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An Imprisoned Writer Speaks
by Ilham Tohti
Ilham Tohti is the world's foremost expert on Uyghurs and Chinese policy in Xinjiang. These texts provide a politically illuminating introduction to the many dimensions of Uyghur oppression.
The words of China's most famous political prisoner.
In Xinjiang, the large northwest region of China, the government has imprisoned more than a million Uyghurs in re-education camps. One of the incarcerated--whose sentence, unlike most others, has no end date--is Ilham Tohti, an intellectual and economist, a prolific writer, and formerly the host of a website, Uyghur Online. In 2014, Tohti was arrested; accused of advocating separatism, violence, and the overthrow of the Chinese government; subjected to a two-day trial; and sentenced to life. Nothing has been heard from him since.
Here are Tohti's own words, a collection of his plain-spoken calls for justice, scholarly explanations of the history of Xinjiang, and poignant personal reflections. While his courage and outspokenness about the plight of China's Muslim minorities is extraordinary, these essays sound a measured insistence on peace and just treatment for the Uyghurs.
Winner of the PEN/Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought while imprisoned, this book is nonetheless the only way to hear from a man who has been called "a Uyghur Mandela."
"Ilham Tohti is the world's foremost expert on Uyghurs and Chinese policy in Xinjiang, and we are extremely fortunate to have the first collection of his writings and interviews in English. These texts provide a politically illuminating introduction to the many dimensions of Uyghur oppression. This is an absolute must-read for anyone trying to understand the origins of one of the 21st century's great human catastrophes." – Eli Friedman, Cornell University, author of The Urbanization of People: The Politics of Development, Labor Markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City
"Ilham Tohti should be read not only as a tragic victim of state violence, but as a primary source for understanding the underlying conditions at the heart of the Xinjiang emergency. With the skill of a diplomat balancing on the knife-edge of a capricious state, We Uyghurs Have No Say calls all people of conscience to stand in opposition to Islamophobia and against an emergent settler colonialism at a frontier of our shared global economy." – Darren Byler, Simon Fraser University, author of Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City
"Largely culled from sometimes ephemeral web resources, translated elegantly, and with a highly useful introduction, in these pieces one hears a voice at once familiar and strikingly original. Tohti's writings remind us of the moral courage of prison writers like Nelson Mandela, Walid Daqqa, Khalida Jarrar, and Leonard Peltier. Although centered on the case of the Uyghur, Tohti's scope broadens to a critique of ethnonationalism, ethnic cleansing, and the erasure of indigenous peoples worldwide." – David Palumbo-Liu, Stanford University, author of Speaking Out of Place: Getting Our Political Voice Back
This information about We Uyghurs Have No Say was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ilham Tohti is a Uyghur economist, writer, and professor who is a co-founder of the website Uyghur Online, also known as Uyghurbiz, which aimed to promote understanding between Uyghurs and Han Chinese. In February 2014 Tohti was charged with separatism and held incommunicado under inhumane treatment for months before he could meet his lawyer. On September 23, 2014, he was found guilty of "separatism," and is currently serving a life sentence. He has been incarcerated incommunicado since 2017, with no access to his family or his lawyers.
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