By Yaxue Cao, published: February 24, 2016   Ilham Tohti, the renowned Uighur scholar who was sentenced to life in prison on charges of “splitting the country” has been denied visitation by his family over the Chinese New Year. Reports had earlier indicated that Ilham’s brother would be visiting him in prison on February 18, but accordin [...] Keep reading »

Updated on December 10, 2018, the International Human Rights Day   Prepared by Late Elliot Sperling, professor of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University  Yaxue Cao, editor of ChinaChange.org and the Ilham Tohti Initiative   Ilham Tohti is the most renowned Uyghur public intellectual in the People’s Republic of China. For over two [...] Keep reading »

Translation published: January 15, 2016 Ilham Tohti was an economics professor at Minzu University in Beijing and the foremost Uighur public intellectual in the People’s Republic of China. He was sentenced to life in prison in September 2014 for criticizing the government’s policies in Xinjiang and advocating basic economic, cultural, religious [...] Keep reading »

Translated From a Report Posted by RFA on October 16, 2015   Noted French Sinologist Prof. Marie Holzman, someone who knows Ilham Tohti, is calling on the European Parliament to award the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to Ilham, a well-known Uyghur intellectual who has been sentenced to life in prison, and to speak out more forcefully [...] Keep reading »

China Change, published: October 16, 2015   Ilham Tohti, the Uighur scholar and public intellectual currently serving a life sentence in prison, has called on his family to engage lawyers and lodge an appeal for him through the Chinese judicial system. Ilham made the request on the second occasion that family has visited him since his sentence [...] Keep reading »

By Ilham Tohti, translated by Cindy Carter, published: May 19, 2015   ChinaChange.org Editor’s Note: This article, a total of 24,000 characters in Chinese, was first posted on the Daxiong Gonghui (大象公会) website sometime after the Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti’s arrest in January, 2014. Daxiong Gonghui described the origin of the artic [...] Keep reading »

By Ilham Tohti, translated by Cindy Carter, published: May 19, 2015 Continued from I. Unemployment, II. Bilingual Education, III. Religion, IV. Ethnic Alienation and Segregation, V.  Distrust of Ethnic Minority Officials and Intellectuals, VI. The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, and VII. Governmental Competence and Credibility   [...] Keep reading »

By Ilham Tohti, translated by Cindy Carter, published: May 12, 2015 Continued from I. Unemployment, II. Bilingual Education, III. Religion, IV. Ethnic Alienation and Segregation, V.  Distrust of Ethnic Minority Officials and Intellectuals, and VI. The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.   VII. Governmental Competence and Credibilit [...] Keep reading »

By Ilham Tohti, translated by Cindy Carter, published: May 11, 2015 Continued from I. Unemployment, II. Bilingual Education, III. Religion, IV. Ethnic Alienation and Segregation, and V.  Distrust of Ethnic Minority Officials and Intellectuals   VI.  The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) Overview Today’s Xinjiang Production [...] Keep reading »