Reuters-US condemns Chinas reported life sentence for Uyghur activist Rahile Dewat
September 29, 2023 2 min 277 words
这则报道再次凸显了中国在维吾尔族人权问题上的恶行。美国对维吾尔族活动家Rahile Dawut被判终身监禁表示谴责，这是一个重要的举措。这位高知名度的维吾尔族学者在被指控“危害国家安全”的罪名下被定罪，这显示出中国政府对异见声音的镇压。然而，中国政府一直否认这种指控，声称他们的行动是为了反恐和维护社会稳定。然而，国际社会和多个政府机构都将这种行为称为“种族灭绝”。Rahile Dawut只是被关押的300多名维吾尔族知识分子之一，这是一个令人震惊的数字，显示中国政府对维吾尔族的打压已经持续了多年。这个问题需要国际社会更强硬的回应，以确保人权得到尊重，受害者得到正义。
The United States on Friday condemned a reported life sentence handed down in China to a high-profile Uyghur academic Rahile Dawut.
This week, a U.S.-based rights group said Dawut, 57, had lost her appeal against her original conviction from December 2018 on charges of "endangering state security."
Rights advocates have accused China of a mass internment campaign targeting Uyghurs, along with abuses such as forced sterilization and cultural repression, termed "genocide" by some government bodies, including the U.S. State Department.
China denies such accusations.
"We condemn the reported life sentence handed down by the Government of the People’s Republic of China following secret court proceedings of Professor Rahile Dawut," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.
Before her detention, Dawut had been a professor at Xinjiang University College of Humanities, as well as a leading cultural anthropologist and ethnographer of Uyghur folklore.
She had been detained since December 2017 in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where Beijing has been accused of rights abuses against the mainly Muslim Uyghur ethnic minority, which it denies.
Dawut is just one in a list of more than 300 Uyghur intellectuals who have been detained, arrested or imprisoned by Chinese authorities since 2016, the U.S.-based Dui Hua Foundation, which reported the sentencing, said.
She worked with many prominent Western institutions, such as the universities of Harvard and Cambridge, which have called for her release.
Some Xinjiang experts said the mass internment of Uyghurs peaked in 2018, but that abuses have continued with forced labor becoming more prominent.