Ilham Tohti rarely worries about his personal safety here — at least not at the hands of would-be thieves.
That is because Tohti, an economics professor and unofficial spokesman for this country’s embattled Uighur minority, frequently has a police escort.
Whether they are looking out for his well-being is another matter.
“You may not see them, especially if I’m out with friends, but they’re there,” said Tohti, 41, whose ever-present smile seems to convey more sadness than joy.
Just then his cellphone rang. He looked at the number, put his fingers to his lips and whispered “domestic security.” After a quick exchange with his minders, Tohti hung up and lit yet another cigarette.
“They’re very angry with me,” he said sitting in his Beijing apartment. “They told me very clearly that I may be in grave danger.”
These are precarious times for Tohti, a man whose advocacy for China’s Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs has landed him on the government’s list of citizens who warrant near-constant surveillance.
In July last year, after ethnic bloodletting in the far western region of Xinjiang killed 197 people, the governor appeared on television to accuse Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled Uighur leader, of inciting the violence, much of which involved Uighur mobs bludgeoning Han Chinese migrants in Urumqi, the regional capital. Then he parceled out some of the blame to Tohti’s Web site, Uighurbiz.net, a lively forum for debate — and a platform for rumor-mongering, according to the government — before it was blocked by the censors.
The next day, security agents from Beijing took him on what he said they called a “vacation” for three weeks, interrogating him for long periods and warning him to stop publicly criticizing the government’s policies and practices in Xinjiang. The agents later decamped to his living room, although Tohti declined to describe the experience for fear he might incur their wrath.
“Sometimes they were nice to me, but other times they said, ‘We can crush you like an ant,’” he said.
It is not clear why they have not crushed him yet. Since the unrest of last summer, the authorities have had little compunction about detaining scores of Uighurs whose whereabouts remain a mystery. In recent weeks, several have been given long prison terms, including three Web masters and a journalist who were convicted for endangering the Chinese state.
The longest sentence, 15 years, was handed down to Gheyret Niyaz, a 51-year-old writer who worked for Tohti’s Web site. Prosecutors say Niyaz’s greatest crime was speaking to a magazine in Hong Kong.
His fate has weighed heavily on Tohti and increased his already perilous levels of garrulousness.
“They say I’m hyping up his case and that I have to stop talking to the media, but I just can’t help myself,” he said, adding another cigarette butt to an overflowing ashtray.
As one of the few prominent Uighur intellectuals living in China, Tohti said he felt he had no choice but to speak out against the discrimination and economic inequality he says fuel Uighur resentment, some of which ends up directed at the Han migrants who have been encouraged to move west by the millions.
Tohti knows his frank words have had unintended consequences for those closest to him. His first marriage ended in divorce after his wife, spooked by sirens and jolted by every knock at the door, returned to Xinjiang with their young son. Last year his second wife also fled Beijing and later she gave birth to their second child.
He admits that the stroke that nearly killed his mother recently may have been brought on by her anxiety over his safety.
“She said she would have never allowed me to go to school if she knew I would turn out like this,” he said.
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