MCLC: why Beijing fears Ilham Tohti

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: why Beijing fears Ilham Tohti
***********************************************************

Source: Huffington Post (7/2/14):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alim-a-seytoff/why-beijing-fears-uyghur-_b_55
49499.html

Why Beijing Fears Uyghur Scholar Ilham Tohti
By Alim A. Seytoff, President of the Uyghur American Association

Since Xi Jinping became China’s new president more than a year ago,
questioning or criticizing Chinese Communist Party rule has become an
extremely risky business for academics, scholars and lawyers in China.
Beijing has resolutely brushed aside China’s legal protections for freedom
of speech and arrogantly disregarded international concerns when it comes
to dealing with regime critics, even those moderates whose intention is
pure and criticisms are constructive. The case in point is China’s
treatment of prominent Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti. Mr. Tohti’s case
illustrates that China’s legal system is merely a theatrical performance.
It gives a veneer of legality to a deeply flawed process, all in the name
of China’s national interest and maintaining state stability.

According to reports circulated mid-June, Mr. Tohti was tried in secret by
the Chinese authorities and given a heavy sentence. The information
stemmed from Mr. Tohti’s lawyer, Li Fangping who stated he had received
the news from two sources. Although the secret trial turned out to be a
falsealarm after Mr. Li visited Professor Tohti last week in his prison
cell for the first time  in five months, nobody is optimistic that Mr.
Tohti will receive a fair trial in an open court. The trial, whenever it
happens, will most likely be a show trial backed by shadowy evidence with
a predetermined sentence from Beijing. During Professor Tohti’s nearly
six-month long incommunicado incarceration, he was denied food for ten
days and shackled with a big iron chain. The harsh treatment of Professor
Tohti essentially prevents any future peaceful resolution of Beijing’s
increasingly contentious relations with the restive Uyghur population of
East Turkestan (also known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region).

Mr. Tohti is a well-respected economic professor at the Central
Nationalities University in Beijing. He is also a moderate critic of the
Chinese government’s discriminatory policies in East Turkestan, frequently
urging Chinese leaders to find rational solutions to racial discrimination
and marginalization of the Uyghur people. In order to foster interethnic
understanding and reconciliation between China’s Han majority and the
Uyghur people, he created Uighurbiz, a website which was widely respected
by both Han scholars and Uyghur academics. In spite of his sincere efforts
as a loyal Chinese citizen to correct the chronic mistakes of Beijing’s
Uyghur policies, China’s current leaders saw him instead as a troublemaker
and a thorn in their side.

On January 15, at least two-dozen Chinese security officers raided
Professor Tohti’s apartment in Beijing, confiscated his computers and
written materials, and dragged him away in front of his terrified wife and
children to an unknown location. Despite strong international condemnation
and expressions of deep concern by both the U.S. and EU, Mr. Tohti has
been held incommunicado since his detention. His whereabouts are not
known. Even his wife and children did not know where he is being held.

Only three days after his detention and forced disappearance, China’s
state run Global Times issued an op-ed accusing Professor Tohti of having
links to the “West,” delivering “aggressive lectures and being the
“brains” behind alleged Uyghur terrorists. The op-ed was followed by a
statement from the Urumchi Public Security Bureau on its Weibo account
alleging Professor Tohti “made use of his capacity as a teacher to
recruit, lure and threaten some people to form a ring and join hands with
key people from the East Turkestan Independence Movement to plan and
organize people to go abroad to take part in separatist activities
[and]…was involved in splitting the country.” Professor Tohti was formally
charged with the crime of “separatism” according to February 2014 reports
in the overseas media.

There is no public record Professor Tohti has ever advocated independence
for East Turkestan, supported terrorism against China or formed a ring to
join hands with key people from the East Turkestan Independence Movement,
whoever these unnamed people may be. Mr. Tohti was very public about his
opinions and documented them extensively, and consistently rejected so
called “splittism.” However, in China’s legal system, which serves only
the party-state, a man is presumed guilty until found innocent.
 This is the diametric opposite of the Western legal system. A regime
critic, especially a Uyghur like Professor Tohti, will never be legally
found innocent, even though he is factually not guilty of government
charges.

