China is one of the countries where many scientists and intellectuals, particularly Uighurs, have disappeared over the years, according to a new report by Index on Censorship, an organization that supports global freedom of expression. The report highlights the silencing of scientists and science around the world.
In recent years, Uyghur human rights organization Hjelp has documented more than 200 cases of Uyghur scientists and other science professionals being imprisoned in China, according to Abduweli Ayup, the Norway-based group’s founder.
One of the most well-known is Tursunjan Nurmamat, who studied graduate school in the United States. Nurmamat, originally from the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in northwest China, specialized in molecular biology and was working as a science editor when she disappeared in 2021.
In addition, he translated English nonfiction books about science and scientists into Uighur. He used the famous pen name Bilge for his published translations. The work was then shared through his social media accounts in China.
Tongji University in Shanghai, where Nurmamat once worked, confirmed to Radio Free Asia reporters in July 2021 that she had been arrested and questioned since April that year.
In response to a VOA request for more information, Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said in a written statement, “I am not familiar with the specific case, so I have no information to share. China is a country based on law, and I believe that the judiciary and law enforcement agencies are carrying out their duties in accordance with the law.”
Just before her arrest by Xinjiang police, Nurmamat announced her new position as science editor at Cell Press, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based publisher of scientific journals.
“When I last spoke to him before he disappeared, he said he was ‘trapped and couldn’t leave,’” said a Uighur friend now living in Canada.
Uighurs now living in Canada, along with several other Uighur exiles in the U.S. who knew Nurmamat before she disappeared, provided details about her situation to VOA. They expressed concerns about Nurmamat’s conditions in Chinese detention and asked that their identities be withheld to protect the safety of their families in Xinjiang.
Joseph Caputo, head of media and communications at Cell Press, confirmed to VOA that Nurmamat had worked briefly at the organization, but did not provide further details about her current situation.
“No one outside the Chinese government knows the location or duration of his sentence at this time, as is the case with many other cases involving Uighur intellectuals,” Ayup of Uighur Hjelp told VOA in a telephone interview.
Uyghur human rights organizations report that since 2017, China has taken repressive measures against the Turkic-speaking Uyghur people in Xinjiang. The human rights violations include the arbitrary detention of more than 1 million people, forced labor, sterilization of women, and torture.
The United States (US) and several Western parliaments have said China's treatment of the Uighurs could amount to genocide. The United Nations (UN) human rights office has also said the actions could amount to crimes against humanity.
China has denied the allegations, saying its Xinjiang-related policies are being implemented in the context of combating extreme terrorism and separatism. It has also accused anti-China forces in the US and the West of spreading disinformation.
Sensor Sains Uighur
Ayup sees Nurmamat’s case as an important example of broader censorship affecting Uighur science and scientists.
“The Chinese government has targeted Uighur scientists like (Nurmamat) who have studied abroad and experienced democratic freedoms,” Ayup told VOA. “His work, including translations and scientific materials in the Uighur language, has made him a target.”
Ayup noted that by translating and writing extensively in Uighur about science, Nurmamat directly challenged China's efforts to suppress the use of Uighur in education.
Over the past two decades, Uighurs have seen Beijing gradually remove the Uighur language from the science curriculum in schools and universities in Xinjiang.
Ayup also compared Nurmamat's case to that of Tashpolat Tiyip, a prominent Uighur geographer and former president of Xinjiang University, where Nurmamat completed his undergraduate 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 about his whereabouts or the charges against him.
“Even the Xinjiang University website removed Tiyip’s record from the list of historical presidents, although it still lists the former president as having fled to Taiwan in 1949,” Ayup said. (ah/ft
