Dr Tashpolat Tiyip, a leading Uyghur academic from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of the People’s Republic of China, is facing imminent execution.
Since 2014, organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Scholars at Risk have called attention to increasingly severe government repression in the XUAR. Extraordinary levels of human rights violations have been documented by human rights organisations, international media and in peer-reviewed scholarly articles.
The detention and prosecution of Dr Tiyip occurs against the backdrop of an apparent campaign by Chinese authorities to detain large numbers of ethnic minorities in the XUAR, including at least 435 prominent Uyghur, Kyrgyz, and Kazakh intellectuals and scholars. Human rights groups estimate that as many as one million members of these minority communities have been detained at centres for so-called ‘transformation through education’, now officially represented as ‘vocational training centres’.
Dr Tiyip has had a path-breaking 30-year career in academia as both a geographer and high-level university administrator, including heading Xinjiang University in Urumchi. Dr Tiyip was reportedly detained at Beijing Capital International Airport while on his way to a conference in Germany in 2017. He was subsequently found guilty of ‘separatism’ and sentenced to death with a two year-reprieve after which he will either be executed, or his sentence commuted to life imprisonment.
The authorities in China have not released any details of the trial or provided evidence to substantiate the charge. The trial was held in secret and Tashpolat Tiyip’s whereabouts have remained unknown since he was detained at Beijing Capital International Airport.
According to a recent interview given by his exiled brother, the two-year period of reprieve expires in September 2019 and Dr Tiyip now faces imminent execution.
It is therefore with some urgency that we ask scholars to sign the following letter to the President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping.
[to add your name to the letter, go to this address and scroll down to the bottom: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdPxUJhcT3jHcOP9HtCtoL6paAjR5_ReDydZICre7rvT-Iwyg/viewform]
References
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa17/1006/2019/en/
https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/05/01/chinas-algorithms-repression/reverse-engineering-xinjiang-police-mass-surveillance
https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/2019/09/china-halt-the-execution-of-renowned-scholar-tashpolat-tiyip/
https://uhrp.org/press-release/uhrp-update-435-intellectuals-detained-and-disappeared-uyghur-homeland.html
OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT XI JINPING
Zhongnanhai
Xichang’anjie
Xichengqu,
Beijing Shi 100017
People’s Republic of China
Fax: +86 10 6238 1025
Email: english@mail.gov.cn
Dear President Xi Jinping
We, the undersigned academics, are writing to ask for your urgent intervention to halt the execution of Tashpolat Tiyip which could be carried out this month – September 2019.
Tashpolat Tiyip was the President of Xinjiang University when he was forcibly disappeared in 2017, while travelling to Germany with a group of students for a conference.
He has been detained since then and his whereabouts remain unknown. He was convicted of ‘separatism’ in secret and grossly unfair proceedings.
Sentenced to a ‘suspended death sentence’, which includes the possibility of commutation after two years’ imprisonment when no other crimes are committed, he now faces imminent execution.
We call on you to:
• Immediately halt plans to carry out the execution of Tashpolat Tiyip;
• Release Tashpolat Tiyip unconditionally, unless there is sufficient credible and admissible evidence that he committed an internationally recognized offence and is granted a fair trial in line with international standards.
Yours sincerely,
[to add your name to the letter, go to this address and scroll down to the bottom: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdPxUJhcT3jHcOP9HtCtoL6paAjR5_ReDydZICre7rvT-Iwyg/viewform]