For months, China has been trying to make people believe that the situation has returned to normal in Xinjiang, by increasing the number of press trips or duly supervised “experts” there and by promoting mass tourism. The situation there is so “normal” that the courts have just sentenced Rahile Dawut, a 57-year-old Uighur academic whose only “crime” is to be an expert in Uighur folklore and traditions and for having created, in 2007, the research center on ethnic minorities within Xinjiang University.
Arrested in 2017, Mme Dawut was initially sentenced to life in prison for “separatism” following a trial which was held behind closed doors in December 2018. The academic had appealed but her sentence has now been confirmed.
It was the American Dui Hua Foundation, specializing in dialogue on human rights between the United States and China, which revealed this conviction, which has since been confirmed in Beijing. “This conviction is a cruel tragedy, a great loss for the Uighur people and for all those who cherish academic freedom,” commented John Kamm, director of Dui Hua. “Professor Dawut’s conviction is in no way proof that she did wrong, but speaks to Beijing’s relentless cultural persecution of Uighurs, its hostility to free expression, and its contempt for a fair justice”, comments Sophie Richardson, head of China at the Human Rights Watch association.
An “eliticide”
Author of a thesis at Beijing Normal University in 1998, Rahile Dawut was “a reference in the Chinese academic world on Uyghur studies. Her research projects were financed by the State and she contributed to the influence of Chinese research in the world”, explained to Release researcher Vanessa Frangville, holder of the chair of Chinese studies at the Free University of Brussels. Mme Dawut had worked with several Western universities such as Cambridge, Harvard, Tokyo as well as the National Center for Scientific Research.
His conviction was made public on September 22, the eve of the ninth anniversary of the life sentence of another prominent figure of the Uyghur intelligentsia, economist Ilham Tohti. According to a Human Rights Project calculation published in December 2021, at least 312 Uighur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz intellectuals were victims of what the authors called a “eliticide”intended for “exterminate Uighur cultural identity” as well as that of other Muslim ethnic groups in the region.
You have 20.11% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.