Noël Mamère soutien cette initiative et a signé cette lettre.

« Dear Member of the European Parliament,

We are writing to urge you to nominate the Uighur economist Ilham Tohti for this year’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. We are a diverse group of 16 individuals and 22 organizations from around the world who are deeply concerned about the Chinese government’s persecution of Professor Tohti, and the deplorable state of freedom of expression and human rights in China.
We understand that the European Union has been equally concerned about Professor Tohti, and that EU spokespersons have on multiple occasions issued statements of support, as have several non-European governments. In February, 2014, shortly after Professor Tohti was arrested, the High Representative of the Union of Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton expressed her concern. In August 2014, an EU spokesperson stated: « We are deeply concerned about the announcement that Professor Ilham Tohti has been charged with separatism, after more than six months of detention without adequate access to his lawyer and proper medical care. For years, Professor Tohti has worked peacefully within China’s laws to promote equal rights for all of China’s citizens and to encourage exchange and understanding between different ethnic groups.” In a statement on September 23, 2014, the EU’s External Action Service said: « The EU condemns the life sentence for alleged ‘separatism’ handed out today to Uighur economics professor Ilham Tohti, which is completely unjustified.”
We thank the European Union for its firm stance on this case, and we wish to thank you, as a member of the European Parliament, for your unwavering support of Professor Ilham Tohti. We have also been encouraged by the wide-range of support from journalists, writers, and academics.
Professor Tohti was from an elite Uighur family, and many of its members, including his father, were in fact Communist Party cadres in China’s northeastern region, inhabited by Uighurs and other ethnicities. As a rarified member of the small Uighur intelligentsia and an economist at the prestigious Minzu University in Beijing, he could have enjoyed a stable and comfortable life. However, Professor Tohti grew increasingly concerned by the worsening economic and cultural plight of his people, and the division between the Uighurs and Han Chinese, China’s dominant ethnicity. He decided to address those issues in his teaching, research work and academic writings, in a climate where speaking out requires courage, and carries tremendous personal risk and cost. From 1994 to 2003, he was barred on and off from publishing and teaching due to his criticism of the failures of the local government in Xinjiang. In 2006, Professor Tohti founded Uighur Online, a website designed to facilitate peaceful communication and build trust between Uighurs and Han people. It was repeatedly hacked and eventually shut down in 2009. After the July unrest in Xinjiang in 2009, Professor Tohti faced increasingly harsher treatment. He was subjected to short detentions, house arrests, confiscation of assets, verbal and physical threats, and was barred from traveling outside China.
But he persisted in his peaceful advocacy on behalf of Uighurs and for better relations between Uighurs and Han. Among the policy recommendations he made in 2011 to Chinese leaders, he championed economic, cultural, and religious policies conducive to peaceful ethnic co-existence, and warned that “Xinjiang’s coercive stability maintenance policies, particularly in the area of religion, are having a grave impact on the lives, jobs and mobility of Xinjiang’s Uighur population. If the government does not change its thinking and tactics with respect to religious issues, I fear that religion will become the single biggest cause of ethnic strife and social discord in Xinjiang.”
The Economist noted, “No other Uighur inside the country has come close to speaking out on such issues with his persistence.” Professor Tohti has been known as a moderate and a voice of understanding between Han Chinese and ethnic minorities. But as early as 2009, he prepared himself for prison, even death. “That just might be the price our people have to pay,” he said. “Though I may have to go, perhaps that will draw more attention to the plight of our people.”
“After seeing the judgment against me, contrary to what people may think, I now think I have a more important duty to bear,” he said in a statement issued the day after his trial concluded in September 2014. “Peace is a heavenly gift to the Uighur and Han people. Only peace and good will can create common interest.”
Whenever a courageous man stands up against injustice, he stands up for all of us, and we must stand behind him and behind the values we believe in. We shall not fail him. The EU and the leading democracies in the world have a responsibility to be the champions of Professor Tohti.
Our hope is that the European Parliament will award Professor Ilham Tohti the Sakharov Prize for his courage, intelligence, and dignity, evident in his work, his character, and his public expressions over the span of twenty years. All this he has done at great risk to himself and his family. The prize, we hope, will also help bring attention to the plight of the Uighur people and China’s deleterious policies in Xinjiang as Professor Tohti so hoped. «