Uighur Scholar Rahile Dawut Imprisoned for Her Research

A respected Uyghur scholar who has become a powerful symbol of the devastation of that culture has been jailed by the Chinese. Her imprisonment cannot go unchallenged (Rachel Harris, 'China has sentenced Rahile Dawut to life in prison and would like the world to forget her. We must not' Guardian 12 Oct 2023).

Over the past six years, the sacred shrines have been destroyed, and the people who visited them detained for “re-education” in the camps, or given long prison sentences on spurious charges of “religious extremism”. It’s clear that Dawut’s “crime” is her research: the same painstaking work to document Uyghur heritage that was previously officially approved and supported by government grants.

Dawut has become a powerful symbol of the devastation of Uyghur culture and society, but she is just one individual among many. The Chinese authorities have gone to extraordinary lengths to mask what has been happening in the Uyghur region, but we know of at least 312 individual cases of people like her – Uyghur academics, writers and creative artists – who have been detained and imprisoned simply because they researched, promoted, transmitted and created Uyghur culture and history.

Chinese president Xi Jinping has been explicit in his calls for a “correct understanding” of the history of Xinjiang. What this means is that history is now being comprehensively rewritten to demonstrate that the Uyghur region and its people have been an integral part of the Chinese nation since ancient times. Dawut’s research contradicts this distorted view of history, and so she and her work have been disappeared.

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