Imprisoned activist Ilham Tohti’s work is more urgent than ever. whatpaula writes on a newly released collection of his writing and how his daughter has inherited his mission
Photo: Gilles Sabrie/The New York Times/REDUX Ilham Tohti is a practical man. When his daughter, Jewher, complained he was working too much and wasn’t spending enough time with her, he simply moved his desk into her room, forcing her, she recalled with playful annoyance, to do her schoolwork on her bed.
It’s striking that Ilham produced all of this work before the Chinese Communist Party began its most serious crackdown on Uyghurs in 2017: Starting that year, over a million Uyghurs, along with other minorities, were forced into internment camps in Xinjiang. The Chinese government initially denied the existence of these camps, in which Uyghurs are forced to renounce their language and religion and are subjected to routine torture, according to reports.
Ilham teaching students at Beijing’s Minzu University. Photo: Federic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images When discussing Uyghur persecution with the press, Ilham’s fervor was tempered, if no less intense.
Rather than encourage a complete overhaul of Chinese government, Ilham warned that the Communist Party’s Uyghur policy would jeopardize its cherished goal of social stability. In an essay at the heart of the book, he addresses the various issues plaguing Uyghurs, including unemployment due to discrimination, the phasing out of Uyghur culture, and segregation within Xinjiang.
At times, his writing reads more like one friend’s sober advice to another, possessing a “for your own good” quality while still bearing the mark of lived experience. “Uyghur blood flows in my veins, and I grew up in the embrace of a Uyghur family,” he wrote on the fourth anniversary of “the July 5 incident,” a series of Uyghur protests in Xinjiang’s capital, Ürümqi, which devolved into riots and took the lives of 192 people.
Jewher’s move to the United States was an accident: In February of 2013, she and her father attempted to board a flight from Beijing to Indiana, where Ilham had been offered a yearlong fellowship at Indiana State University as a visiting scholar. Jewher tagged along, planning to travel with her father for a few weeks before eventually returning home to Beijing. At the Beijing airport, however, Ilham was detained by authorities.
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