We Uyghurs Have No Say: An Imprisoned Writer Speaks
Author: Ilham Tohti
Publisher: Verso Books
Print Length: 192 pages
Genre: Non-Fiction / Essay
Area: Xinjiang, East Turkistan, China
Topic: Uyghur, Muslim, Lived Experience, Testimonies, War on Terror, Ethnic Cleansing, Ethnic & Ethnicity, Repression, Persecution, Internment, Camps, Justice, Social Justice, Peace, History, Politics & Power, Independence & Liberation, Exile, Technology & Surveillance, Torture
The words of China’s most famous political prisoner
In Xinjiang, the large northwest region of China, the government has imprisoned more than a million Uyghurs in re-education camps. One of the incarcerated–whose sentence, unlike most others, has no end date–is Ilham Tohti, an intellectual and economist, a prolific writer, and formerly the host of a website, Uyghur Online. In 2014, Tohti was arrested; accused of advocating separatism, violence, and the overthrow of the Chinese government; subjected to a two-day trial; and sentenced to life. Nothing has been heard from him since.
Here are Tohti’s own words, a collection of his plain-spoken calls for justice, scholarly explanations of the history of Xinjiang, and poignant personal reflections. While his courage and outspokenness about the plight of China’s Muslim minorities is extraordinary, these essays sound a measured insistence on peace and just treatment for the Uyghurs.
Winner of the PEN/Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought while imprisoned, this book is nonetheless the only way to hear from a man who has been called “a Uyghur Mandela”.
Table of Contents
Preface: Ilham Tohti and the Uyghurs — Rian Thum (University of Manchester)
Articles
1. The Source of Xinjiang Ethnic Tensions as I See Them (2005)
2. The Need to Mount Long-Term Resistance to Totalitarianism and Ethnonationalist Chauvinism (2016)
3. Isn’t It Time to Rethink China’s Ethnic Policies (2009)
4. My Ideals and the Career Path I Have Chosen (2011)
5. “The Wounds of the Uyghur People Have Not Healed” (2013)
Essay
1. Present-Day Ethnic Problems in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region: Overview and Recommendations (2013)
Statements
“I Don’t Have Too Many Good Days Ahead of Me” (2013)
“My Outcries Are for My People and, Even More, for the Future of China” (2014)
Interviews
The Watchman of the Uyghur People (2008)
We Uyghurs Have No Say (2012)
Why the Uyghurs Feel Defeated (2013)
“The Uyghurs Are Living in Fear” (2013)
Ilham Tohti is a Uyghur economics professor at Beijing’s Minzu University, where he was known for his research on Uyghur-Han relations as well as his activism for the implementation of regional autonomy laws in China. In 2006, Tohti founded UighurOnline, a Chinese-language website devoted to fostering understanding between Uighur and Han people, China’s dominant ethnic group. In 2008, authorities shut down his website citing the websites links to Uyghur “extremists” abroad. After the July 5, 2009 ethnic rioting between Uyghurs and Han in Ürümqi, Tohti’s whereabouts were unknown after he had been summoned from his home in Beijing. Tohti was subsequently released on August 23, 2009 after international pressure and condemnation. Tohti was again arrested in January 2014, after police raided his apartment and confiscated his laptops, books, and papers. In September 2014, after a two-day trial, Tohti was found guilty of “separatism” and sentenced to life imprisonment in addition to all of his assets being frozen.
Source: https://humanrightscommission.house.gov/defending-freedom-project/prisoners-by-country/China/Ilham-Tohti
More from Ilham Tohti in this library, click here.