Professor Rahile DAWUT
Rahile Dawut, a renowned anthropologist and leading expert on the study of Uyghur folklore, is reportedly serving a life sentence after conviction of endangering state security. In late 2017, Rahile Dawut disappeared shortly after she had made plans to travel from Xinjiang to Beijing for an academic conference. Rahile Dawut was then held in secret by Chinese authorities without any confirmation of her detention for over five years, despite international media attention and a campaign led by her daughter calling for her release. In September 2023, reports emerged suggesting that Rahile Dawut had been sentenced to life imprisonment after conviction of ‘endangering state security’. The report also confirmed that her appeal against the conviction had been rejected by the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region High People’s Court (see Case Lists 2018 – 2023/3034).
Rahile Dawut, born on 20 May 1966, is an associate professor at Xinjiang University and founder of the university’s research centre on minority folklore. A recipient of English PEN’s Writer of Courage award in 2023, Rahile Dawut is recognised around the world for her peerless contributions to the study and cataloguing of Uyghur cultural heritage, including through her book Uyghur Shrines (Uyghur Mazarliri) published in Uyghur in 2001. Her work was also recognised and supported by the PRC government. In 2016, just a year before she was initially detained, Rahile Dawut received a research grant from the Ministry of Culture, reportedly the largest ever given to a Uyghur research project.
DONG Yuyu
A writer and journalist, Dong Yuyu is currently serving a seven-year prison term after conviction of ‘espionage’. Police initially detained Dong on 21 February 2022 at a hotel in Beijing while he was having lunch with a Japanese diplomat, who was also briefly detained. On 23 March 2023, authorities informed Dong’s family that his case had been sent to court for trial on charges of ‘espionage’; the hearing was reported to have taken place in late July 2023 (see Case List 2023/2024). On 29 November 2024, Dong Yuyu was convicted of ‘espionage’ and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. His family have yet to receive the verdict and have raised serious concerns over the basis for the conviction.
Dong’s family have been denied contact with him for the duration of his detention and he has only been granted limited meetings with his lawyer. For the first six months of his detention, he was held in ‘residential surveillance at a designated location,’ a form of detention which United Nations human rights experts have described as ‘tantamount to enforced disappearance’.
Dong Yuyu, born on 21 April 1962, is a writer and journalist. Before his arrest, he was the deputy head of the editorial department for Guangming Daily, a state-owned newspaper, where he had worked since 1987. In 1998, he co-edited the book Political China: Facing an Era of Choices for a New System, which contained essays contributed by liberal scholars about judicial independence. In addition to his writing for Guangming Daily, he had written columns for The New York Times Chinese website from 2012-2014, including the essay ‘I want to send my son to study in the United States‘ which continues to circulate on Chinese media. Another essay of his, the book review ‘Viewing the Cultural Revolution from the Perspective of National Politics,’ later led to Dong being labelled as ‘anti-socialist’ in 2017.