A court in China has sentenced a prominent Uighur academic specializing in the study of her people’s folklore and traditions to life in prison, a US-based foundation that works on human rights cases in China said.
Rahile Dawut was convicted on charges of endangering state security in December 2018 in a secret trial, the San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation said in a statement on Thursday.
Dawut appealed, but her conviction was upheld, it said.
Photo: AFP
“The sentencing of Professor Rahile Dawut to life in prison is a cruel tragedy, a great loss for the Uighur people, and for all who treasure academic freedom,” foundation executive director John Kamm said in a statement.
Dawut was a professor at Xinjiang University and founder of the school’s Ethnic Minorities Folklore Research Center. She disappeared in late 2017 amid a brutal government crackdown aimed at Uighurs in the region.
For years, her exact status was unknown, as Chinese authorities do not disclose her whereabouts or the nature of the charges against her. That changed this month when the Dui Hua Foundation saw a Chinese government document disclosing that Dawut was sentenced to life in prison.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Mao Ning (毛寧) said she had “no information” on Dawut’s case at a regular news briefing on Friday, but added that China would “handle cases in accordance with the law.”
Dawut was internationally renowned for her work studying sacred Islamic sites and Uighur cultural practices in Xinjiang and across Central Asia, authoring many articles and books and lecturing as a visiting academic abroad, including at the University of Cambridge and the University of Pennsylvania.
She is one of more than 400 prominent academics, writers, performers and artists detained in Xinjiang, advocacy groups say.
Critics say the government has targeted intellectuals as a way to dilute, or even erase, Uighur culture, language and identity.
“Most prominent Uighur intellectuals have been arrested. They’ve [the authorities] been indiscriminate,” said Joshua Freeman, an Academia Sinica researcher who used to work as a translator for Dawut. “I don’t think it is anything about her work that got her in trouble. I think what got her in trouble was that she was born a Uighur.”
Dawut was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and received grants and awards from the Chinese Ministry of Culture before her arrest.
Dawut’s daughter, Akeda Pulati, said she was stunned by the news and called on the Chinese authorities to release her mother.
“I know the Chinese government is torturing and persecuting the Uighurs, but I didn’t expect them to be that cruel, to give my innocent mother a life sentence,” Pulati said. “Their cruelty is beyond my imagination.”
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
RSS