Ilham was summoned from his Beijing home and detained shortly after the July 2009 Ürümqi riots by the authorities because of his criticism of the Chinese government's policies toward Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

According to the limited public information about the trial, the prosecutor claimed that Ilham Tohti mentioned multiple times "do not think [that] violent protests are terrorist activities"[6] during his lectures in the MUC.

[5] China had created in Ilham Tohti "a Uighur Mandela," by jailing him for life in September 2014, as the scholar Wang Lixiong wrote in a Twitter message.

[16] Ilham was released from detention on August 23,[17] along with two other Chinese dissidents, Xu Zhiyong and Zhuang Lu, after pressure on Beijing from the administration of American President Barack Obama.

[24] According to the statement from PEN, Ilham, was "long harassed by Chinese authorities for his outspoken views on the rights of China's Muslim Uyghur minority.

Ilham represents a new generation of endangered writers who use the web and social media to fight oppression and broadcast to concerned parties around the globe.

We hope this honor helps awaken Chinese authorities to the injustice being perpetrated and galvanizes the worldwide campaign to demand Ilham's freedom.

Amnesty International asserted Ilham's legal team were never shown evidence and furthermore denied access to their client for six months, and condemned the trial as an "affront to justice".

[27] In 2021 China denied the request of a group of Ambassadors from European Union countries to visit Ilham Tohti with Chinese authorities citing his convicted status as the reason they could not meet with him.

[28] On March 31, 2022, the Human Rights Watch reported that the Chinese government have arbitrarily detained the students of Ilham Tohti.

[29] In September 2016 he was nominated for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and the following month he was declared as the winner of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders.

[30][31] The Martin Ennals foundation cited Ilham for spending two decades trying "to foster dialogue and understanding" between the Han Chinese majority and members of Xinjiang's largely Muslim Uyghurs.

By awarding this prize, we strongly urge the Chinese government to release Tohti and we call for the respect of minority rights in China.