A Conference on Uyghur crisis and professor Ilham Tohti
Ilham Tohti
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Jewher Ilham: My Father, My Country
Dec 06, 2017 Huffpost This week, Chinese President Xi Jinping will arrive in Washington D.C. to meet with President Barack Obama. It will be President Xi’s first state visit to the U.S. and an impressive—and tight—itinerary of bi-lateral talks, meetings, banquets and receptions await him. The visit will certainly underscore the need for open and clear lines of communication between China and the United States in order to reach understanding on the issues of disagreement dogging Sino-American relations. I support this effort to have a fruitful dialogue between these two countries, and have never been swayed by early calls for the state visit and its attendant discussions to be cancelled. But ironically, while China’s president is enjoying the hospitality of his hosts in this country, engaging in dialogue with those who disagree with him on many issues, scores of well-known dissidents and an unknown number of lesser known writers, artists, intellectuals, and activists will be languishing in the prisons that his government oversees for seeking to do nothing other than what he himself will be doing this week. One of those imprisoned writers is my father, Ilham Tohti. At this very moment he sits in prison in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the area where most of our Uyghur compatriots reside. September 23 will mark a year since he was sentenced to life in prison. His crime? Writing, teaching, and operating a blog intended to bring Han Chinese and Uyghurs—a Turkic Muslim minority group in China—together peacefully to understand the issues and discontents that have caused so much misery and repression among Uyghurs. His work has been honored with numerous international awards, including the 2014 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. Now, in sharp contrast, he sits every day in shackles and is subjected to a […]
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Committee to Protect Journalists: Ilham tohti
Tohti, a Uighur scholar, writer, and blogger, was taken from his home by police on January 15, 2014, and the Uighurbiz website he founded, also known as UighurOnline, was closed. The site, which Tohti started in 2006, was published in Chinese and Uighur, and focused on social issues. Tohti was charged with separatism by Urumqi police on February 20, 2014. He was accused of using his position as a lecturer at Minzu University of China to spread separatist ideas through Uighurbiz. On September 23, 2014, at the Urumqi Intermediate People’s Court, Tohti was sentenced to life imprisonment. He denied the charges. Several foreign governments and human rights organizations protested the sentence. The European Union released a statement condemning the life sentence as unjustified. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S. was concerned by the sentencing and called on Chinese authorities to release him, along with seven of his students. Tohti’s appeal request was rejected at a hearing in a Xinjiang detention center on November 21, 2014, that was scheduled at such short notice that his lawyer was unable to attend. Tohti’s wife told Radio Free Asia in February 2016 that authorities allow family members to visit Tohti for only 30 minutes every three months. Seven of his students–Perhat Halmurat, Shohret Nijat, Luo Yuwei, Mutellip Imin, Abduqeyum Ablimit, Atikem, Rozi and Akbar Imin–were charged with being involved with Uighurbiz during a secret trial held in November 2014, according to Tohti’s lawyer Li Fangping. Many were administrators for the site, according to state media. According to the political prisoner database of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, an organization set up by the U.S. Congress to monitor human rights and laws in China, Rozi and Mutellip Imin wrote for the site. Imin, who is from Xinjiang and enrolled at Istanbul University in Turkey, also has a blog. He was arrested […]
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Five facts about Ilham Tohti, award-winning activist jailed in China
20 October 2016, 16:39 UTC Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti celebrates his birthday on 25 October, shortly after he was awarded the prestigious Martin Ennals Award for human rights. But who is he and why is he in prison in China? Ilham Tohti is a respected economist who has highlighted abuses against China’s Uighur minority. A renowned Uighur intellectual in China, Ilham Tohti was an economics professor at Central University for Nationalities in the capital, Beijing. He has worked for two decades to build understanding between Uighurs and Han Chinese. Rejecting separatism and violence, he tried to reconcile differences between these ethnic groups. Uighurs, a mainly Muslim Turkic ethnic group, have faced widespread discrimination in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China. Ilham Tohti has been put under surveillance and arrested many times for drawing attention to the plight of Uighurs in China. Through his writing and lectures, Ilham highlighted government policies that limit the use of the Uighur language, severely restrict Uighurs’ ability to practice their own religion, block their chances of getting a job, and encourage Han migration into the region, all fuelling discontent and ethnic tensions. Ilham was the founder and director of the bilingual website “Uighur Online”, which reported on human rights violations suffered not only by Uighurs but also by ethnic Han Chinese. The website had been shut down by the authorities several times: first before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, again in March and April 2009, and now since 2014. When ethnic violence erupted in the XUAR in 2009, Ilham was detained for several weeks after he posted information on the internet about Uighurs who had been detained, killed and had “disappeared” during and after the protests. In the following years, he was placed under house arrest for various periods.The path I have pursued […]
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The Ilham Tohti Institute
The Ilham Tohti Institute (ITI) is a non-governmental organisation, that was founded after the unjustly imprisoned Uyghur academic Professor Ilham Tohti. Before Ilham Tohti was imprisoned by the Chinese government, he publicly conducted research and pursued campaigns, including: establishing an open dialogue and peacefully solving the existing conflict between Uyghurs and Han people in the Chinese state; campaigning to eliminating racial discrimination and safeguarding for Uyghurs’ equal citizenship rights before the law; take action and fully implement equal rights for the Uyghurs as equals to the majority Han Chinese; conduct research and publicise these critical issues among the Han Chinese people as well in the international community about how Uyghurs are suffering in the hands of Chinese Government with racial discrimination, injustice before law and with the widespread human rights abuses. Despite the obvious risk to his life, Mr. Ilham Tohti openly submitted his proposals and opinions to the Chinese government. Unfortunately, he was unfairly tried in Chinese court in 2014 and sentenced to life in prison. Our Institute will work to release Professor Ilham Tohti. We will continue working on his research and inform the world of his work on the human rights abuses of the Uyghur people, as well as his tireless effort on finding a method for a peaceful solution for the existing Uyghur issues, and it’s possible implementation. Our institute is actively involved in conducting research, investigations and the disclosing of cases of violations to the international community regarding the human rights abuse of the Uyghur people within the criteria of United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all relevant human rights under the international law.
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