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+--- Thread: According to a rights group, China has sentenced a scholar of Uyghur culture to life (/showthread.php?tid=2353)
According to a rights group, China has sentenced a scholar of Uyghur culture to life - tripleyou - 09-27-2023
According to a rights group, China has sentenced a scholar of Uyghur culture to life in prison
Rahile Dawut, a renowned expert on the religious and cultural practises of the minority community, has not been seen since 2017
Sept. 22, 2023
According to a human rights organisation citing an unknown Chinese official, a renowned Uyghur traditional culture professor who vanished in December 2017 has been sentenced to life in jail for compromising China's state security.
Rahile Dawut was a renowned scholar who travelled extensively throughout the oasis towns and shrines of the Xinjiang area in far western China to record religious celebrations, musical performances, and oral traditions of her own Uyghur culture.
When she vanished, her family and coworkers assumed she had most likely been imprisoned as part of a massive effort by Chinese authorities to forcibly assimilate Uyghurs and other Turkic minority groups. This campaign involved the detention of hundreds of thousands of people in detention centres and indoctrination camps.
The United Nations human rights office said last year that China had violated human rights in Xinjiang severely, citing accusations of sexual abuse and torture of detainees who had been held without cause in what the Chinese government has claimed was an effort to combat extremism.
Rahile, 57, established a folklore centre and was a professor at Xinjiang University. She was regarded as a prolific and demanding researcher, as well as a kind mentor who welcomed students and visiting researchers for dinners at her mother's home and shared knowledge and resources.
It has been challenging to learn more about Rahile's condition. Rahile was prosecuted in December 2018 and found guilty of "splittism," a felony of undermining state security, according to the Dui Hua Foundation, a U.S.-based human rights organisation that monitors political prisoners in China and bargains with the government for their release. The group claimed on Thursday that a representative of the Chinese government had verified the denial of Rahile's appeal.
Although it has been rumoured that Professor Rahile Dawut received a lengthy term, this is thought to be the first instance in which a trustworthy source within the Chinese government has officially confirmed the sentence of life in prison, according to a statement from Dui Hua.
Akida Pulat, Rahile's daughter, expressed her shock and devastation over the phone from Seattle, where she resides.
"I am speechless," she exclaimed. It's inconceivable to think that I'll never see her again.
An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by the Xinjiang authorities.
Xinjiang, a province that has been torn apart by ethnic conflict between local Turkic Muslim groups and state-supported waves of Han Chinese migrants for decades, is being aggressively targeted by the Chinese government in an effort to weaken Uyghur identity, according to colleagues in academia. Rahile's case is indicative of this policy.
Rahile was regarded by former pupils as having an excellent grasp of where the red lines were when exploring potentially difficult subjects like religion and identity and never making political comments. She is one of numerous renowned Uyghurs from the fields of education, commerce, and the arts who have recently either been detained or disappeared.
"The Chinese government accuses Rahile of engaging in 'splittism.' The reality, however, is that her only offence was being a Uyghur by birth," wrote Joshua Freeman on X, the social networking website that briefly hosted Twitter. Freeman is a historian at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. He wrote, praising the scholar's efforts and sense of humour, "Everyone should know her name."
Her sentencing is "absurd, blind cruelty," according to Rian Thum, a historian at the University of Manchester. Writing or speaking about this heinous conduct by the Chinese government is difficult.
The Chinese government's efforts to quell criticism of its campaign in the Xinjiang area are evident in the official hush surrounding Rahile's case. Last year, Beijing protested the publication of the UN report. On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Atlantic Council's Strategic Litigation Project hosted an event on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly to discuss how to respond to the 2022 report and "examine options for pursuing justice for the Uyghur people." It was also requested by its mission to the U.N. that member countries refrain from attending.
The Chinese mission charged the organisations in a letter that was previously reported by National Review with "plotting to use human rights issues as a political tool to undermine Xinjiang's stability and disrupt China's peaceful development."
Human Rights Watch's China director Sophie Richardson showed a copy of the letter at the occasion. She told the crowd, "Any government that's going to make an effort to do this first of all has no business sitting on the U.N. Human Rights Council." But it's also effectively stating that it has a lot to hide and is aware of it.
An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by China's U.N. mission.