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<\/a><\/p>\nIlham Tohti<\/p>\n
‘Everything llham Tohti has said and written is published online or in the media. It is an absurdity that he was charged, tried and sentenced for separatism.’ Photograph: Frederic J. Brown\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Not long before his arrest in January this year, when Ilham Tohti, a 44-year-old Uighur economics professor, was on an outing with his wife and children, three secret policemen rammed their car into his from the rear. \u201cWe\u2019ll kill your whole family!\u201d one of them screamed. Afterwards, Tohti wrote his will. Even if I am murdered by secret police, it said, remember, \u201cit is not the Han Chinese who killed me, and do not place hatred between the two people, Uighur and Han\u201d.<\/p>\n
Tohti was put on trial for \u201cseparatism\u201d on 17 and 18 September. The sentence was handed down four days later by the Intermediate People\u2019s Court in Urumqi, the capital of China\u2019s increasingly violent Xinjiang region, where Uighurs are the main ethnic group: life imprisonment for the crime of separatism.<\/p>\n
Tohti\u2019s troubles began in 2006 when he founded Uighurbiz, a Chinese-language website devoted to fostering understanding between the Uighur and Han people, China\u2019s dominant ethnic group. For years, in his writing and speeches, he has repeatedly emphasised his opposition to separatism, religious extremism and terrorism. What he has focused most on is the need to implement Xinjiang\u2019s long-promised autonomy; the need to observe the rule of law and human rights; that all ethnic groups should share fairly in the fruits of China\u2019s development; and that discrimination based on region, ethnicity or gender must be eliminated.<\/p>\n
The Uighur academic, and my friend, has … Continue reading
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