Chinese scholar Feng Siyu reportedly jailed over Uyghur research, says Human Rights in China

BEIJING(China): Zhejiang-born academic Feng Siyu, once celebrated as one of China’s most gifted students, has disappeared from public view since her arrest in 2018. According to Human Rights in China (HRIC), she is believed to be serving a lengthy prison sentence linked to her research on Uyghur cultural traditions.

Feng first drew national attention in 2012 after being admitted to 17 of the world’s leading universities, including the University of Chicago, UC Berkeley, and Northwestern. Chinese media portrayed her as a prodigy. She eventually pursued a degree in history at Amherst College in Massachusetts and later continued her postgraduate studies at SOAS, University of London.

Fluent in both English and Uyghur, Feng specialised in Asian cultural studies, with a particular focus on Uyghur folklore and oral traditions. Her cross-cultural expertise earned her recognition among scholars. Yet her academic work also placed her in politically sensitive territory.

In 2014, Feng shared a Facebook post commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. The suppression once inflicted on the 1989 student generation has resurfaced against young scholars like Feng, as noted by the HRIC report.

Internal police documents obtained by international rights groups show that authorities began investigating Feng in late 2017. The official reason was that her phone allegedly contained “foreign software”. However, the same report admitted the app was factory-installed and never used. Despite the weak evidence, she was arrested in 2018. HRIC reports that Feng was sentenced to 15 years in prison and possibly transferred from a Xinjiang facility back to her home province of Zhejiang.

Experts believe her detention is more closely tied to her research. In early 2017, Feng joined the Folklore Research Centre at Xinjiang University under the renowned ethnographer Rahile Dawut, who herself vanished later that year and was secretly sentenced to life in prison.

According to HRIC, Feng’s case highlights the growing risks faced by academics studying Uyghur culture. For this once-promising scholar, as for Dawut, an academic dream has been brutally cut short. (ANI)