{"id":4372,"date":"2018-11-03T18:42:59","date_gmt":"2018-11-03T18:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iuhrdf.org\/en\/2018\/11\/03\/disappearance-rahile-dawut\/"},"modified":"2018-11-03T18:42:59","modified_gmt":"2018-11-03T18:42:59","slug":"disappearance-rahile-dawut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/disappearance-rahile-dawut\/","title":{"rendered":"The Disappearance of Rahile Dawut"},"content":{"rendered":"

On December 4, 2017, the disappearance<\/a> of Professor Rahile Dawut, an eminent scholar of the Uyghur ethnic minority which she herself belongs to, sent quiet shockwaves among her students and colleagues around the world. On that day she had packed her bags for a flight to Beijing from Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where the majority of Uyghurs live, and has not been seen since. Presumably she is being held in detention. The cryptic text messages a colleague sent regarding what happened did not provide many details. They ended with the message, \u201cI am going to delete my VPN [virtual private network, for communicating behind the Chinese firewall] and never use it again. So please if you care about people here, stop asking questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dawut\u2019s Uyghur students care too deeply to stop asking questions, but for many months they have kept their questions quiet. Many of them have already lost friends and family to the \u201ctransformation through education\u201d camp system that has disappeared hundreds of thousands<\/a> of Uyghurs in 2017, and continues to do so in 2018. They know about the dangers of speaking out against the state\u2019s human-engineering campaign.<\/p>\n

Although they have remained silent, her students told me they have cried uncontrollably. They felt dizzy. It has been hard to breathe. They feel that with Dawut\u2019s disappearance, their collective future has also disappeared, erasing their work to bring native Uyghur knowledge \u2013 its world view, its system of values, its life practices \u2013 into the present, translating and amplifying it for audiences around the world.<\/p>\n

Rahile Dawut has taught them an ethics of survival. Born in Urumqi in 1966 to a family of intellectuals, in 1998 she became one of the first Uyghur women to receive her PhD. The determination it took to achieve this has also shaped her work, which strives to preserve the enduring life of Uyghur cultural values and practices. Throughout her career she has refused to let her students simply watch as Uyghur traditions vanished and sacred landscapes were barred. Instead she has shown them how Uyghurs can take control of their own stories by sharing knowledge of their land.<\/p>\n

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\u201cShe has refused to let her students simply watch as Uyghur traditions vanished and sacred landscapes were barred\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Dawut is more than just a scholar of Uyghur folklore and sacred geography. When she founded the Ethnic Minorities Folklore Research Center<\/a> at Xinjiang University in 2007, she built an intellectual home for dozens of young researchers. Historian Eric Schluessel noted that when he first met her in 2008, other Uyghurs already thought of her \u201cas a kind of superstar.\u201d This awe came not only from her pathbreaking work as one of the first female Uyghur academics to rise through the ranks of Chinese academia, but also from her student-centered approach to teaching and research.<\/p>\n

She not only pioneered native ethnography in Xinjiang, but as one of her Uyghur students put it, \u201cestablished herself as a model for many young female ethnographers and has shown them what is possible.\u201d Another of her students \u2013 who must all remain anonymous for obvious reasons \u2013 told me that her influence on campus extended far beyond her focus on anthropology, and that because of Dawut \u201cmany women, even those in computer science or mathematics, saw that a woman could be successful in her career in Uyghur society. Our society can be so patriarchal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The anthropologist Rune Steenberg observed when he met Dawut for the first time in 2010 that her office was full of bookshelves crowded with the MA and BA theses of her students, stacks of papers, books, cassette recordings, DVDs of weddings, oral storytelling events, and records of shrine pilgrimages and other celebrations that Dawut has collected from all over Xinjiang. Like many international researchers, Steenberg spent hours in her office looking at her collections of ethnographic data and learning from her and her students. \u201cI was struck by how well Dawut took care of her students,\u201d she said. \u201cShe bought lunch for them, saw after them when they were ill and generally took an interest in their work and life. She treated them as equals.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Dawut\u2019s students told me, \u201cWe are like sisters! She is my hero. Even after I first came to the US, whenever I had a problem I would write her an email. She always encouraged me. She said, \u2018This is your chance, every single day you are learning something! Not everyone can get this chance! Don\u2019t give up! I believe in you, you can do it!\u2019 So, I never gave up even if I felt that a mountain had collapsed on my head.\u201d<\/p>\n


