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.”
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