Professor RAHILE DAWUT

Image Credit: Lisa Ross/WikkiCommons

Rahile Dawut, a renowned anthropologist and leading expert on Uyghur folklore, remained in incommunicado detention throughout 2025, reportedly serving a life sentence after she was convicted on charges of ‘endangering state security’. In late 2017, Rahile Dawut disappeared shortly after making plans to travel from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to Beijing to attend an academic conference. She was subsequently held in secret by Chinese authorities, with no official confirmation of her detention for more than five years, despite international media attention and an advocacy campaign led by her daughter calling for her release.  

In September 2023, reports emerged indicating that Rahile Dawut had been sentenced to life imprisonment and that her appeal had been rejected by the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region High People’s Court (see Case Lists 2018-2025). Her family has not been informed of her place of detention or the conditions of her detention. 

Born on 20 May 1966, Rahile Dawut is an associate professor at Xinjiang University and the founder of the university’s research centre on minority folklore. She is recognised around the world for her groundbreaking contributions to the study and preservation of Uyghur cultural heritage. Her work includes the influential book Uyghur Shrines (Uyghur Mazarliri), published in Uyghur in 2001, which catalogues sacred sites and religious practices across the region.  

Rahile Dawut’s scholarship was widely respected internationally and by the Chinese government. In 2016, just one year before her detention, she received a major research grant from the Chinese Ministry of Culture, reportedly the largest ever awarded to a Uyghur research project. In recognition of her courage and contribution to cultural preservation, Rahile Dawut was awarded English PEN’s Writer of Courage Award in 2023.