US lawmakers nominate jailed Uygur Ilham Tohti for Nobel Peace Prize, seeking global pressure on China
- Academic has been serving a life sentence since 2014 on separatism-related charges
- The move is the latest effort by US lawmakers to draw attention to the mass internment of Uygurs and other alleged human rights abuses in China
US lawmakers nominated an imprisoned Uygur academic for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize on Tuesday in a bid to pressure China to stop its crackdown on the minority group.
Ilham Tohti, an ethnic Uygur economist, writer, and professor at Minzu University in Beijing, has been serving a life sentence since 2014 on separatism-related charges.
Tohti had been vocal about the need to reduce tensions in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, asking Beijing to abide by the region’s existing laws, reduce economic discrimination and establish a legal system.
A bipartisan group of 13 US lawmakers signed the letter of nomination to the Nobel Peace Prize committee in Oslo, Norway. The group, led by Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, and Representative Christopher Smith, Republican of New Jersey, included Republican Senator Cory Gardner; Republican Representative Mike Gallagher; Independent Senator Bernie Sanders; Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal, Jeff Merkley, Chris Van Hollen and Sherrod Brown; and Democratic Representatives Ro Khanna, Jim McGovern, Jamie Raskin and Thomas Suozzi.
“This nomination could not be more timely as the Chinese government and Communist Party continue to perpetrate gross human rights violations with over a million Uygurs and other ethnic minority Muslims detained in ‘political re-education’ camps,” Rubio said.