China: Uighur academic Rahile Dawut sentenced to life in prison

A Uighur academic has been sentenced to life in prison in China. Rahile Dawut, 57, a cultural specialist in the western Muslim minority, was accused of "endangering state security".

Tourists take photos near a tower of the Grand International Bazaar in Urumqi, western China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, during a government-organized trip for foreign journalists, April 21, 2021. © Mark Schiefelbein / AP

By: RFI Follow

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With our correspondent in China, Stéphane Lagarde

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Disappeared" in 2017, Rahile Dawut was sentenced to life imprisonment a year later in a closed trial for "separatism". His sentence was recently upheld on appeal, the U.S. human rights foundation Dui Hua said. "This sentence is a cruel tragedy, a great loss for the Uyghur people and all those who cherish academic freedom," the NGO's director wrote.

Rahile Dawut is not the first Uighur intellectual figure to be sentenced to life in prison. In September 2014, nine years ago, Ilham Tohti, an economist and professor at the Central University of Minorities in Beijing, was serving the same sentence. His children have not seen him since 2017. Rahile Dawut's daughter, Akida Pulat, told the Wall Street Journal of her distress from Seattle, where she lives. "I am devastated. The thought of not seeing her for the rest of my life is unimaginable," she fears.

Dozens missing

What these moderate voices have in common is defending the culture of an ethnic minority once protected in China. Rahile Dawut's research, like Ilham Tohti's, has long been funded by the Chinese state. Both knew the red lines and never commented on the policy publicly. Their only "crime" is to have, for one, co-founded the website Uighurbiz, and for the other, the Center for Research on Ethnic Minorities within Xinjiang University. This defense of Uyghur folklore and culture is considered by the Chinese authorities, in the context of the repression of the Muslim and Turkic-speaking minority, as "separatism" and a "endangerment of the state".

According to human rights groups, dozens of academics, businessmen, artists and members of the Uighur elite have disappeared or been imprisoned in recent years in China.

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