He was a legend. He lived as a hero.
His name was Ibrahim Dawut. He did something people can’t even imagine.
Ibrahim Duwut was born on March 20, 1964, in Kashgar, where he was raised. He graduated from Kashgar Teacher’s College and then worked as a chemistry teacher at my high school for more than 30 years.
His name became synonymous with resistance in Kashgar. On 12 December 1985, while he was a university student, he organized a student protest. Although the police prevented the students from marching into the streets, they continued their demonstration on campus. During the protest, Ismail Tiliwaldi, then Secretary of the Kashgar Communist Party Committee, came to the university to persuade the students that they were wrong. Ibrahim debated him, accusing state-owned enterprises of polluting Kashgar’s drinking water. As a chemistry student, he also criticized the Chinese government’s nuclear testing in the Uyghur region, arguing that it had caused serious health problems among the Uyghurs. He called on the local government to take action to prevent soil contamination.
While teaching at the high school in late 1989, he criticized the mayor for using tax revenues collected from local residents to finance the construction of state highways. He argued that the central government should reimburse the local government for those expenditures.
In 1993, he organized teachers whose salaries had been delayed for six months. In the end, he succeeded, and people praised him as “the brave Ibrahim.”
In July 2011, when I returned to Kashgar, he was the only one who agreed to work with me. We both believed that the Uyghur language should not be excluded from education. It should remain part of both the curriculum and the classroom.
He was a strong supporter of my Mother Tongue Kindergarten Movement, but he suffered a lot because of that.
I did not publicly mention his contributions to the movement to protect him from persecution. However, he still paid a heavy price because of his association with me. He was detained during the authorities’ campaign to eliminate my influence. In July 2019, the authorities launched the “Elimination of Abduweli’s Influence” campaign in Kashgar. More than a thousand people were arrested in my home county Konasheher, and around 200 more were arrested in Kashgar City. Ibrahim Dawut was one of them. They got detained for sending their kids to my kindergarten, meeting with me at the restaurant, and keeping my phone number. Some were even arrested because they had stayed in the same hotel as I had or happened to be on the same flight.
How did I learn all this? Recently, one of my former students fled China and reached Europe. She had been arrested in Kashgar and witnessed the arrests firsthand.
Ibrahim Dawut was one of the victims. He got murdered during the interrogation, like my niece Mihriay. He lost his life in October 2019.
In the police station, he had a chance to call his family. During that call, he told one of his kids to leave China, to tell the truth, to try everything she could to expose atrocities against people. He was a legend. He lived as a hero.
Written by Abduweli Ayup
Mother Language Day Celebration in Kashgar, featuring Ibrahim Dawut.
