Our anthropologist colleague Rahile Dawut has been handed a “life sentence” — she was initially detained while on her way to a Beijing conference, in 2017. Her daughter, Akida Pulati, has been campaigning for her mother. Rahile Dawut is clearly being persecuted according to the logic of genocide: for being an Uyghur cultural leader. This is similar to hundreds of other cultural leaders, artists, academics, and other intellectuals targeted in the genocide because the Chinese regime wants them terminated.
Today’s news revealing the life sentence, supposedly handed down in 2018, is a stark reminder that China’s genocide continues unabated with the utmost cruelty, with hundreds of thousands of families separated and with no hope of reunification.
It’s incredible that in many places in the West and around the world, it is still business as usual with China and its academic institutions. They buy our silence and complicity.
On today’s news see:
https://duihua.org/life-sentence-for-professor-rahile-dawut-confirmed/
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/uyghur-professor-09212023155317.html
https://uhrp.org/statement/uhrp-appalled-by-news-of-life-sentence-for-professor-rahile-dawut/
[ = with links to reports on the mass persecution of academics, intellectuals, cultural leaders].
More background: (See also multiple previous messages about Rahile Dawut on the MCLC list)
https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/2020/11/rahile-dawut-to-receive-courage-to-think-award/
https://www.unothegateway.com/missing-scholar-has-yet-to-be-reunited-with-family-after-four-years/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRUDdlLwUFc [Rahile Dawut video tributes from world scholars]
Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>