{"id":1189,"date":"2026-06-10T01:32:41","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T22:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/?p=1189"},"modified":"2026-06-10T01:39:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T22:39:36","slug":"trump-must-put-detained-uyghur-intellectuals-on-the-agenda-for-xi-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/trump-must-put-detained-uyghur-intellectuals-on-the-agenda-for-xi-summit\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Must Put Detained Uyghur Intellectuals on the Agenda for Xi Summit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Akida Pulat has\u00a0not spoken<\/a>\u00a0to her mother in eight years. This Mother\u2019s Day was her eighth without\u00a0Rahile Dawut<\/a>, the renowned Uyghur anthropologist and folklorist who\u00a0disappeared<\/a>\u00a0into Chinese state custody in 2017. Dr. Dawut devoted her career to documenting Uyghur shrines and preserving Uyghur cultural memory. For that work, the Chinese government\u00a0sentenced<\/a>\u00a0her to life in prison.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Her case is not unique, as I\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0for The Diplomat last year. Across the Uyghur diaspora in the United States, families are living with the same cruel separation: their relatives, including many of the most respected Uyghur intellectuals of their generation, are imprisoned by the Chinese government. Jewher Ilham, the daughter of Uyghur scholar\u00a0Ilham Tohti<\/a>, who was handed down a life sentence in 2014, has\u00a0campaigned<\/a>\u00a0for his release ever since. Tumaris and\u00a0Kamalt\u00fcrk Yalqun<\/a>\u00a0have also spent years advocating for their father, Yalqun Rozi, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison,\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0for his work as a literary critic and textbook editor.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) has documented at least 11 wrongfully detained or imprisoned Uyghur scholars and cultural leaders with immediate family members in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s upcoming meeting<\/a> with Chinese President Xi Jinping is an opportunity to end this travesty. He should use all available leverage to demand the release of wrongfully imprisoned and disappeared Uyghur intellectual and cultural leaders, especially those with close relatives in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summits between U.S. and Chinese leaders are crowded with competing priorities from trade to security and technology, and more. But human rights cannot be treated as a side issue. For Uyghur-American families, these cases are urgent and unresolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

China\u2019s persecution of Uyghur intellectuals is central to its policy of crushing Uyghur religion, language, and identity. Beijing has targeted<\/a> professors, poets, publishers, artists, religious scholars, entrepreneurs, and cultural leaders because they preserve a people\u2019s memory and pass it to the next generation. By locking them away, the Chinese government seeks to control not only Uyghur political life, but Uyghur culture itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rahile Dawut is a scholar of Uyghur folklore and sacred sites. Ilham Tohti is an economist who advocated dialogue and understanding between Uyghurs and Han Chinese. Yalqun Rozi helped compile Uyghur literature textbooks. Their work was peaceful, academic, and, at the time, state-approved. Yet under Beijing\u2019s repression, even documenting Uyghur heritage is now treated as a crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scale of China\u2019s campaign to silence Uyghur intellectuals is staggering. Half a decade ago, the UHRP documented<\/a> at least 312 intellectual and cultural elites who have been held in some form of detention by the Chinese government. The true number is certainly higher, amid a near-total communications blackout and harsh punishment for anyone caught smuggling out information from the Uyghur homeland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration often speaks<\/a> of \u201cpeace through strength.\u201d Strength is not measured only by tariffs or military posture. It is measured by whether the United States is willing to defend its citizens, residents, and values, even when doing so is difficult. If Trump sits across from Xi and fails to raise these urgent cases, Beijing will read that omission not as pragmatism, but as weakness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not a distraction from an \u201cAmerica First\u201d foreign policy. It is a natural expression of American priorities. An \u201cAmerica First\u201d approach should mean defending American citizens and their families from the reach of foreign authoritarian governments. When Uyghur Americans and their loved ones are targeted by the Chinese government, raising their cases is not about charity for foreigners. It is standing up for the United States and making clear that Beijing cannot abuse American families without consequence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Chinese Communist Party is using torture and a 24-7 surveillance state to force Uyghurs to live and think in line with totalized loyalty to the state<\/a>, and assist the state in erasing their distinct identity. The United States must not make that erasure easier by treating their freedom as secondary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this week\u2019s summit, Trump must demand their release and make clear that any serious effort to stabilize China-U.S. relations must include justice for those who are unjustly imprisoned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See The Diplomat\u2019s profiles of \u201cDetained Uyghur Intellectuals\u201d <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read the full article: https:\/\/thediplomat.com\/2026\/05\/trump-must-put-detained-uyghur-intellectuals-on-the-agenda-for-xi-summit\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Akida Pulat has\u00a0not spoken\u00a0to her mother in eight years. This Mother\u2019s Day was her eighth without\u00a0Rahile Dawut, the renowned Uyghur anthropologist and folklorist who\u00a0disappeared\u00a0into Chinese state custody in 2017. Dr. Dawut devoted her career to documenting Uyghur shrines and preserving<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1193,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions\/1193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dukva.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}