Peaceful advocate for Muslim Uighurs in China sentenced to life in prison

[Anees]

Ilham Tohti was given a life sentence for advocating equal rights for Xinjiang's minorities. Photograph: Andy Wong/AP
A court in the Xinjiang region of north-west China sentenced the country’s most prominent peaceful advocate for the rights of Muslim Uighur people to life in prison for “inciting separatism” on Tuesday, days after the conclusion of a two-day trial.

Ilham Tohti, a former economics professor at Minzu University of China in Beijing, is known as a moderate Uighur intellectual and critic of the government’s ethnic policies. He advocates increased autonomy and equal rights for Xinjiang’s minority groups. Tohti, 44, has firmly denied the charge.

The US and EU have called for his release, and human rights groups have called the case a political prosecution intended to showcase the government’s unwillingness to tolerate even moderate forms of dissent. “Ilham’s case is an example of someone being convicted for speaking freely,” Tohti’s lawyer, Li Fangping, said in a phone interview, adding that the defence team would appeal the verdict. The court in Urumqi, the region’s capital city, also demanded the seizure of all of Tohti’s assets.

Xinjiang, a sparsely populated but ethnically diverse region, is more than six times the size of the UK and borders several central Asian states. Tensions between the region’s Muslim Uighur minority group and majority Han have increasingly flared into clashes and terror attacks over the past year and a half. In total, more than 200 people have died in Xinjiang-related violence since last spring. On Sunday, three explosions in the region’s south killed two people and injured many others.

China blames the conflict on independence-seeking “separatists”, “terrorists” and the spread of radical Islam; Uighur groups abroad say that the clashes are a desperate protest against religious oppression and economic marginalisation.

“Today, Ilham Tohti becomes another casualty of China’s war on words,” Dominic Moran, the director of Free Expression Programs at the New York-based PEN American Center, said in a statement. “His conviction makes a mockery of China’s professed commitment to social harmony by silencing one of the country’s unifying voices and, with it, fellow Uighur writers who are now unlikely to dare speak out.”

Moran continued: “PEN upholds Tohti’s innocence, decries the profound iniquity of this judgment, and holds profound concerns regarding his maltreatment in detention. We maintain hope that, with time, justice will prevail and he will be freed to return to his wife and children.”

Xinhua, China’s official newswire, said on Tuesday afternoon that Tohti “spread lessons containing separatist thoughts via the website, [Uighur] Online”.

Tohti launched the site in 2006 to provide an open, bilingual forum for Uighurs and Han Chinese to discuss the country’s ethnic issues. Authorities blocked the site two years later.

“He bewitched and coerced young ethnic students to work for the website and built a criminal syndicate,” Xinhua said, citing the court’s verdict. “Tohti organized this group to write, edit, translate and reprint articles seeking Xinjiang’s separation from China.”

Through “online instigation,” the newswire said, “Tohti encouraged his fellow Uighurs to use violence. He also colluded with foreign groups and individuals in hyping incidents related to Xinjiang with the aim of making domestic issues international.”

According to Tohti’s lawyers, the academic was kept in shackles and intermittently denied food and warm clothing in detention.

Tohti has been in detention since January; he was charged with separatism in June. Seven of Tohti’s former students are also currently in detention, but their legal status remains unclear.

Maya Wang, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch, called the sentence the harshest handed to a peaceful government critic in recent history. The verdict is “a sign of further tightening of civil liberties that has been going on in the past year and a half – and it means that things might get worse in the future,” she said. “It certainly doesn’t bode well for the already-tense relationship between Han and Uighurs in Xinjiang.”

Wang Lixiong, a prominent writer and activist in Beijing, tweeted: “On September 23, 2014, the Chinese authorities created the Uighur Nelson Mandela.”

Peaceful advocate for Muslim Uighurs in China sentenced to life in prison | World news | The Guardian

 

[Kolaps]

The West has double standard on Islamic movement.

In one side, they condemn and hunt them down.

At other side, they support it.


May be it's a regret for China not to support Osama bin Laden and recognize the establishment of IS.

May be if China did it, China will became friend of Muslims and the West is in the big trouble right now.


Just like Gaddafi and Assad, who support the West against Osama bin Laden, but being backstabbed now like animals.

 

[conworldus]

Osama bin Laden and ISIS are both US creations that bite the US in the end.

 

[dlclong]

peaceful，？Publicity and education in this asshole, how manY people were killed? !
Let him continue to live, is a violation of human rights!
It is unfair to dead people!
Chinese government, too weak

 

[dlclong]

in addition，dont put himwith Muslim together，china have ten Muslim ethnic，all the other nine no problem

 

[TaiShang]

An intelligent comment by Chinamiah. I quote:

"The game plan of these terrorists are obvious. First, they quibble about things that had never been problems in past generations. From eating and dietary habits to dress codes, they demand all kinds of strict adherence to rules that are not native, but dictated by religious teachers faraway. In all aspects of life, they seek a strict separation from other non-believers of their faith. In so doing they practise ethnocentrism, a euphemism for racism. This include the notion that they are better and, hence, must not be "dirtied" or corrupted" by others. Not an insignificant number of them put religion above the state. In doing what they're doing, they undermine China efforts to integrate its multi-ethnic society and make everyone a patroitic citizen of the country.

The punishment meted out on the learned professor is, indeed, appropriate. King Solomon could not have adjudicated more wisely."

 

[StarCraft_ZT]

Equal rights? I thought minorities in China has more rights than Hans.

Ilham Tohti was given a life sentence for advocating equal rights for Xinjiang's minorities.