Ilham Tohti<\/a> has faced long periods of food deprivation and restraint by shackling during his detention in China, in violation of China\u2019s international obligations regarding the treatment of prisoners under Article 16 of the UN Convention Against Torture, which bars acts of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, including deprivation of food.<\/p>\nTohti was finally given access to his lawyer, Li Fangping, on Thursday at a detention center in China\u2019s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. This initial meeting comes more than five months after Tohti\u2019s initial arrest, during which time he has been held nearly 2,000 miles from his home in Beijing without any access to his family, his lawyer, or the outside world.<\/p>\n
While Li reported Tohti\u2019s health to be intact, PEN\u2019s initial relief was mitigated upon learning he had suffered ill treatment in prison, spending 20 straight days shackled by the ankle and another 10 days deprived of food from March 1-10, presumably in retaliation for the March 1 knife attack in Kunming blamed on Uyghur separatists. Tohti had also staged a hunger strike in January to protest his prison conditions, and has lost a considerable amount of weight since his incarceration.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be denied food for ten days is pushing the body to its outermost limits,\u201d said Sarah Hoffman, PEN Freedom to Write Coordinator and case manager for Ilham Tohti. \u201cA visit from his lawyer\u2014which is permitted under Chinese law\u2014is no consolation for Tohti’s five months of ill treatment in violation of China\u2019s international obligations. PEN calls on President Xi Jinping to stop exploiting China\u2019s security laws and its opaque pretrial detention system to silence and break those writers whose views they disfavor.\u201d<\/p>\n
A member of Uyghur PEN, Ilham Tohti was arrested at his apartment in Beijing on January 15, 2014, after speaking out about human rights violations against the Uyghurs on his website, Uyghur Online. He was held in secret for a month before his family received notification that Tohti had been imprisoned on spurious charges of separatism. In May, PEN American Center honored Tohti with its 2014 PEN\/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award to recognize his sacrifice in the service of free expression.<\/p>\n
In his conversation Thursday with Li, Tohti reiterated his innocence, saying that his actions intended to unite China\u2019s ethnic groups and maintaining that he had said nothing to support separatism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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