Jewher Ilham grew up in Beijing, the daughter of economics professor and Uighur human-rights activist Ilham Tohti. She was accompanying him on a teaching assignment to Indiana in 2013 when they were stopped at the airport by Chinese authorities.
Her father was barred from leaving, but he insisted his teenage daughter go anyway. It was the last time she saw him in person. Today, Tohti is serving a life sentence on separatism-related charges, according to the U.S. State Department. No one in the family has spoken to him for three years, she said.
Now 26 and living in the U.S., Jewher Ilham serves as a Uighur human-rights fellow for the Washington-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. She spoke to Bloomberg News about the new Walt Disney Co. film "Mulan,” which was partly shot in the Xinjiang region of China, and about how U.S. companies should conduct business in that country.