February 10, 2014
NEW YORK (February 10, 2014)—The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) condemns the arrest and enforced disappearance of Uyghur professor Ilham Tohti and calls on the Chinese government to release him immediately. Tohti’s family has had no news of his whereabouts since he was arrested at his home in Beijing on January 15, 2014.
“History shows that, because they base their rule on fear and lack any citizen representation, dictatorial governments are invariably ruthless in the persecution and oppression of all sorts of minorities,” said HRF president Thor Halvorssen. “This is the case with the Chinese dictatorship and the plight of the Uyghur and Tibetan peoples under its rule,” concluded Halvorssen.
Tohti is a leading academic and one of the most prominent commentators on basic rights issues affecting the Uyghur people. The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority—in a country that is 91.6% Han Chinese—that live primarily in the Xinjiang region of China and have been brutally repressed by the government. The Chinese authorities raided Tohti’s home on January 15, arresting him and confiscating his computer. The public security bureau in the capital of Xinjiang released a statement accusing Tohti of inciting separatism, but refused to inform his family where he is being held.
As the New York Times reports, the practice of enforced disappearances of dissidents—and particularly of Uyghur dissidents—has increased in China in recent years. According to the 2006 International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, enforced disappearance is “the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law.”
To learn more about the plight of the Uyghur people, watch Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer’s speech at the Oslo Freedom Forum, HRF’s annual human rights conference.
The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies. We believe that all human beings are entitled to freedom of self-determination, freedom from tyranny, the rights to speak freely, to associate with those of like mind, and to leave and enter their countries. Individuals in a free society must be accorded equal treatment and due process under law, and must have the opportunity to participate in the governments of their countries; HRF’s ideals likewise find expression in the conviction that all human beings have the right to be free from arbitrary detainment or exile and from interference and coercion in matters of conscience. HRF does not support nor condone violence. HRF’s International Council includes human rights advocates George Ayittey, Vladimir Bukovsky, Palden Gyatso, Garry Kasparov, Mutabar Tadjibaeva, Ramón J. Velásquez, Elie Wiesel, and Harry Wu.
Contact: Jamie Hancock, Human Rights Foundation, (212) 246-8486, jamie@thehrf.org