We Uyghurs Have No Say, Ilham Tohti
We Uyghurs Have No Say, Ilham Tohti
List: $15.99 | Sale: $11.20
Club: $7.99

We Uyghurs Have No Say
An Imprisoned Writer Speaks

Author: Ilham Tohti, Cindy Carter, Yaxue Cao, Matthew Robertson

Narrator: David Lee Huynh

Unabridged: 5 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/14/2023


Synopsis

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 reeducation 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 the only way to hear from a man who has been called "a Uyghur Mandela."

About Ilham Tohti

Ilham Tohti is a Uyghur economist, writer, and professor who is a cofounder 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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Aisha on December 07, 2022

4.5 stars I learnt a LOT about Uyghurs and the history of their struggle 👏🏾......more

Goodreads review by 2TReads on March 10, 2022

Writings from a personal perspective that help to illuminate the plight of Uyghurs in China. Full review to come.......more

Goodreads review by Benjamin on August 02, 2024

This felt like a timely read with Beijing brokering a unity agreement between Fatah, Hamas, and other Palestinian groups this week. Ilham Tohti, in one of his articles, talks about the “Palestinization” of the Uyghur people, likening the segregation and state-sponsored Han migration in East Turkesta......more

Goodreads review by Zish on May 18, 2022

Welp, this is one thing I knew I didn’t fully know. Invokes the current (but not new) instability between China and Taiwan. What’s this obsession with erasure of Uyghur people? What’s the obsession with getting back to what used to be? China + Taiwan, Russia + Ukraine + USSR. This obsession with pow......more

Goodreads review by Vivian on June 17, 2023

An excellent primer for issues in Xinjiang and for Tohti’s influence/work in general. Purely as a piece of writing/political argument, it wasn’t always the most engaging — these pieces feel fragmentary or somehow incompletely fleshed out/missing context — but that’s likely a product of how they were......more