MCLC: Ilham Tohti's wife makes plea

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Magnus Fiskesjo <magnus.fiskesjo at cornell.edu>
Subject: Ilham Tohti's wife makes plea
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Source: The Telegraph (6/19/14):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10911745/Tell-me-where
-my-husband-is-wifes-plea-to-Chinas-Communist-Party.html

'Tell me where my husband is' – wife’s plea to China's Communist Party
Nearly six months after her husband disappeared into the custody of
China’s security services, the wife of respected Uighur academic Ilham
Tohti issues an emotional plea for information on his whereabouts
By Tom Phillips, Shanghai

The wife of a respected Chinese academic who disappeared into police
custody almost six months ago has issued an emotional plea to Beijing amid
rumours that he has been secretly put on trial as part of a Communist
Party crackdown on critics.

Ilham Tohti, a Beijing-based Uighur professor known for his moderate
criticism of government policy in the western province of Xinjiang, was
dragged from his home by dozens of police officers on January 15 and
subsequently charged with as yet unspecified crimes related to
“separatism”.

Prof Tohti is believed to have been taken from Beijing to Urumqi,
Xinjiang’s capital, but his precise location is unclear. Li Fangping, his
lawyer, has been unable to visit his client and this week said he had
received unconfirmed reports that Prof Tohti had received a “heavy”
sentence following a secret trial.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Guzaili Nu'er, the academic’s wife,
said she had been allowed no contact with her husband since he was
wrestled into custody in front of his children.

“Why are they doing this? Does China not have laws?” she said. "Why won't
they tell his family what is happening?"

“It has been more than five months since Ilham was taken away and I have
not heard a single word from him. All I can do is wait.”

Prof Tohti, a 44-year-old economist who worked at Beijing’s Minzu
University, was born in the city of Artux in China’s far west.

He became the most prominent critic of Beijing’s policies towards
Xinjiang’s Uighurs, the Turkic-speaking and predominantly Muslim group to
which he belongs.

In 2005 he founded a website called Uighur Online which explored issues
facing the Uighur community including discrimination, religious
persecution and unemployment and was frequently scathing about what it
described as Beijing’s heavy-handed policies.

That criticism appears to have made Prof Tohti a target for the Communist
Party, which has become increasingly sensitive about opposition to its
rule in Xinjiang in the wake of a recent spate of violent incidents and
terrorist attacks that it has blamed on Islamic extremists and separatists
from that region.

Dozens of civilians have been killed in at least four major attacks since
last October, when a car ploughed into crowds in Tiananmen Square killing
two bystanders and its three occupants. On Monday, three Uighurs were
given the death sentence after being found guilty of helping plan that
attack.

Prof Tohti came under growing pressure in the months leading up to his
detention and claimed that on one occasion last November security agents
had rammed his car before telling him: “We want to kill your whole family."

“I am almost confident that the Chinese government is trying to get rid of
me this time,” he wrote in a statement handed to a journalist from Radio
Free Asia before he was detained.

The professor’s detention and disappearance have triggered an
international outcry.

His treatment made “a mockery of China’s claims to be a country based on
the rule of law,” Amnesty International said this week.

“Ilham Tohti has done nothing more than exercise the rights guaranteed to
him by his country's own laws,” a group of leading writers including
Salman Rushdie said in a letter to the Guardian in April.

Prof Tohti’s website had served as a “critically important counterpoint to
the aggressive measures that Xi Jinping's administration has imposed
against the Uighur people in the name of stability,” the writers added.

Gardner Bovingdon, a Xinjiang expert from Indiana University, said Prof
Tohti had “been facing state suspicion and occasional house arrest for
years”.

However, his current detention was a dramatic escalation underlining how
Beijing no longer believed it could convince the majority of Uighurs that
Communist Party rule benefited them, Prof Bovingdon said.

“I think basically the government has made a determination that it is
going to squelch even moderate voices of criticism… and even more
violently repress people who go out on the streets but at the same time
engage in other strategies, such as cracking down on religiosity in
Xinjiang, such as continuing to promote Han immigration to the region,
that really sideline a substantial portion of the Uighur population.”

William Nee, China Researcher at Amnesty International, said Prof Tohti
appeared to have been targetted for “trying to explain what Uighurs are
feeling” to the world.

“He was firmly committed to non-violence and he was always committed to
dialogue. He was committed to trying to be a bridge between Han
intellectuals and the Uighur community,” said Mr Nee, describing the
academic’s treatment as “completely unfair and ridiculous”.

“It’s a little bit unclear what is happening,” added Mr Nee. “It doesn’t
look good.”

The recent spate of attacks on civilians had enabled Beijing to avoid
greater scrutiny over increasingly repressive crackdowns in Xinjiang and
over Prof Tohti’s plight, Prof Bovingdon said. “His story has
unfortunately been completely submerged by all this eye-grabbing and
terrible violence.”

Guzaili Nu'er, Prof Tohti’s wife, said her two young sons had been left
traumatised after witnessing their father’s detention. “They don’t even
dare to go out and play now because they say it is not safe.” The couple’s
eldest son, who is 8, suffers recurrent nightmares.

She vowed to speak up for her husband, despite Beijing’s efforts to
silence him.

“I fear nothing. I just worry for him,” she said. “What has happened to
him? Where is he now?”