But why would a rising and confident China go so far as to detain,
disappear, fabricate charges and then sentence a peaceful, sincere, and
moderate Uyghur scholar like Professor Tohti, who believes he is doing
this as a concerned and loyal Chinese citizen? What is it that Professor
Tohti says or does that keeps Chinese leaders awake at night? Why is it
that Beijing fears him so much? Many people in China and the West are
simply baffled by the Chinese government’s rather harsh and unconscionable
treatment of Professor Tohti.

In fact, Beijing ‘s harsh and unconscionable treatment of Professor Tohti
is not quite surprising. The real reason that Bejing has feared and then
decided to silence him is simply because Professor Tohti’s constructive
criticism didn’t fit into the Chinese government’s domestic propaganda
narrative that “China respects the rights of all Uyghur people,” “Uyghur
people are happy and warmly embrace Communist Party rule and support
Chinese government policies,” and “China has preferential policies for the
Uyghur people.” In essence, Professor Tohti’s constructive criticism, no
matter how sincere, mild or helpful, exposed the hypocrisy of China’s
domestic propaganda narrative about the Uyghur people and East Turkestan
since 1949, when communist Chinese troops conquered the once independent
state.

It is easy for the Chinese governmentto defend criticism of its ethnic
policies coming from someone overseas and to attack a  regime critic based
outside of China as someone who has no credible information from the
ground and is therefore completely cut off his or her influence in China.
It is difficult for the Chinese government to defend criticism of its
ethnic policies coming from an insider and one of the leading
intellectuals of that group living in the capital, Beijing; a person who
has first hand information on the effects of Chinese discriminatory
policies on his people and whose relatives, friends and students fell
victims to them.

Furthermore, Professor Tohti’s constructive criticism indirectly exposed
the hypocrisy of Beijing’s global propaganda narrative since 9/11 that
“China is a victim of Uyghur terrorism” and “China faces a threat of
Islamic terrorism and needs international support in its fight against
three evil forces of terrorism, separatism and religious extremism.”
Professor Tohti’s criticism articulated the root causes of Uyghur
discontent in modern China and unambiguously pointed out the fact that
“Uyghur people have been a victim of China’s six-decade long repressive
policies,” “the high tension that exists today between the Chinese state
and the Uyghur people is really the result of China’s repressive
policies,” and “China needs to prove its case with substantive evidence
about alleged Uyghur terrorism instead of resorting to Cultural
Revolution-style rhetoric, intimidation and demonization of Uyghur
people.” His firm belief that tension is going to only rise higher and
higher as long as Beijing retains its ongoing heavy-handed repressive
policies against the Uyghur people.

Consequently, Professor Tohti’s sincere and constructive criticism didn’t
sit well with China’s current leaders. They believed that they could
continue to propagate their recurring, hypocritical domestic and global
narrative on the Uyghur people and East Turkestan only by permanently
silencing him. What better way to silence Professor Tohti than
discrediting his words and deeds, holding him incommunicado indefinitely,
subjecting him to a mockery of justice, locking him up as long as possible
and throwing away the key. China’s rulers think that while the
international community condemns the terrible treatment of Professor Tohti
and Western governments express deep concerns for now, the reality is that
they will forget about this courageous Uyghur critic as time lapses and
more important global issues grab their attention. By that time, Mr Tohti
will be far from their minds, but he will still be caged in a dark and
hopeless dungeon in China. Chinese leaders believe time is on their side
in the case of Professor Tohti.

However, one lesson authoritarian governments rarely learn is that they
give birth to the very people who will eventually reform or revolutionize
the political system simply because of the sheer brutality and
uncompromising idiocy of such regimes. Through mistreatment and
imprisonment, these authoritarian governments will make people like
Professor Tohti larger than life and inspire others to follow his
footsteps to stand up to their inherently unjust rule. If Professor Tohti
dies in Chinese prison, Beijing will make a historic martyr of him.

 If he is released sometime in the distant future, then he will most
likely become a more confident and courageous spokesperson for the
long-suffering Uyghur people. Whether Professor Tohti eventually dies in
prison or is released, he is already a transformational figure, a shining
light in the darkest corner of the world.