Tokyo, Mar 6 Jewher Ilham, the daughter of jailed Uyghur economist Ilham Tohti, has vowed to make people all over the world aware of the oppression that Uyghurs are suffering in the Xinjiang province of China.
Ilham, now 30 and residing in the United States, was separated from her father in February 2013 at Beijing airport by the Chinese authorities.
Having not returned to China since that day, she told Japan's Kyodo News on Thursday her father's current location remains unknown.
Tohti, a former professor at Minzu University of China in Beijing, was barred from leaving China to take up a position as a visiting scholar at a US college. He was then detained and convicted in September 2014 following a closed-door trial in China. Several reports cited that he was given a life sentence on separatism-related charges.
The sentence, finalised in November 2014, drew outrage from human rights organisations and Western governments. The charges against Ilham Tohti, said Amnesty International, stem from his writings and teachings which explained the systemic discrimination faced by Uyghurs in the Xinjiang province of China.
"Tohti's life sentence, handed down on September 2014 after a trial lacking fairness and transparency, is a blatant violation of his rights. During his imprisonment, Tohti has reportedly been subjected to torture and ill treatment, including wrist and ankle shackling, prolonged solitary confinement, and denial of adequate medical care and food, as well as political indoctrination," the organisation stated.
In 2024, Human Rights Watch stated that the Chinese government persisted in committing crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang.
"Over the years, the Chinese government has dismissed all calls to end its severe repression in Xinjiang, which includes mass arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, separation of families, forced labour, sexual violence, and violations of reproductive rights," it said.
Earlier in 2023, 51 United Nations member countries issued a joint declaration condemning the Chinese government's crimes against humanity committed against Uyghurs and other Turkic communities while calling on Beijing to end its systematic human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region.
In 2022, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) stated that the extent of arbitrary detentions against Uyghur and others, in the context of “restrictions and deprivation, more generally of fundamental rights enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity."
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