The New York-based organisation Scholars At Risk will reward Uyghur eminent scholar with prestigious Courage to Think Award.



December 2017. An Associate Professor of the Human Science Institute of Xinjiang University tells friends she is going to travel to Beijing. She is in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, called by Chinese and East Turkestan by Uyghurs. Nearly eight months earlier, Beijing imposed on the region draconian restrictions against the customs and religious practices of these historic people. Men must cut beards short, and women are banned from wearing veils in public. All of them must watch Beijing propaganda media, abide by family planning policies, and send their children to the Communist Party-led schools. The so-called reeducation introduced in 2014 has been now expanded with the detention camps of forced laborers.

The Professor disappears shortly after she shares her trip plans with friends.

Dr. Rahile Dawut's whereabouts have been unknown, and it is only assumed that she was disappeared and unjustly imprisoned in one of the infamous labor concentration camps built around Xinjiang.

Dr. Dawut is an innocent person who was unjustly imprisoned
by Beijing regime only because she is an Uyghur.

She is an innocent person and was disappeared only because she is an Uyghur. It is the reality for at least two million of her people, men, women, and children forcibly separated and exploited by slave labor.

Family members who announced Uyghur academic disappearance in August 2018 have been fighting for her freedom.

Thanks to New York-based rights group Scholars at Risk, their fight will become better known to the world since this week, Dr. Dawut will be the recipient of the Courage to Think Award 2020.

The award will be presented at a virtual conference, “Freedom to Think 2020: Responding to Attacks on Higher Education,” and will be accepted by Dawut’s daughter, Ms. Akeda Pulati.

The topmost wealthy families of Chinese Communist Party are benefiting from the free labour

She studies the folklore and cultural traditions of minority populations. That is not a threat to the government, other institutions, or the people of China, Ms. Pulati told in an interview with the Uyghur section of the Radio Liberty.

Dr. Dawut is one of at least two million Uyghurs unjustly imprisoned by the Chinese Communists. It is estimated their topmost wealthy families are benefiting from the free labour while violating their basic human rights.

I urge the Chinese government to release my mother immediately, Ms. Pulati said.

The list of atrocities of the Chinese Communist Party against the Uyghurs and other minorities persecuted and exploited as slave labor is long.

The authors of the State Department report published on the American government website indicated that the Chinese Communist Party is waging a targeted campaign.

The list of atrocities of the Chinese Communist Party
against the Uyghurs is long

Documented human rights abuses include coercive population control methods, forced labor, arbitrary detention in internment camps, torture, physical and sexual abuse, mass surveillance, family separation, and repression of cultural and religious expression, the authors of the report emphasised.

Last week, Norway-based Uyghur Transitional Justice Database published the satellite photos of new construction in Chinese Labor Camps Archipelago that indicate not only its expansion but also new worrying extensions like a crematorium and cemetery.

Nearby a large cemetery located within a kilometer of the two camps in Aksu on the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert stands also a wide building with a parking lot. Human rights defender and director of the Norway-based Uyghur organisation Mr. Bahtiyar Omar suggested that it may be a crematorium.


Nine cremations centers were built in Xinjiang between March 2017 and February 2018

The building appears to be several stories, he told Radio Liberty. If a crematorium is located in this building, it does not seem a coincidence that it would be located between two camps.

According to information on the Xinjiang Development and Construction Information Network, a publicly available website, nine cremation centers were constructed between March 2017 and February 2018, including in Aksu.