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An eminent historian Ouhura and an expert in the names of public workers is serving a sentence of 17 years in prison for his writings, said people knowing the situation.
Ghojaniyaz Yollugh Tekin, 59, was an educator at the Aksu Institute of Education in the city of Aksu, in the north of the region of Xinjiang from the far west of China. His research and publications have focused on Uighur toponymy – the linguistic evolution of place names and the historical and geographic reasons for names.
A police officer who works in the village where Tekin comes from the county of Uchturpan of Aksu Prefectur, told Radio Free Asia that the intellectual had been sentenced to 17 years and purges his sentence to Hotan, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of Aksu City.
Tekin was arrested in 2017 in the midst of the Chinese Government of Uighurs and other Turkish peoples in the
Tekin was sentenced to prison at the end of 2018 for his research, writings and opinions according to which Uighurs are part of the Turkish world – and not Chinese – according to Ayup data.
It was part of 1.8 million Ughurs, including intellectuals, teachers, cultural personalities and eminent businessmen, who were forced to rehabilitate rehabilitation camps.
Harassed to write on sensitive subjects
In addition to his influential research and historical writings, Tekin has boldly and actively participated in intellectual gatherings and debates in Uighur society, said his friend Tuyghun Abdoweli, an activist currently living in Canada.
Chinese state security agents have often harassed Tekin after having acquired significant recognition for his writings on sensitive historical subjects concerning the link of UGHurs with the Turkish world, he said.
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Tekin’s professional colleague called him “Turghun Almas d’Aksu”, a reference to one of the most influential Historians of the 20th century who challenged the assertion of China according to which the homeland of Uyghur was part of Chinese territory since the old days in his book, “Uighurs.”
After the publication of the book in the late 1980s, China prohibited it and prohibited that Almas from writing and publishing anything for the rest of its life.
Tekin was involved in the visit and accommodation of prominent Uighur intellectuals, notably Almas, Abdurehim Otkur, Nizamidin Huseyin and Abdullah Talip, and organizing meetings between them and the readers, said Abduweli.
Tuanism
At the end of the 1980s, Tekin published an article entitled “East Turkistan, Western Turkistan, and the concept of Turan”, in an Aksu newspaper, which caused an agitation among the Uighurs in the Xinjiang and attracted the Watch out for the Chinese authorities, said Abduweli.
The term “Turan” refers to a historic region in Central Asia, as well as a political and cultural movement. At the beginning of the 20th century, Tuanism became an initiative aimed at uniting the Turkish peoples and other peoples of the Ural-Altaic throughout Eurasia.
“Due to this article, he was suspended at his teaching position and has gone through very difficult moments thereafter,” said Abdoweli, adding that the authorities had interviewed and detained Tekin since the 1990s.
Tekin was criticized as an “obstinate separatist” in 2018 for not having abandoned his research and continued to speak of the history of the ones, and ended up in a rehabilitation camp, he said.
China said the camps were vocational training centers and said they had been closed.
However, the testimony of the Uighurs owned in them and in other credible relationships indicates that political indoctrination, physical violence, sexual assault and forced sterilizations of women took place in the facilities.
Translated by RFA UGHUR. Published by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.