{"id":4157,"date":"2018-10-08T10:19:46","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T10:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2018\/10\/08\/star-scholar-disappears-crackdown-engulfs-western-china\/"},"modified":"2018-10-08T10:19:46","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T10:19:46","slug":"star-scholar-disappears-crackdown-engulfs-western-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/star-scholar-disappears-crackdown-engulfs-western-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Scholar Disappears as Crackdown Engulfs Western China"},"content":{"rendered":"

URUMQI, China \u2014 She was one of the most revered academics from the Uighur ethnic minority in far western China. She had written extensively and lectured across China and the world to explain and celebrate Uighurs\u2019 varied traditions. Her research was funded by Chinese government ministries and praised by other scholars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then she disappeared.<\/p>\n

The academic, Rahile Dawut<\/a>, 52, told a relative last December that she planned to travel to Beijing from Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region where she taught. Professor Dawut was in a rush when she left, according to the relative, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of punishment from the Chinese authorities.<\/p>\n

She has not been heard from since, and her family and close friends are sure she was secretly detained as part of a severe clampdown on Uighurs, the largely Muslim group who call Xinjiang their homeland.<\/p>\n

Professor Dawut\u2019s trajectory \u2014 from celebrated ethnographer at Xinjiang University in Urumqi to clandestine detainee \u2014 illustrates a wider crackdown that has drastically constricted Uighur life and culture.<\/p>\n

The family member and Professor Dawut\u2019s friends said they decided to speak out now, eight months after she vanished, because it had become clear that staying silent would not bring her release from a re-education facility, detention cell or perhaps prison.<\/p>\n

\u201cVirtually all expressions of Uighurs\u2019 unique culture are dangerous now, and there\u2019s no better evidence of that than the disappearance of Rahile Dawut,\u201d said Rian Thum<\/a>, an associate professor at Loyola University New Orleans whose historical research on Uighur pilgrimages and manuscripts drew on Professor Dawut\u2019s pioneering studies. \u201cThere was a lot of hope that they would see that she was a nonthreat and release her, but that hope gradually dwindled.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Xinjiang region, more than anywhere else in China, has demonstrated how Xi Jinping<\/a>, the country\u2019s president and Communist Party leader, is determined to redraw the boundaries of what is permitted in religion, academic research, civil society and ethnic expression.<\/p>\n

Under him, the government has redoubled a yearslong clampdown on Uighurs who are marked as potential supporters of independence or Islamist extremism. For many of Xinjiang\u2019s 11 million Uighurs<\/a>, their homeland has become a surveillance state swarming with checkpoints, security cameras and armed patrols.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of Uighurs have been kept in secretive re-education centers for weeks, months and even years, scholars and international human rights groups<\/a> estimate. Uighurs have also experienced increasing restrictions on movement, prayer and communications.<\/p>\n

Chinese officials have mostly avoided acknowledging the mass internments. But not even moderate academics like Professor Dawut appear secure. The government has purged what it calls \u201ctwo-faced\u201d Uighur teachers and officials suspected of secretly resisting the hard-line policies.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince Uighurs are now collectively under suspicion, any Uighur academic with foreign ties is branded a \u2018two-faced intellectual\u2019 \u2014 disloyal to the state and in need of re-education,\u201d said Rachel Harris<\/a>, who studies Uighur music at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and knows Professor Dawut as a friend and academic partner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe accounts of the \u2018re-education\u2019 regime that people are undergoing in those camps are harrowing,\u201d Professor Harris said by email. \u201cI imagine my lovely, principled, dedicated colleague there, and I feel incredibly angry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other prominent Uighurs who have vanished in the past two years, apparently into detention, include writers and website operators<\/a>, a soccer star<\/a> and a popular musician<\/a>, according to Radio Free Asia and overseas Uighur groups with extensive contacts in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

At least one of Professor Dawut\u2019s graduate students in China has also disappeared, according to John Kamm, founder of the Dui Hua Foundation<\/a>in San Francisco, which lobbies the Chinese government on human rights cases. He said his attempts to get information about Professor Dawut from Chinese officials had been unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone who has known her is under suspicion,\u201d Mr. Kamm said. \u201cRahile Dawut is the human face of this unspeakable tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

