Amnesty Int’l Urges World Leaders to Act for Jailed Uyghur Scholar

As the 10th anniversary of Ilham Tohti’s life sentence approaches, Amnesty International is calling on the international community to increase diplomatic efforts for his release, the organization’s website reported.

 Tohti was sentenced to life imprisonment on September 23, 2014, after an unfair trial on charges of “separatism.” He was targeted by the Chinese government for advocating dialogue between the Uyghur ethnic group and China’s majority Han population.

Amnesty highlights that Tohti’s writings addressed systemic discrimination against Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. His daughter, Jewher Ilham, has campaigned for his release and reported that Chinese authorities have attempted to silence her activism by offering conditional contact with her father. She last spoke with him on January 14, 2014, just hours before his arrest.

Reports since 2017 have documented extensive human rights abuses against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other predominantly Muslim groups in Xinjiang, including systematic mass imprisonment and torture. Amnesty International’s findings align with a UN report from August 2022, which stated that arbitrary detention may constitute crimes against humanity.

Despite these findings, a proposal for a debate on the situation was narrowly rejected by Human Rights Council member states in October 2022. Amnesty has launched a petition urging Chinese President Xi Jinping to ensure Tohti’s immediate and unconditional release, emphasizing the need for accountability for human rights violations in Xinjiang.