The United States condemned a reported life sentence handed down in China to a high-profile Uyghur academic Rahile Dawut.
This week, a U.S.-based rights group said Dawut, 57, had lost her appeal against her original conviction from December 2018 on charges of “endangering state security.”
Rights advocates have accused China of a mass internment campaign targeting Uyghurs, along with abuses such as forced sterilization and cultural repression, termed “genocide” by some government bodies, including the U.S. State Department.
“We condemn the reported life sentence handed down by the Government of the People’s Republic of China following secret court proceedings of Professor Rahile Dawut,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.
Before her detention, Dawut had been a professor at Xinjiang University College of Humanities, as well as a leading cultural anthropologist and ethnographer of Uyghur folklore.
