June 6, 2020

Special Rapporteur on the Uighur Scholar Ilham Tohti

An Urgent Communication to the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of ExpressionThe Special Rapporteur on Human Rights DefendersThe Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or PunishmentThe Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous PeoplesThe Working Group on Arbitrary Detention Regarding the Uighur Scholar Ilham Tohti Submitted by China Change, the Martin Ennals Foundation, and Ilham Tohti Initiative March 9, 2018 January 15, 2018, marked the 4th anniversary of the Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti’s sentencing to life in prison for peacefully speaking out for the economic, cultural, political and religious rights of the 10 million Uighur people inhabiting the northwestern region known as Xinjiang. In 2017, we have made two previous attempts to appeal to the UN Special Procedures but have not heard back. Once again, China Change in Washington, D. C., the Martin Ennals Foundation in Geneva, and the Ilham Tohti Initiative in Munich would like to bring the case and conditions of Ilham Tohti to the attention of the Special Rapporteurs listed above and the working group on arbitrary detention for an intervention.   A Summary of the Case Ilham Tohti is the most renowned Uighur intellectual in the People’s Republic of China. For over two decades he has worked tirelessly to foster dialogue and understanding between Uighurs and Chinese over the present-day repressive religious, cultural and political conditions exercised against the Uighurs, a Muslim, Turkic people living mostly in modern China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. As a result of his efforts he was arrested on January 15, 2014, and sentenced to life in prison in September the same year following a two-day show trial. […]