STATE SECRETS: CHINA'S LEGAL LABYRINTH - HRIC

CASE STORY
Tohti Tunyaz
8 HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA STATE SECRETS: CHINA’S LEGAL LABYRINTH
Tohti Tunyaz (图尼亚孜), an ethnic Uyghur, was arrested on February 6, 1998
after returning to China to collect research materials for his Ph.D. thesis. Tunyaz,
who wrote under the pen-name Tohti Muzart, enrolled at the University of
Tokyo’s graduate school in 1995 and was preparing a thesis about China’s policies
toward the country’s ethnic minorities. He was charged with “illegally
procuring state secrets” and sentenced to five years in prison, plus seven years
for “inciting splittism,” with a combined sentence of 11 years’ imprisonment.
Reportedly, the documents in question were historical records from 50 years
ago that he obtained from a library worker and photocopied. On the latter
charge, he allegedly published a book in Japan in 1998 entitled The Inside Story
of the Silk Road. According to the Chinese government, the book advocates ethnic
separation, but neither the book nor its manuscript was submitted to the
court, one source says. Furthermore, Tunyaz’s supervisor, Professor Sato Tugitaka
at the University of Tokyo, claims that this book simply does not exist. 19
Tunyaz appealed to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR)
Higher People’s Court, which upheld his sentence of 11 years’ imprisonment
with two years’ subsequent deprivation of political rights on February 15,
2000. However, the Higher Court later amended the charge from stealing
state secrets to illegally acquiring them. He is being held at Urumqi No. 3
Prison in the XUAR and is due for release on February 10, 2009.
In May 2001, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that
his imprisonment was arbitrary and in violation of his rights to freedom of
thought, expression and opinion. Successive presidents of the University of
Tokyo have written letters to Chinese leaders to ask for Tunyaz’s release, saying
that, for example, “Tohti was critical of the independence movement. He
did not plan to publish a book. His arrest is based on misunderstandings.” On
November 29, 2005, he was visited by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Manfred
Nowak, during his mission to China between November 20 and December 2,
2005. Tunyaz told the Special Rapporteur
that he had been held in a pretrial
detention facility for more than two
years. He was put in a solitary confinement
cell, interrogated daily and was
unable to communicate with his family. 20
Tohti Tunyaz