Writers in Prison (China)

30

  Name                      Tohti TUNYAZ (中文资料)

  Pen name                MUZART

  Sex                          Male

  Birth date                1959-10-01

  Birth place              Bay County, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region

  Resident place         Tokyo, Japan

  Education                B.A. in History at the Central Institute of Nationalities, Beijing, in 1984

                                 Ph. D student at Tokyo University, Japan

  Profession               Ph. D student, Ethnic Uighur historian and writer (Honorary member of

                                  English,Perth, Catalan, Japan, American, Liechenstein and Canadian

PEN centers)

  Date of arrest          1998-02-06

  Cause of arrest        Collecting sensitive materials on ethnic relations, and publishing articles

                                 on ethnic separation in history                                

  Charge                    Inciting national disunity, and stealing state secrets for foreign persons

                                 (later amended by the Supreme Court to “illegally acquiring state

secrets”).

  Date of sentence      1999-03-10 (Urumqi Intermediate People's Court), 2000-02-15 (appeal)

  Sentence                  11 years imprisonment and 2 years deprivation of political rights

  Place of jail             Xinjiang No.3 Prison,  Urumqi, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region

  Situation in jail        Unknown

  Defender                 Unknown

  Family contact        unknown

  Case adopted by      English, Perth, Catalan, Japan, American, Liechenstein and Canadian PEN

  Current Status         Main Case

                                 under invistigation

  References              http://www.pencanada.ca/committ/HM/TohtiTunyaz.htm

                                 http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/ea/mgck/archive03/02hrprc5.htm (Chinese)

 Compiled by WiPC of Independent Chinese PEN Centre (11/2004) 30

Last update: November 3, 2004