In the European Parliament’s sakharov prize, given to Ilham Tohti. The daughter says she doesn’t know where he is today.
his Daughter to the uighur activist and economist Ilham Tohti has Wednesday on his father’s behalf received the european UNION’s human rights award.
She says it is her hope that the Sakharov prize will help her father, who is in China is sentenced to life imprisonment for “separatism”.
– This is not about fighting China, it’s about human rights, says Jehwer Tohti at the ceremony in the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
– For the members of parliament, I say, use your laws to make chinese government to the responsibility, she says.
China is the EU s second largest trading partner in volume. But the relationship has wavered. This is partly because the large-scale demonstrations in Hong kong and the heavy-handed treatment of the muslim minority uighurs and other minorities in the region Xinjiang.
Since april of 2017, China has placed over a million uighurs in re-education camps. Here they have been forced to give up their ethnic identity and religious beliefs.
instead, they have had to swear loyalty to the government of China.
Ilham Tohti was in the process of leaving China in 2013 for a lærerpost in the UNITED states. He was stopped in the airport by the police, tells his daughter the european politicians.
– to say it frankly, so I don’t know where my father is, she explains.
Before Tohti in 2014 was sentenced to life imprisonment for separatism, he had worked to bridge the gap between China’s han chinese and the persecuted uighur minority.
At the award of the sakharov prize, the european UNION requires-president of the european Parliament, David Sassoli, that Tohti immediately and without conditions release of China’s government.
the sakharov prize was awarded for the first time over 30 years ago. The prize carries with it € 50,000 (374.000 euros). It is named after the soviet physicist and political dissident Andrei Sakharov.
/ritzau/dpa
