NGOs have written to prominent politicians in Europe, urging them to make a call for the release of imprisoned Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti and to support his nomination for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.

Enver Can, founding chairman of the Germany-based Ilham Tohti Initiative, Marie Holzman, president of the France-based human rights organization Solidarité Chine, along with Susanne Köhler and Gerhard Keller, board members of the association Vorstand Wahrheitskämpfer, sent a joint appeal letter to Europe’s senior politicians. The letter urges them to make a call for the immediate release of Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, who was sentenced to life imprisonment on September 23, 2014, on baseless charges of separatism, and seeks support for his nomination for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.

The letter was sent to senior politicians representing the European Union or its member states, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, European Commission Vice-President Kaja Kallas, German Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

The joint appeal letter is as follows:

“We appeal to you to call on the Chinese government to immediately release Uyghur professor Ilham Tohti after 11 years in prison and to lobby the international community to nominate Ilham Tohti for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.

Ilham Tohti was awarded the EU Parliament’s Sakharov Prize in 2019. In the same year, he was awarded the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize.

The former economics professor is the best-known Uyghur intellectual in the People’s Republic of China. The Uyghurs are a Muslim Turkic people who live mainly in northwest China, in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

For more than two decades, Ilham Tohti tirelessly advocated for constructive dialogue and mutual understanding between the Uyghur and majority Han Chinese communities. Nevertheless, in September 2014, after a two-day show trial, he was sentenced to life in prison on charges of “separatism.” Today, he remains in prison as a political prisoner.

However, his voice and example continue to have a great impact through his writings, which are characterized by a spirit of reconciliation. Ilham Tohti has never advocated confrontation and separatism. He advised harmonious cooperation and mutual respect between the Chinese authorities and the Uyghur people. He did everything in his power to facilitate reconciliation and peace in his home region of Xinjiang.

Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Ilham Tohti would show the world that many people are waiting with hope for a China where people like Ilham Tohti can help build a great multicultural country that respects the life, dignity, rights, and individual contribution of every citizen.

The release of Ilham Tohti would also be a signal to the many other Uyghur prisoners of conscience currently in jail, including Rahile Dawut, a renowned ethnologist, and Dr. Gulshan Abbas, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for “extremism.” It would also encourage such well-known peaceful fighters for democracy as Jimmy Lai, Joshua Wong, Xu Zhiyong, Ren Zhiqiang, and Ding Jiaxi.

The list of Uyghur and Han Chinese innocent victims is so long that we cannot mention more than a small handful.

We appeal to you to urge the Chinese government to release Ilham Tohti immediately and to lobby the international community to nominate him for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. We kindly ask you to advocate for Ilham Tohti to receive medical treatment in Europe.

The world needs a democratic China, and we are convinced that awarding the Nobel Prize to Ilham Tohti will have a strong positive reaction among all those in China who are denied their rights.”