Ms Ilham, the daughter of 2019 Sakharov Prize winner, Uighur Ilham Tohti, called on the international community on Monday 16 December, to demand her father’s release.
“China is a strong country. It may not be afraid of one country, two or ten, but when all the other countries unite and call for the release of people unduly locked in the camps, it will have to respect this will”, she explained during a hearing before the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Development Committees and Human Rights Sub-Committee.
Ms Ilham hoped that the Sakharov Prize, which will be awarded to Ilham Tohti in absentia on Wednesday 18 December, will have a “positive impact” on her father’s situation, “that it will attract the attention of the whole world, that is what we need”. “Other countries need to realise that the award is an acknowledgement of the Uighur cause”, she added.
The young woman also asked parliamentarians to “get involved, to help [her] father, the hundreds of millions of innocent Uighurs who are locked in concentration camps or cells for the wrong reasons”. According to her, this is not a battle for a person, a religion or a community, but for a “humanitarian reason”. “It's high time”, said the woman who took up her father’s torch and advocates for his ideas and Uighur rights.
Ms Ilham called on Parliament to help her find out where her father is, whom she has not seen since 2017, and whether he is in good health. She also wants MEPs to support her brother so that he can continue his studies in Beijing and not have to return to Xinjiang.
Finally, she said, Parliament must press for sanctions against products manufactured in Chinese concentration camps. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)