China has sentenced Rahile Dawut to life in prison and would like the world to forget her. We must not

October 12, 2023 | The Guardian | By Rachel Harris

Dawut has become a powerful symbol of the devastation of Uyghur culture and society, but she is just one individual among many. The Chinese authorities have gone to extraordinary lengths to mask what has been happening in the Uyghur region, but we know of at least 312 individual cases of people like her – Uyghur academics, writers and creative artists – who have been detained and imprisoned simply because they researched, promoted, transmitted and created Uyghur culture and history.

Part of this push to rewrite the region’s history is through tourism. Over the past few years we have seen millions of Chinese tourists pouring into the Uyghur region to watch singing and dancing Uyghurs, and to visit the tomb of the “fragrant concubine”. International travel firms are eagerly promoting similar tours to the UK market. I hope that travellers will pause and think of Rahile Dawut before they join one of these tours.

But institutions need to pause too. Unesco continues to treat China as a protector of Uyghur heritage by including it in its heritage lists, even though China’s actions in the Uyghur region demonstrably constitute what Unesco elsewhere calls “strategic cultural cleansing”.

Read the full article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/12/china-uyghur-rahile-dawut-prison