A month before Professor Dawut left her last message, her life had a semblance of normality. She gave a talk on Uighur women in November at Peking University, speaking to a forum<\/a> of scholars who have backed Mr. Xi\u2019s assimilationist ethnic policies in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

Uighurs are a Turkic people, much closer in appearance, language and customs to peoples across Central Asia than the Han who make up the vast majority of China\u2019s population. The Chinese government had long been wary of defiance from them, given Uighurs\u2019 heritage and history of independence. Official alarm skyrocketed after deadly riots in Xinjiang in 2009<\/a> and a series of primitive but bloody assaults<\/a> on Han people, police officers and officials.<\/p>\n

But until recently, Professor Dawut\u2019s work was welcomed by Chinese bureaucrats, as evidenced by grants and support she received from the Ministry of Culture<\/a>. She had earned an international reputation as an expert on Uighur shrines<\/a>, folklore, music<\/a> and crafts that had been neglected by previous generations of scholars.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was deeply drawn to this vivid, lively folk culture and customs, so different from the accounts in textbooks,\u201d she said in an interview with a Chinese art newspaper<\/a> in 2011. \u201cAbove all, we\u2019re preserving and documenting this folk cultural heritage not so that it can lie in archives or serve as museum exhibits, but so it can be returned to the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Chinese policymakers worried that Uighurs were increasingly drawn to radical forms of Islam from the Middle East, Professor Dawut\u2019s work portrayed Uighur heritage as more diverse and tolerant, shaped by Sufi spiritual traditions anathema to modern-day extremists. In 2014, she told The New York Times<\/a> that she worried about Uighur women drawn to conservative Islam.<\/p>\n

After finishing her doctorate in Beijing, Professor Dawut began teaching at Xinjiang University, the region\u2019s premier school. She founded a folklore institute and shared her work in Europe and the United States, becoming a guide to many foreign scholars.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost Western scholars doing research on Xinjiang knew to bring her coffee,\u201d said Elise Anderson, a Ph.D. candidate at Indiana University who worked with Professor Dawut. \u201cI remember a lot of the time she would say, \u2018Let\u2019s take a break from work. Let\u2019s drink some coffee.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Dawut stayed away from political disputes about the future of Xinjiang. If she needed any warning about the risks, there was Ilham Tohti, a Uighur economist at Minzu University in Beijing and measured critic of Chinese policy in Xinjiang. He was sentenced to life in prison<\/a> in 2014 on charges of separatism. Seven of his students were also charged<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Professor Dawut\u2019s international prominence and pride in Uighur traditions may help explain her downfall.<\/p>\n

After Mr. Xi came to power in 2012 and installed a hard-line party functionary to run Xinjiang, the drive to root out dissent here accelerated. Xinjiang University and other schools became a particular focus.<\/p>\n

In March of last year, the university leaders were replaced<\/a>, and soon afterward a team of party inspectors reported<\/a> that the university had been politically lax. The new administrators vowed to unmask<\/a> \u201ctwo-faced\u201d Uighur academics who resisted the new orthodoxies. Research and foreign ties that were once tolerated became increasingly suspect.<\/p>\n

Xinjiang University held a rally<\/a> of 4,300 teachers and students who were warned that separatist sympathizers would be driven out like \u201crats crossing the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chinese government, after arresting Uighur government officials, Uighur rich people, they\u2019ve begun to arrest Uighur intellectuals,\u201d Tahir Imin, a former student of Professor Dawut, said from Washington, where he lives. \u201cRight now I can tell you more than 20 names, all prominent Uighur intellectuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

As her friends abroad expressed growing worry, Professor Dawut continued her teaching and research as far as new restrictions allowed. She was also reluctant to leave her mother alone in Urumqi, Professor Harris said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always tried to bring some freshly ground coffee with me when I visited her,\u201d she said of Professor Dawut. \u201cThat\u2019s a painful memory when I think of her life now in the detention camp.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Buckley reported from Urumqi, China, and Austin Ramzy from Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

Source: The New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n

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By Chris Buckley<\/a> and Austin Ramzy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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