China has sentenced Rahile Dawut to life in prison and would like the world to forget her. We must not

I last saw Rahile Dawut in 2016, at a conference we'd organised in Hong Kong. We sat in a sunny precinct, drank coffee, and enjoyed a rare moment of calm before the gathering storm. She was detained in 2017, and this week we have confirmation, via the US-based Dui Hua Foundation rights group, that Dawut has been jailed for life by China for "splittism": a deliberate attempt to split the Chinese nation. When we met in 2016, Dawut was already experiencing trouble. On her journey from Urumqi to Hong Kong, her plane was diverted due to snow, and she and…