Index on Censorship, an organization that promotes freedom of expression globally, is highlighting the silencing of scientists and science around the world in the next issue of its publication. One country where scientists and intellectuals, especially those who are Uighurs, have disappeared over the years is China.
In recent years, the Uyghur rights organization Uygur Hjelp has documented more than 200 cases of Uyghur scientists and other science professionals imprisoned in China, according to Abduweli Ayup, founder of the Norway-based group.
Among the most prominent is Tursunjan Nurmamat, who received his graduate and post-graduate education in the United States. Nurmamat, who is from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China, was specializing in molecular biology and working as a science editor when he disappeared in 2021.
In addition, he translated English non-fiction books about science and scientists into the Uyghur language. He used his well-known pen name, Bilge, for these translations, which he published on his social media accounts in China.
One of Nurmamat’s former employers, Shanghai Tongji University, confirmed to Radio Free Asia reporters in July 2021 that he had been arrested and was under investigation since April of that year.
In response to VOA’s request for more information, Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, wrote: “I am not aware of this specific case, so I have nothing to share. China is a country based on law, and I believe that the judicial and law enforcement institutions do their work in accordance with the law.”
Shortly before Nurmamat’s arrest by Xinjiang police, he announced his new role as science editor at Cell Press, a scientific journal publisher based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“When I last spoke to him before his forced disappearance, he said he was ‘stuck and couldn’t leave,'” said a friend who is an exiled Uyghur now living in Canada. The Canadian Uyghur, along with several other Uyghur exiles in the U.S. who knew Nurmamat before his disappearance, shared with VOA details about his situation. They expressed concern for his well-being in Chinese custody and requested anonymity out of fear for their families in Xinjiang.
Joseph Caputo, head of media and communications at Cell Press, confirmed to VOA that Nurmamat had a short tenure with the organization, but did not provide further details on his current situation.
“No one outside the Chinese government knows his current whereabouts or the length of his sentence, similar to many other cases involving Uyghur intellectuals,” Ayup of Uyghur Hjelp said in a phone interview with VOA.
Uighur rights groups say China has stepped up its crackdown on Turkic-speaking Uighurs in Xinjiang since 2017 with human rights abuses that include the arbitrary detention of more than 1 million individuals, forced labor, sterilization of women and torture.
China’s treatment of the Uyghurs has been labeled genocide by the US and some Western parliaments. The United Nations human rights office has suggested that these actions may amount to crimes against humanity.
China denies the allegations, saying policies linked to Xinjing were created in the context of fighting violent terrorism and separatism, and accuses the US and Western anti-China forces of spreading disinformation.
Censorship of Uighur science
Ayup described Nurmamat’s case as a key example of the broader censorship affecting Uyghur science and scientists.
“The Chinese government has targeted Uyghur scientists like [Nurmamat] who studied abroad and experienced democratic freedom,” Ayup told VOA. “His work, including translations and scholarly materials in Uyghur, made him a target.”
Ayup noted that by translating and writing extensively in Uyghur on science, Nurmamat directly challenged China’s efforts to suppress the Uyghur language in education.
Over the past two decades, Uyghurs have noted that Chinese authorities have gradually removed the Uyghur language from science-related subjects in Xinjiang’s K-12 schools and universities.
Ayup also compared Nurmamat’s case to that of Tashpolat Tiyip, a prominent Uighur geographer and former president of Xinjiang University, where Nurmamat completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
Tiyip disappeared in 2017, four years before Nurmamat’s arrest, while traveling from Beijing to Berlin for a scientific conference. Since then, there has been no information on his whereabouts or the charges against him.
“Even Xinjiang University’s website has removed his record from the list of historical presidents, although it still lists a former president who fled to Taiwan in 1949,” Ayup noted.
The perils of education in the US
Nurmamat began her doctoral studies in molecular biology at the University of Wyoming in the fall of 2009, then transferred to the University of California on a fellowship, which she completed in 2018.
During the scholarship, Nurmamat traveled to Xinjiang in the summer of 2017 for a job interview at Shihezi University. He took his wife, Nurimangul, and their 5-year-old US-born daughter, Tumaris, with him to China, hoping to find a job back in China after his US scholarship.
“At the airport, he was questioned by Chinese officials and his and his wife’s Chinese passports were confiscated. Their daughter, who had an American passport, was the only one spared from questioning,” said a friend.
After weeks of questioning, Chinese authorities allowed Nurmamat to return to the US to complete his fellowship, but imposed strict conditions: his wife and daughter, an American citizen, had to stay in China.
“He was also asked to promise to return to China once his fellowship was over,” the friend added.
The dangerous return
After his scholarship ended in 2018, Nurmamat expressed significant concerns about returning to China.
“I’m still very worried. Shihezi University keeps asking me to come back; but I’m afraid to go back after my experience last summer,” he told his friend in the US via a messaging app on April 11, 2018, a screenshot of which was shared with VOA. “My family was unable to join me. I hope they will be able to get their passport and join me in USA.
Despite these fears, Nurmamat returned to China in the summer of 2018, with the aim of securing the release of his wife, a graduate of Xinjiang University. She had been under house arrest since 2017 and was later detained in an internment facility, known as a “vocational training center,” which holds over a million Uyghurs, according to his friend.
“Nurmamat thought that keeping his promise to the Chinese authorities would help free his wife and their US-born daughter,” the friend said.
But instead of returning directly to Xinjiang, where his wife was detained, Nurmamat took a research position at Tongji University in Shanghai. He believed Shanghai would be safer and hoped to eventually be reunited with his family. But his efforts proved futile, as he eventually followed the path of other Uyghur intellectuals before him, with arrest and detention.