Photo courtesy of Akida Polat/Freemymom.org
An internationally recognized expert in Uyghur folklore and ethnographer who disappeared in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) more than three years ago has been confirmed as being imprisoned by authorities, according to her former co-workers at Xinjiang University.
Rahile Dawut, 55, created and directed the university s Minorities Folklore Research Center and wrote dozens of articles in international journals and a number of books, including studies on Islamic sacred sites in Central Asia, and presented her work at conferences around the world.
An anthropologist by training, she disappeared in December 2017, believed to be arrested and detained in one of the many internment camps in a mass incarceration campaign launched that year by Chinese authorities, who to date have not provided information on her whereabouts or the charges against her.