Rahile Dawut talking with Uyghur village elders in 2005 (Lisa Ross)<\/em><\/p>\n

Historian Joshua Freeman, one of her long-term collaborators, commented, \u201cFor a generation of master\u2019s students at Xinjiang University, Rahile Dawut is more than an advisor. With her boundless energy and generosity, she made sure her students \u2013 many from distant towns and less privileged backgrounds \u2013 had the means to get by in Urumqi, that they were doing OK in their studies and in life. Dawut\u2019s students have gone on to remarkable success in academia and in other spheres, and I have heard from many of them about the role she played in their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I talked to over a dozen of Dawut\u2019s international colleagues for this essay, a common thread emerged: nearly all of them mentioned how modest and self-effacing Dawut is, even though she has achieved so much as a scholar. It often feels as though she is not fully aware of how monumental her contribution to Uyghur studies is. The modesty that Dawut\u2019s colleagues and students associate with her also proceeds from her ethics of survival. For her, the true carriers of knowledge in her research are not scholars and academic institutions, but the Uyghur farmers who use traditional knowledge in their everyday life.<\/p>\n

Dawut\u2019s monumental 2002 study<\/a> of religious geography mapped hundreds of shrines (mazars<\/em>) that dot the desert landscape surrounding the oasis cities that make up the Uyghur homeland. She examined not only this network of pilgrimage sites but, as historian Rian Thum commented, also the \u201cbeliefs people held about each shrine\u2019s history and the rituals they performed at the shrines.\u201d As the landscape portrait photographer Lisa Ross remembered, Dawut\u2019s book became an object Uyghur farmers \u201cwere excited to look at and hold in their hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe negative intersection of Chinese patriarchy, minority status and international misrecognition made her success even more remarkable\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Since many Uyghurs are not permitted to make the journey to Mecca \u2013 passports are restricted, and a strict quota is enforced \u2013 visiting a number of the shrines Dawut describes in the book allows them to achieve a life-goal similar to the Hajj without ever leaving China. Because of this, the book itself became a highly sought-after object in the region, affirming Uyghur believers as they traced the paths of their ancestors. The eagerness of Uyghurs to participate in this shrine tradition and their interest in Dawut\u2019s work demonstrates the importance of shrines for Uyghurs. Her work shows that shrines are \u201ca pervasive, rather than exceptional, feature of the Uyghur landscape,\u201d according to Thum.<\/p>\n

Ethnomusicologist Elise Anderson recalled Dawut\u2019s commitment to the people who maintain these traditions when they co-authored a chapter on Uyghur oral traditions in 2015. \u201cWhen the foundation that published our textbook chapter offered us small sums of money for the audio and video materials we included, all of which came from Dawut\u2019s decades-long archive of recordings from her fieldwork at mazars<\/em>, without skipping a beat Dawut insisted that we turn around and give the money back to the oral poets (dastanchis<\/em>) who had originally performed the poems.\u201d Her students told me she asked Uyghur village elders for input on what she planned to publish and respected their desires when it came to sharing their knowledge with the wider public.<\/p>\n


Dawut documenting Uyghur village life in 2005 (Lisa Ross)<\/em><\/p>\n

In January 2017, Dawut was featured on the front page of the magazine Xinjiang Women<\/em> in recognition of her 20 years of research, her four books and more than 30 research articles in Uyghur, Chinese and English. She had received millions of yuan<\/em> in state grants and was a native scholar superstar. As ethnomusicologist Rachel Harris observed, \u201cAs a minority woman she shouldered not just a double but a triple burden.\u201d Her ability to succeed despite the negative intersection of Chinese patriarchy, minority status and international misrecognition made her success even more remarkable.<\/p>\n

Dawut has been a member of the Chinese Communist Party for over 30 years, and her disappearance is particularly shocking because she has long been celebrated within the Chinese academic and political system, as a student of the celebrated Chinese folklorist Zhong Jingwen. In 2008, she was awarded the prestigious Zhong Jingwen Award<\/a> for her research.<\/p>\n

This collegiality also left a big impression on her students and colleagues. Steenberg said, \u201cI never heard her even covertly say bad things about the Han [ethnicity]. Her Mandarin was great and she used it without a grudge. She held good relations to her Han colleagues, and they were always invited to the talks I held at her institute.\u201d He continued, \u201cI see Dawut as a bridge-builder between western, Uyghur and Han-Chinese academia. She embraced all of these traditions, learned from each of them and managed to have their practitioners interact in mutual respect and support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps Dawut has such a powerful effect on those who know her because of what historian Alexandre Papas referred to as her \u201cparticular attention to the material, often barely visible, aspects of veneration in Islam.\u201d She observes the feeling of the places she documents, the tears people shed. She cares about what Uyghurs care about, and when those around her watch this in action they cannot help but care too. As Ross says, \u201cDawut helped me to grow and develop in my humanity, in my hospitality and in my generosity.\u201d<\/p>\n