Chinese historian released after 11 years of prison

On 6 February 1998, Tohti Tunyaz (pen name: Tohti Muzart) (1959–), an Uighur historian and writer, was detained and on 1 April 1998, he was arrested in Urumqi, Xinjiang (East Turkestan’s name since 1955), when returning to China to visit his relatives, collect source materials, and do research. Tohti was born in Kashgar and graduated from the Central Institute of Nationalities history department, Beijing (1984). Later, he was assigned to work for the Standing Committee of the China National People’s Congress and studied for a Ph.D. in Uighur history and ethnic relations in nineteenth- and twentieth-history China at the Oriental History Department of the Graduate School of Humanities, Tokyo University, Japan (1994–). His works on Uighur history included one book published in China and several papers published in Japan. In November 1998, he was charged with “illegally acquiring state secrets” because he had received a copy of a single fifty-years-old list of documents relating to the second East Turkestan (Xinjiang) Independence Movement and pre-1949 Xinjiang history (1944–49) from a clerk working at the archives and officially authorized to do so. Tohti was also charged with “instigating national disunity” because he had allegedly published a book in Japan, entitled The Inside Story of the Silk Road ([1998]), advocating “ethnic separatism”—but his Japanese supervisor Sato Tsugitaka insisted that no such book exists (although the Japanese publisher Sofukan had approached Tohti with a plan, not accepted by Tohti, to publish such a book). On 10 March 1999, Tohti was tried and sentenced to eleven years’ imprisonment and two years’ suspension of political rights. In February or March 2000, his appeal to the High Court in Urumqi was dismissed. On 17 May 2001, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Tohti was “arbitrarily detained.” On 10 February 2009, Tohti was released at the end of his sentence. He was reportedly not able, however, to rejoin his family in Japan.

[Sources: Amnesty International (AI), People’s Republic of China: Gross Violations; AI, People’s Republic of China: Uighurs Fleeing Persecution as China Wages Its “War on Terror” (WWW-text of ASA 17/021/2004; London 2004), 8–9; AI, Report 2003 (London 2003) 74; AI, Uighur Historian behind Bars (WWW-text; London August 2002); S. Dowd., “Silenced Voices”, Literary Review, 2003; Human Rights Watch, World Report 2003 (Washinton 2003) 224; Ifex, Communiqué 11–15 (16 April 2002); PEN International (PEN), Centre to Centre, 2002, no.1: 3; PEN, Half-Yearly Caselist (London) 2003: 78–79; 2004: 36; 2007: 36; PEN, Ifex Alert (9 May 2001); PEN, Rapid Action Network (3 October 2001; 17 February 2009); United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Civil and Political Rights, Including the Questions of Torture and Detention: Opinions Adopted by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention: Opinion no. 7/2001 (China) (E/CN.4/2002/77/Add.1; Geneva 2001) 50–54.