MCLC: Ilham Tohti could face death penalty

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Paul Mooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: Ilham Tohti could face death penalty
***********************************************************

Source: Reuters (2/26/14):
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/26/us-china-xinjiang-academic-idUSBR
EA1P0P420140226

Uighur professor could face death sentence in China: lawyer
By Michael Martina 

(Reuters) - A prominent ethnic Uighur economist is unlikely to receive a
fair trial and could face the death penalty after being charged with
separatism in China's far western Xinjiang region, his lawyer said on
Wednesday.

Beijing police last month detained Ilham Tohti, a professor who has
championed the rights of Xinjiang's large Muslim Uighur minority. Unrest
in Xinjiang has killed more than 100 people in the past year, prompting
authorities to toughen their stance.

Tohti was taken after his detention to Xinjiang's regional capital Urumqi
and on Tuesday his wife was notified of the charges. His case has draw
concern from the United States and Europe over human rights abuses.

"To a degree, his name has already been blackened in the court of public
opinion," Tohti's lawyer Li Fangping said by telephone from Urumqi, where
he said he has not been allowed to see his client after a month and a half
in detention.

"We'll have to wait and see if his trial will be fair. We are not feeling
very optimistic."

If found guilty, Li said, Tohti was most likely to receive a sentence
between 10 years and life in prison, but China's criminal code also
provides for the death sentence for separatism. With strategic border
regions like Xinjiang and Tibet populated with ethnic minorities,
separatism is considered a serious crime.

"It includes the possibility (of a death sentence). If there are no other
violent circumstances, it should be 10 years to life," Li said.
Tohti's wife, Guzailai Nu'er, has dismissed the charge as "ridiculous".

"He's never done anything like the crime of separatism they accuse him
of," she told Reuters Television. "And I'm under so much pressure ... I'm
not particularly free leaving my own home - wherever I go (police) are
always trailing me."

Li said he believed his client was "an extremely open and transparent
person. All that he has done is in his interviews, in class lectures and
in his online content."

The charge is the latest sign of the government's hardening stance on
dissent in Xinjiang, gripped by periodic outbursts of violence often
pitting Uighurs against ethnic Han Chinese.

Many Uighurs chafe at restrictions on their culture and religion, although
the government says it grants them broad freedoms. China blames some of
the violence on Islamists who want to establish an independent state
called East Turkestan.

But rights groups and exiles say China exaggerates the threat to justify
its firm grip on energy-rich Xinjiang, which borders ex-Soviet Central
Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

CHALLENGING THE GOVERNMENT'S VERSION

Advocates for Tohti say he has challenged the government's version of
several incidents involving Uighurs. That includes what China says was its
first major suicide attack, in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in October,
involving militants from Xinjiang, by pointing out inconsistencies in the
official accounts.

"China's accusation of so-called separatism is a political excuse to
suppress Uighurs who express differing opinions," Dilxat Raxit, a
spokesman for the main Uighur exile group, the World Uyghur Congress, said
in an emailed statement.

Tohti, who teaches at Beijing's Minzu University which specializes in
ethnic minority studies, told Reuters in November that state security
agents had threatened him for speaking to foreign reporters.

"I have never associated myself with a terrorist organization or a
foreign-based group," Tohti told Radio Free Asia's Uyghur Service last
year in a statement he asked to have released if he was taken into custody.

"I have relied only on pen and paper to diplomatically request the human
rights, legal rights, and autonomous regional rights for the Uyghurs."

The foreign ministry, the only government department which regularly
answers questions from the foreign media, declined to comment directly on
the case.

"I believe that China is a country with rule of law and judicial
authorities will try the case in a fair and legal way," spokeswoman Hua
Chunying told a press briefing on Wednesday.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard and Joseph Campbell; Editing by Ron
Popeski)