The wife of detained ethnic minority Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti said she is concerned over his health after it was revealed that he had gone on a hunger strike and was deprived of food and adequate water.<\/p>\n
2014-06-27<\/p>\n
The wife of detained ethnic minority Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti said she is concerned over his health after it was revealed that he had gone on a hunger strike and was deprived of food and adequate water.<\/p>\n
Uyghur rights groups called the conditions of Tohti\u2019s imprisonment a human rights violation and demanded he be given access to proper medical treatment.<\/p>\n
Guzelnur said although one of two lawyers who met Tohti at a detention center in China\u2019s northwestern Xinjiang region on Thursday had told her that his health was not at risk, she was concerned about his sudden weight loss.<\/p>\n
She called on the authorities to allow his family to meet with Tohti, a long-time advocate of Uyghur rights and outspoken critic of Chinese policies in the Xinjiang region.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy husband did not have any illnesses before,\u201d she told RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. \u201cEven though the lawyer said he is fine, I am worried because he lost 16 kilograms [[35 pounds].\u201d<\/p>\n
Lawyers Li Fangping had contacted Guzelnur after his meeting with Tohti to reassure her that her husband was in good health.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe told me that my husband\u2019s health is good and not to worry about it too much,\u201d Guzelnur said.<\/p>\n
Punishment<\/strong><\/p>\n Tohti had told Li and another lawyer Wang Yu in their first meeting since being taken into custody that he was denied food and given one and a half glasses of water for 10 days in March in an apparent punishment for failing to cooperate with the authorities.<\/p>\n He told them that the deprivation of food and water made him shed16 kilograms [35 pounds].<\/p>\n Earlier in January, during his initial days in detention, Tohti had staged a 10-day hunger strike in protest against food served to him that didn’t follow Islamic dietary laws.<\/p>\n Tohti was dragged away from his home in the Chinese capital by dozens of police on Jan. 15, and formally arrested on Feb. 20 on separatism charges, which the academic has dismissed as spurious.<\/p>\n He was been sacked as an economics professor at The Central University for Nationalities in Beijing, where he had been teaching for many years.<\/p>\n Human rights groups have said that Tohti’s detention is part of Beijing’s broad strategy to drown the voices of the mostly Muslim Uyghurs, who call Xinjiang their homeland.<\/p>\n It also underscores Beijing’s increasing hard-line stance on dissent surrounding Xinjiang, where Uyghurs say they have long suffered ethnic discrimination, oppressive religious controls, and continued poverty and joblessness.<\/p>\n Uyghur rights groups have expressed concern over Tohti\u2019s fate under detention.<\/p>\n Rights violation<\/strong><\/p>\n The Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) said it considered the conditions of his imprisonment a violation of international human rights standards, saying the Chinese authorities should allow Tohti access to proper medical treatment and release him.<\/p>\n UHRP also asked the international community, particularly concerned governments, to call on Beijing to account for its handling of Tohti\u2019s case.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Chinese government\u2019s treatment of Ilham Tohti is scandalous,\u201d said UHRP director Alim Seytoff in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cBy any standard, deprivation of food and water as some kind of retribution for a crime he did not commit is cruel,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis state sanctioned brutality is happening to him all because he wanted to have a rational and open discussion about the documented discrimination and marginalization of the Uyghur people in China,\u201d Seytoff said.<\/p>\n Guzelnur said she had asked Li to urge the authorities to allow Tohti\u2019s family, especially his ailing mother, to visit with him.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, his mother is ill,\u201d she said, adding that she had told Li that \u201ceven if I cannot meet with him, just find a way for his mother to visit with him.<\/p>\n The authorities have said they would only allow Li and Wang Yu access to Tohti.<\/p>\n Vindicated<\/strong><\/p>\n Guzelnur also said she was confident that her husband would be vindicated.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we got married, Ilham told me clearly that he will fight for the Uyghurs rights within the Chinese law and promote this view through his website Uyghur Online,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, it has been half a year since his detention and I have been left alone with our two kids. I know my husband has taken the right path and that is why I support him.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI also tell my kids, \u2018Your father is a good man and you should be proud of him.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Tohti’s university stopped paying his salary last month, leaving Guzelnur and their two young sons little to survive on as they struggle to cope with his disappearance.<\/p>\n Reported by Eset Sulaiman for RFA\u2019s Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Parameswaran Ponnudurai. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The wife of detained ethnic minority Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti said she is concerned over his health after it was revealed that he had gone on a hunger strike and was deprived of food and adequate water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}