This month marks the tenth year of detention for Uighur human rights activist Ilham Tohti. Tohti remains in detention simply for advocating for the rights of Uighurs and other minority groups in the People’s Republic of China, or PRC. His life sentence demonstrates the PRC’s efforts to silence those brave enough to speak out against the government’s discriminatory practices and other human rights abuses, which include genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
A respected scholar in China, Ilham Tohti was an economics professor at Central University for Nationalities in Beijing. He had worked for decades to improve relations between Uighurs and Han Chinese. He rejected separatism and violence and 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.
In his writings, Tohti highlighted government policies that restrict the use of the Uighur language, severely curtail Uighurs’ ability to practice their faith, limit their chances of employment, and encourage Han migration into the region - all of which fuel ethnic tensions. Tohti was the founder and director of the website “Uighur Online,” which reported on human rights violations suffered not only by Uighurs but also by ethnic Han Chinese.
On January 15, 2014, Ilham Tohti was taken from his home in Beijing by police. For five months, he was held incommunicado. On September 23, following an unfair trial, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of “separatism”.
Rights groups estimate that more than 1 million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic minorities have been rounded up in internment camps in the northwest region of Xinjiang. China initially denied the existence of the camps, but now says they are "vocational training schools" necessary to combat terrorism.
The United States once again condemns the PRC’s ongoing atrocities in Xinjiang, and calls on the PRC to respect the human dignity of members of ethnic and religious minority groups and to immediately and unconditionally release Tohti and all those arbitrarily detained in Xinjiang and throughout all of China.
