After 10 years, Uyghur academic’s arrest commemorated with calls for release

The U.S. State Department, lawmakers and human rights groups marked the 10th anniversary of jailed Uyghur academic and blogger Ilham Tohti’s arrest on Monday with renewed calls for China to release him, while his daughter urged Beijing to provide proof that he remains alive.

An outspoken economics professor who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Tohti was arrested on Jan. 15, 2014. While teaching, he regularly highlighted the religious and cultural persecution of the mostly Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

He was sentenced to life in prison on Sept. 23 the same year following a two-day show trial on charges of promoting separatism and has not been seen or heard from since 2017.