MCLC: Uighur scholar and mother seized

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: Uighur scholar and mother seized
******************************************************

Source: The Guardian (1/15/14):
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/uighur-scholar-mother-chinese-
police-ilham-tohti

Uighur scholar and mother seized by Chinese police, says website
By Tania Branigan 

Chinese police have taken an Uighur scholar and his mother from their home
in Beijing, a website connected to the professor said on Wednesday.

Ilham Tohti, 45, is known for pressing the rights of the Uighur ethnic
minority in Xinjiang and for questioning state policies in the troubled
north-west region, where scores have died in unrest over the last year.

The Uighurbiz.net website said police seized Tohti and his mother between
3pm and 4pm local time on Wednesday, citing a phone call from his wife.
The site, which is hosted overseas, was inaccessible on Wednesday evening.

Tohti's wife said officers had not gone through any formalities or stated
the basis for his detention. She added that she and the couple's two
children were being kept in their home, that all means of communication
had been confiscated and that police from Xinjiang as well as Beijing were
monitoring them. The author of the Uighurbiz.net report said Uighur
officers could be overheard in the background during the call, which she
was able to make via a relative's phone.

Tohti could not be reached by phone. Beijing police said they could
respond only to faxed queries.

Tohti, who lectures on economics at the Central University for
Nationalities in Beijing, has been an outspoken commentator on Uighur
issues.

In 2009 he spent more than a month in detention after violent ethnic riots
in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, left about 200 people dead and many
more injured. In February 2011 he was detained at Beijing airport and
prevented from taking up a fellowship in the US.

In November last year, he alleged that security agents had rammed his car,
telling him that they wanted to stop him speaking to foreign media.
He told the New York Times that when he pointed to his children in the
back seat, the men said: "We don't care ... we want to kill your whole
family."

He added: "The more they threaten me, the more important it is for me to
speak up."

Uighurs make up almost half the population of Xinjiang, but many are
angered by cultural and religious restrictions, and complain that have
been marginalised by Han migration. Some seek an independent state for
what they call East Turkestan.

Authorities have been particularly concerned by a recent upsurge in
violence in the region. Last month Chinese police said they had shot eight
dead in what they described as a terrorist attack near Kashgar. In
October, a Uighur man crashed a car containing his wife and mother  into a
crowd at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, killing all three of them and two
tourists. An Islamist group later claimed responsibility though other
sources had suggested the driver might have been angered by a raid on a
mosque in his hometown.