Uyghur intellectual died while in custody of Chinese authorities

A Uyghur intellectual and educational activist, who was arrested the night before his daughter’s wedding five years ago, died only two months later while in detention, two people familiar with the situation told Radio Free Asia.

Ibrahim Dawut was a former chemistry teacher at a high school in Kashgar, in China’s far-western Xinjiang region, who advocated for classes in the Uyghur region to be taught in Uyghur.

He an outspoken critic of China’s bilingual education system in which some classes were taught in Mandarin and others in Uyghur.

In 2019, Chinese authorities arrested him amid a sweep of mass arrests of mostly Ugyhur men. While the specific charges were unclear, he was taken away because of “his influence on society in Kashgar,” according to a source who had just recently moved to Europe.

Dawut had been tailed by police since 2016 and had been called in for interrogation four or five times, she said.

“The police took him away from his family on the night of July 28th, 2019, and we did not even know what had happened and why they took him,” said the source who requested anonymity for safety reasons.

Dawut was in his late 50s at that time, and his daughter was to be married the following day, she said.

“We looked for him for around 5-10 days and learned that the police arrested around 500-600 men, including him,” the source said.

Dead and buried

On Oct. 6, authorities informed Dawut’s family that he had died, she said, but buried him without showing his body to his family, prompting enormous outrage among his relatives.

The police made his family sign a document which said he died from a heart attack, and they did not allow anyone to visit his tomb, she said.

“When I asked the reason for his death, no one said anything,” she said.

His death was confirmed by a staff member of the No. 6 High School in Kashgar, where Dawut had worked, but the person said he didn’t know any details.

“He died several years ago. As far as I know, he died. The reason for his death is unknown,” he said. “Because details of his death were not reported to the school, we will not intervene in this type of case directly.”

Educational activism

Dawut had advocated for Uyghur language-based education through his writings since 2000 and often expressed disdain for the government’s bilingual education policies in Xinjiang, the source said.

Dawut translated Chinese school books into Uyghur for high school students in Kashgar and provided students with school materials in Uyghur.

He also opened bookstores in Kashgar and elsewhere, sold textbooks written in Uyghur and launched foreign language and college entrance exam preparatory courses.

Abduweli Ayup, founder of Norway-based UyghurHelp and Dawut’s former student, said Dawut played a key role in opening a Uyghur language school in Kashgar, providing both support and financial investment.

In 2011, Dawut invited Ayup to teach English and Turkish at the Nurhan Education Training Center he had founded and to help establish the Uyghur Mother Tongue Kindergarten.

“We opened a school together. I was responsible for teaching English, Turkish and mother tongue, and he was responsible for teaching college entrance exam preparatory courses.” Ayup said.

Dawut had also been an activist for teachers, organizing them and filing a lawsuit against the local government for withholding teachers’ salaries for several months to fund a state highway project.

The legal battle was successful in pointing out that the state was responsible for highways, not the local government, and the teachers received their full salaries and a public apology.

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.