Uighur scholar Tohti jailed for life for inciting separatism – IEMS’ Barry Sautman comments for Bloomberg article
Bloomberg quoted IEMS’ Barry Sautman on the life sentence handed down to Ilham Tohti, a noted Uighur scholar in China’s turbulent Xinjiang province. Observers were shocked at what appeared to be one of China’s most oppressive sentences in recent memory, handed down to Tohti due to his running of a Uighur-centric website discussing China’s policies in the Xinjiang region, a crime which the Central Government cited as “splitting the country”.
As Barry Sautman noted in the Bloomberg article,
“He is certainly a Uighur nationalist even if he doesn’t have in mind the creation of a separate Uighur state,” said Barry Sautman, a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, who has met Tohti. “But he didn’t denounce separatism. That set off alarms.”
Read the full article here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-23/uighur-scholar-tohti-sentenced-to-life-for-inciting-separatism
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