Akida Pulat has not spoken to her mother in eight years. This Mother’s Day was her eighth without Rahile Dawut, the renowned Uyghur anthropologist and folklorist who disappeared into Chinese state custody in 2017. Dr. Dawut devoted her career to documenting Uyghur shrines and preserving Uyghur cultural memory. For that work, the Chinese government sentenced her to life in prison.
Her case is not unique, as I wrote for The Diplomat last year. Across the Uyghur diaspora in the United States, families are living with the same cruel separation: their relatives, including many of the most respected Uyghur intellectuals of their generation, are imprisoned by the Chinese government. Jewher Ilham, the daughter of Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, who was handed down a life sentence in 2014, has campaigned for his release ever since. Tumaris and Kamaltürk Yalqun have also spent years advocating for their father, Yalqun Rozi, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison, reportedly for his work as a literary critic and textbook editor.
The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) has documented at least 11 wrongfully detained or imprisoned Uyghur scholars and cultural leaders with immediate family members in the United States.
