1. We Uyghurs Have No Say: A Roundtable on the Writings of Ilham Tohti
- Author:
- Rune Steenberg, Abdürreşit Celil Karluk, and David Brophy
- Publication Date:
- 04-2022
- Content Type:
- Video
- Institution:
- Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
- Abstract:
- Prior to his arrest and sentencing in 2014, economist Ilham Tohti was one of China’s leading experts on contemporary Xinjiang. His academic work and online writings voiced a rare perspective – that of an Uyghur intellectual working within the Chinese system - on the increasingly marginal and precarious position of his Uyghur community in modern China. Ultimately, this critique proved too controversial for the party, and he is now serving a life sentence in prison for “separatism.” We Uyghurs Have No Say (Verso 2022) is a collection of Ilham Tohti’s articles and interviews, translated from Chinese into English, which chart his scholarly interventions from 2007 until his silencing. To mark its publication, this event will assemble a panel of sociologists and anthropologists of Xinjiang – some of whom studied under Ilham in Beijing – to reflect on these writings and the wider significance of Ilham’s work for our understanding of social and political developments in Xinjiang.
- Topic:
- Human Rights, Prisons/Penal Systems, Political Prisoners, and Uyghurs
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, and Xinjiang