Yaxue Cao, January 13, 2023 The article was first published by the Uyghur Human Rights Project. A Chinese version is also available.   I wrote down the title the way I pop in two pills to ease the rising blood pressure in my skull. There is no conversation, as Ilham Tohti, the former economics professor at Minzu University in Beijing, recipient of the 2019 Sakharov Prize, has been serving a life sentence in a prison in Xinjiang since January 15, 2014, and has not been heard for more than six years. People are forgetting him, myself included, as prolonged silence does to our memory and short attention spans. Beijing is counting on our forgetfulness. Never mind that, by China’s law, he should be receiving one […]

Today at 10am an alarm sounded to remind us of the invasion by the Japanese 73 years ago. In the weeks following the invasion 300,000 Chinese were slaughtered. I was in my office when I heard the alarm, it caused an awful, uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. My bus ride to work takes me past many of the homes and universities that served as refugee camps. I’ve been in the home where the missionaries would gather to pray for peace during that time. I have seen the mass graves that serve as the undeniable evidence of the atrocities committed. The International Safety Zone was created by the foreigners who chose to stay behind in Nanjing to protect the people. The area was […]