Beijing, July 14: More than 100 Chinese writers and intellectuals have signed a letter calling for the release of Ilham Tohti, an outspoken Uighur economist who disappeared from his Beijing home last week and has apparently been detained.
Tohti had in recent months sharpened his critique of problems in China’s far west region of Xinjiang, where ethnic violence in the capital Urumqi earlier this month left 184 dead and 1,680 wounded.
“Professor Ilham Tohti is a Uighur intellectual who devoted himself to friendship between ethnic groups and eradicating conflicts between them. He should not be taken as a criminal,” said the letter, which demanded information about his case and was posted online Monday.
“If they’ve started legal proceedings toward Ilham Tohti, they must gain trust from the people through transparency, and especially gain trust from the Uighur people,” the letter said.
The letter said the Web site that Tohti founded, Uighurbiz.cn, a Chinese-language Web site that became a lively forum about Uighur life and views, was an important site for dialogue between Han Chinese and Uighurs.
The letter was signed by Chinese authors, including Wang Lixiong, a Chinese democracy activist, and posted on the international version of the blogging Web portal Bullog, at bullogger.com.
“The signing is continuing and it is gathering more signatures,” said Woeser, a Beijing-based Tibetan writer and blogger who signed the letter.
It urged the Chinese government to reflect on its whether its own mistakes caused the unrest in Xinjiang and the anti-government riots last year Lhasa and other Tibetan communities.
Xinjiang Governor Nur Bekri in a televised speech July 6 accused Tohti’s Web site and another popular one of helping “to orchestrate the incitement and spread propaganda,” a day after Sunday’s peaceful protest by Uighurs dissolved into a riot.
Tohti, 39, disappeared from his Beijing home last week, but called a friend just after midnight Wednesday to say he would be detained.
A spokesman for the Beijing Public Security Bureau said he did not have any information on the case.
Tohti’s academic work had begun to focus on how Chinese policies that encourage Han Chinese to move into Xinjiang have disadvantaged and marginalized native Uighurs.
–Agencies