cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/40821384

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On the night of July 29, 2018, Chinese authorities raided the home of Dr. Abdulqadir Jalaleddin, a celebrated Uyghur poet. Police placed a black hood over his head and took him away. Jalaleddin’s arrest was part of the state campaign to erase Uyghur identity, a key aim of the genocide against the Uyghur people.

While in detention, Jalaleddin wrote the poem “No Way Home,” memorized by fellow detainees and translated by one of his former students. The poem concludes:

In December 2017, Dr. Rahile Dawut, a renowned Uyghur ethnographer and the founder of a folklore institute at Xinjiang University, was planning to travel to Beijing. But before she could make the trip, Dawut disappeared. Five years later, in 2023, her family finally learned that she had been sentenced to life in prison for “endangering state security.”

Seven years later, Jalaleddin and Dawut remain in incommunicado imprisonment. Their children in the United States do not know where they are, or what conditions they are being held in.

[…]

Meanwhile, the world looks away. Universities and publishers of academic and scholarly work have a special responsibility to make academic freedom, and freedom of expression more generally, a condition of cooperation with institutions in China.

This lesson was learned the hard way by Princeton University Press (PUP). In June, its director joined a Chinese government-sponsored tour of the Uyghur region, and issued a statement praising “the incredible power of Uyghur poetry,” while saying not a single word about the brutal treatment of Uyghur poets like Jalaleddin. This decision made PUP an “instrument of disinformation,” showing “shocking naïveté,” as noted in a roundup of the critical response published in The Uyghur Times.

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By targeting the scholars and interpreters of our history, literature, and traditions, China is attacking the core of Uyghur identity. These intellectuals are the living memory of a people who have thrived for over a millennium at the crossroads of Eurasian civilizations. Uyghur poetry, folklore, and literature draw on Turkic oral verse, Persian literature, influences from the Arab world, and elements from East Asia and Europe to create something entirely our own. Erasing Uyghur culture is a deep loss.

[…]

Now Beijing presents a Potemkin version of Uyghur traditions, creating genocide-denying propaganda out of our heritage. A handful of our mosques may still stand, but inside they are empty. Our children are forcibly separated from their parents in state-run boarding schools where they are punished for speaking our language. Even their names are changed. Our language is restricted, our mosques and graveyards are bulldozed, and our books are burned.

[…]

China wants the world to accept its genocidal policies, and forget the eliticide of Uyghur scholars. We cannot let this happen. It is an urgent imperative for governments and global scholarly communities to once again speak their names, demand their release, and hold China accountable.