Prior to Feb. 2, 2013, Jewher Ilham was a freshman at college looking forward to spending time with her new friends in school. She never imagined that a one-month planned trip to the United States would turn her world upside down and lead her on a path to advocate for her father, an ethnic Uyghur who was sentenced to jail in China.
Jewher’s father, Ilham Tohti, was a Uyghur economics professor in Beijing who ran a website called “Uighur Biz,” which attempted to form a bridge between the Uyghurs in China and the Han Chinese. In 2013, he was invited to Indiana University as a visiting scholar; however, the Chinese authorities didn’t allow him to pass through immigration on the day he and his daughter were due to board the plane at Beijing Airport. The Chinese communist regime later sentenced him to life imprisonment on charges of inciting separatism—a charge that Ilham said was unfounded.
Forced to Start Anew
Prior to the occurrence of this incident, Ilham always thought her father was “being paranoid, suspicious all the time” that Chinese authorities could be monitoring him. The truth finally set in after her father told her at the airport to leave for the United States without him.“Look around you. This country is treating you like this way. Do you still want to stay here?” she recalled him telling her.
“At that moment, everything started making sense,” Jewher further added.
Jewher boarded the plane for the United States even though she didn’t want to leave. However, coming to America alone wasn’t easy, as a nervous Ilham was nearly sent back to China—her visa was tied to her father, and because she didn’t know English, she couldn’t explain to the immigration officers about her situation. After waiting for over 30 hours without food, water, and sleep, Ilham remembered she carried a name card of “Elliot Sperling,” the man who invited her father to the university. With Sperling’s help, she managed to enter the country.
Once in the United States, she tried to check on her father’s situation. She got in touch with him after three days and was told that he had been beaten and interrogated. During their conversation, he also made a decision for her—one that Jewher still thinks is “ridiculous”—to stay in the United States.
“No matter what I said in the future, no matter what I tell you, if I say come back, I don’t mean it. Stay there. I would rather you sweep the street in the U.S. than you coming back here,” he told her.
Jewher couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Before coming to the United States, she was enjoying her new college life in China and was suddenly told to start life from scratch. Despite this, she listened to her father’s advice and later attended school in the United States with the help of Sperling.
Life Sentence and Xinjiang’s Re-education Camps
In 2014, Ilham was sentenced to life imprisonment. At that time, Jewher managed to write a letter to her father and send a picture of it via his lawyer. However, that was her last message to him. Three years later, in 2017, Jewher’s family in China lost contact with Ilham and since then have no news of where he is. It was also the same year when the Chinese regime started the Xinjiang re-education camps.Unable to know the whereabouts of her dad makes Jewher worried. She hopes that the Chinese regime could provide some form of evidence to show that her dad is still alive.
The Path to Seeking Freedom
After Jewher’s dad lost his freedom, she decided to embark on a journey to seek his release. In July 2019, she got the opportunity to meet President Donald Trump at the White House, together with other survivors of religious persecution. She was also invited to speak at the UN General Assembly in September.“I have been trying to do anything that could possibly help my father and my community. I don’t know if it’s helping, I don’t know if anything would help. I just don’t want to regret,” Ilham said.
Jewher has also been working on a documentary film called “Static & Noise” that covers the persecution of Uyghurs and other groups such as Christians who have been suppressed by the Chinese regime.
Despite all that she is doing, Jewher said she’s not against her home country nor the Chinese people.
And while others might connect her activities to politics, Jewher begs to differ.
“It is a humanitarian issue, and it is not about politics, not about religion,” Jewher explained.