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Muhammad Salih Hajim, an 82-year-old Koranic scholar, reportedly died in January, in an internment camp. Almost all of his family members have been interned or harassed. Another scholar, Abdulnehed Mehsum, died in internment last November.
Adil Tuniyaz—a well-known poet—and his wife Nezire Muhammad Salih have been charged with "promoting terrorism." The government took three of their children away from them and placed them in state orphanages.
Uyghur PEN Centre (a sister center to us) has compiled its own list of #Uyghur academics and intellectuals detained. This list contains the names of ten writers/poets, three artists, eight bloggers/online writers, 32 academics.
Last month, the editor in chief of Xinjiang's Literature Translation Magazine, Qeyser Qeyum, reportedly committed suicide rather than face internment in a political indoctrination camp.
Government targeting of #Uyghur intellectuals did not start in 2017. Intellectuals targeted before that include economics professor Ilham Tohti, who is serving a life sentence for "separatism" after a farcical trial. @PENamerican awarded Tohti our 2014 Freedom to Write Award.
#Uyghur poet Gulmire Imin is also serving a life imprisonment; she was tried and sentenced in a one-day, closed trial. Imin is the recipient of the Hellman/Hammett Prize for her work promoting free expression.
These are just some of the cases highlighted in the report, which clearly lays out how Chinese government policy is to treat #Uyghur cultural expression—art, scholarship, literature—as dangerous, unpatriotic, criminal.
As an organization dedicated to safeguarding free expression, PEN America is alarmed and appalled. This report is a wake-up call to all those who believe in conscientious literary citizenship. Read the report and see for yourself.
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