SEPT. 25, 2014
China’s sledgehammer approach to dissent was on display once more this week, when the authorities sentenced the Uighur economist Ilham Tohti to life in prison on Tuesday. The verdict attracted widespread international condemnation and risks further accelerating a vicious circle of repression, discrimination and violence in China’s westernmost region.
Mr. Tohti, a professor at Minzu University in Beijing, was found guilty of “separatism” — the usual charge leveled against nonethnic-Han Chinese, such as Uighurs, Mongols or Tibetans, when they criticize Beijing’s ethnic-minority policies. Mr. Tohti has always stressed his personal opposition to separatism, but according to the prosecution’s tortured logic, this was in fact proof that he was a “covert” separatist.
The real reasons behind Mr. Tohti’s conviction stem from his outspoken efforts to convince the central government to change the course of oppressive policies in his native Xinjiang, which he said were generating more violent resistance among the 10-million-strong mostly Muslim Uighurs.
Occasional violent outbursts have long been a feature of life in the Xinjiang region but the tumult reached unprecedented levels after mass riots in the capital Urumqi in July 2009. Triggered by the suppression of a peaceful demonstration by Uighurs calling for a government inquiry into mistreatment, the turmoil left hundreds of people dead, most of whom were Han Chinese, the country’s dominant ethnicity.
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