a court in the city of Zharkent, Kazakhstan accused of illegally crossing the border from China. During the trial she talked about her forced work at a re-education camp for 2,500 ethnic Kazakhs.Her lawyer believed that if she is extradited to China, she would face the death penalty for exposing re-education camps in Kazakh court. Her testimony for the re-education camps became the focus of the court case in Kazakhstan, which is also testing the country's ties with Beijing.

On 1 August 2018, Sauytbay, who fled one of the Chinese re-education camps, was released with a six-month suspended sentence and direction to regularly check in with police. She and the observers in the court were pleased that she had not been deported immediately. She applied for asylum in Kazakhstan to avoid being deported to China.

She was so worried that she decided to keep silent as she was worried that Kazakhstan may give in to diplomatic pressure and return her to China, even though her husband and children all enjoyed Kazakhstan nationality. Kazakhstan refused to grant her asylum. On 2 June 2019 she flew to Sweden, after the intercession of the United Nations, where she was then given political asylum.

She was chosen as an International Woman of Courage on 4 March 2020 by the US Secretary of State.