Hundreds of Uyghur scientists are imprisoned in China, according to a rights group.
Index on Censorship, an organization that promotes freedom of expression globally, is featuring the silencing of scientists and science around the world in the next issue of its publication. One country where scientists and intellectuals, especially those who are Uyghur, have disappeared over the years is China.
In recent years, the Uyghur rights organization Uyghur Hjelp has documented more than 200 cases of Uyghur scientists and other science professionals being imprisoned in China, according to Abduweli Ayup, founder of the Norway-based group.
Among the most prominent is Tursunjan Nurmamat, who received his graduate and postgraduate education in the United States. Nurmamat, who is from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China, specialized in molecular biology and was working as a science editor when he disappeared in 2021.
In addition, he translated English nonfiction books about science and scientists into the Uyghur language. He used his well-known pen name, Bilge, for these translations, which he published on his social media accounts in China.
One of Nurmamat’s former employers, Shanghai’s Tongji University, confirmed with Radio Free Asia reporters in July 2021 that he had been arrested and had been under investigation since April that year.
In response to VOA’s request for more information, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, wrote, “I am not aware of this specific case, thus having nothing to share. China is a law-based country, and I believe the judicial and law enforcement institutions perform their jobs in accordance with law.”
Just before Nurmamat’s arrest by Xinjiang police, he announced his new role as a science editor at Cell Press, a publisher of scientific journals headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“When I last spoke with him before his forced disappearance, he said he was ‘stuck and couldn’t leave,’ ” said a friend who is an exiled Uyghur now living in Canada. The Canadian Uyghur, along with several other exiled Uyghurs in the U.S. who knew Nurmamat before his disappearance, shared with VOA details about his situation. They expressed concerns about his well-being in Chinese custody and requested anonymity because of fears for their families in Xinjiang.
Joseph Caputo, head of media and communications at Cell Press, confirmed to VOA that Nurmamat had a brief tenure at the organization but did not provide further details on his current situation.
“No one outside the Chinese government knows his current location or the length of his sentence, similar to many other cases involving Uyghur intellectuals,” Uyghur Hjelp’s Ayup told VOA in a phone interview.
Uyghur rights organizations say China has been increasing its crackdown on Turkic-speaking Uyghurs in Xinjiang since 2017 with human rights abuses that include arbitrary detention of over 1 million individuals, forced labor, sterilization of women and torture.
China’s treatment of Uyghurs has been labeled as genocide by the U.S. and several Western parliaments. The United Nations human rights office has suggested these actions may amount to crimes against humanity.
China denies these accusations, saying Xinjing-related policies are established in the context of combating violent terrorism and separatism, and it accuses the U.S. and Western anti-China forces of spreading disinformation.
Censorship of Uyghur science
Ayup described Nurmamat’s case as a key example of the broader censorship affecting Uyghur science and scientists.
“The Chinese government has targeted Uyghur scientists like [Nurmamat] who have studied abroad and experienced democratic freedoms,” Ayup told VOA. “His work, including translations and science materials in Uyghur, made him a target.”
Ayup noted that by translating and writing extensively in Uyghur about science, Nurmamat directly challenged China’s efforts to suppress the Uyghur language in education.
Over the past two decades, Uyghurs have observed that Chinese authorities have gradually removed the Uyghur language from science-related subjects in K-12 schools and universities in Xinjiang.
Ayup also compared Nurmamat’s case to that of Tashpolat Tiyip, a prominent Uyghur geographer and former president of Xinjiang University, where Nurmamat completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
Tiyip disappeared in 2017, four years before Nurmamat’s arrest, while traveling from Beijing to Berlin for a scientific conference. Since then, there has been no information on his whereabouts or the charges against him.
“Even the Xinjiang University website has removed his record from its list of historic presidents, though it still lists a former president who fled to Taiwan in 1949,” Ayup noted.
Dangers of US education
Nurmamat began his doctoral studies in molecular biology at the University of Wyoming in fall 2009, then moved to the University of California for a fellowship, which he completed in 2018.
During the fellowship, Nurmamat traveled to Xinjiang in summer 2017 for a job interview at Shihezi University. He took his wife, Nurimangul, and their U.S.-born 5-year-old daughter, Tumaris, with him to China, in hopes of landing a job back in China after his U.S. fellowship.
“At the airport, he was interrogated by Chinese officials, and the Chinese passports belonging to him and his wife were confiscated. Their daughter, who held a U.S. passport, was the only one spared from the interrogation,” a friend said.
After weeks of questioning, Chinese authorities allowed Nurmamat to return to the U.S. to finish his fellowship but imposed strict conditions: His wife and daughter, an American citizen, had to stay in China.
“He was also required to promise that he would return to China once his fellowship concluded,” the friend added.
Dangerous return
Following the completion of his fellowship in 2018, Nurmamat voiced significant apprehensions about returning to China.
“I’m still really worried. Shihezi University keep asking me to return; but I’m scared to return after my experience in the last summer,” he confided to his friend in the U.S. via a messaging app on April 11, 2018, a screenshot of which was shared with VOA. “My family wasn’t able to join me. I’m hoping they will be able to get their passport back and join me in the U.S.”
Despite these fears, Nurmamat returned to China in summer 2018, aiming to secure the release of his wife, a Xinjiang University graduate. She had been under house arrest since 2017 and was later detained in an internment facility, known as a “vocational training center,” which holds over a million Uyghurs, according to his friend.
“Nurmamat thought that keeping his promise to the Chinese authorities would help free his wife and their U.S.-born daughter,” the friend said.
But instead of returning directly to Xinjiang, where his wife was detained, Nurmamat took a research position at Tongji University in Shanghai. He believed Shanghai would be safer and hoped to eventually reunite with his family. But his efforts proved futile, as he eventually followed the path of other Uyghur intellectuals before him, with arrest and detention.
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