MCLC: Ilham Tohti accused of separatism

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: Ilham Tohti accused of separatism
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (1/25/14):
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/world/asia/china.html

China Accuses Uighur Intellectual of Separatism for His Advocacy Work
By Andrew Jacobs

BEIJING — In an ominous sign of the fate awaiting one of China’s
best-known Uighur intellectuals, security officials in the far western
region of Xinjiang issued a statement on Saturday that accused him of
separatism and inciting ethnic hatred.

The statement provides the first concrete indication that the scholar,
Ilham Tohti, an economics professor in Beijing, could face a long prison
term for his advocacy on behalf of Uighurs, the Turkic-speaking Muslim
minority whose uneasy coexistence with the Chinese authorities has grown
increasingly violent.

Mr. Tohti has been held incommunicado since Jan. 15, when police officers
escorted him from his apartment on the campus of Minzu University of China.

The news that he is likely to face charges of separatism comes at a time
of intensifying bloodshed in Xinjiang despite a growing security presence
by Chinese soldiers and paramilitary police officers. On Friday, 12 people
were killed in a town not far from Xinjiang’s border with Kyrgyzstan in
what officials say was a clash involving explosive devices. A state-run
news portal said that the police shot and killed six people in Aksu
Prefecture, and that six others died in what were described as three
explosions. The accounts provided scant details.

Mr. Tohti’s detention coincides with a broad assault on dissent by the new
leadership under Xi Jinping, the Communist Party secretary who assumed
power in November 2012.

Last week, the authorities put on trial a respected legal scholar, Xu
Zhiyong, who helped create a grass-roots civic organization devoted to
fighting social injustice and official corruption. He was sentenced on
Sunday to four years in prison.

A vocal advocate for China’s embattled Uighur minority, Mr. Tohti, 44, was
the rare public figure willing to speak to the foreign news media about
the Chinese government’s policies in the vast region that borders several
Central Asian countries. He was also the target of frequent harassment by
the Chinese authorities, especially after he helped establish
Uighurbiz.net <http://www.uighurbiz.net/>, a website for news and
commentary on Uighur issues.

Censors blocked the site in 2009 after ethnic violence in Urumqi, the
regional capital, claimed nearly 200 lives. Since then several people
involved with the website have been given long jail terms, including a
15-year sentence for one of its contributors, Gheyret Niyaz.

In the statement issued Saturday night on its microblog account, the
Urumqi Bureau of State Security accused Mr. Tohti of inciting violence
against the Chinese authorities and recruiting people to join a movement
for an independent East Turkestan nation. Uighurbiz, the statement said,
had “concocted, distorted and hyped up” acts of ethnic bloodshed.

“Ilham Tohti exploited his status as a teacher to recruit, entice and
coerce people to form gangs, and to collude with ‘East Turkestan’ leaders
in planning, organizing and assigning people to go abroad to join in
separatist activities,” the statement said.

Analysts outside China have long questioned the official narrative about
the violence in Xinjiang, including allegations that the East Turkestan
Islamic Movement, a murky terrorist organization, was behind much of the
bloodshed.

Mr. Tohti was among those who played down the strength and size of the
organization, saying that many of the clashes involving Uighurs and the
police were rooted in the daily frustrations experienced by Uighurs
disenfranchised by repressive policies and uneven economic development. A
significant portion of Mr. Tohti’s academic work delved into the high
unemployment of young Uighurs unable to compete for jobs with recently
arrived Han Chinese migrants.

In interviews with The New York Times, Mr. Tohti condemned the growing
violence, but called on Beijing to re-examine its economic policies and
ease its heavy-handed administration of the region.

Over the past year, confrontations have been occurring with greater
frequency, alarming Chinese leaders and prompting heavier security in the
strategically important and energy-rich region. Beijing recently announced
that it was doubling Xinjiang’s public security budget, with one regional
official vowing “no mercy for terrorists,” according to the state news
media.

Exile groups like the World Uyghur Congress attribute many recent Uighur
deaths to aggressive police tactics, and say that many of those killed by
the police and described as “terrorists” were carrying only knives or
farming tools.

Over the past two months, nearly three dozen Uighurs in southern Xinjiang
have been shot and killed by the police, including three young men shot on
Jan. 15 outside a police station in Yengieriq, in Aksu Prefecture.

In that episode, security agents opened fire after the men had been denied
entry to a local police station, according to Radio Free Asia. The report
quoted local police officials as saying the men were carrying sickles and
described them as “separatists.”

In the episode on Friday, officials said the attacks occurred in and
around a hair salon and vegetable market in the county seat of Xinhe. In
an account posted on the state-run Tianshan news portal, the authorities
said one of the explosions occurred after the police “besieged” what was
described as a suspicious vehicle. Two of the dead had been sitting inside
the vehicle, the report said. The authorities arrested three people and
several others were injured, including a police officer.

Over the years, Mr. Tohti had become inured to the constant surveillance
and the occasional detention, including forced “vacations” during which
minders would escort him to a hotel outside Beijing for days or weeks.

In November, as he and his family drove through the university gates, he
said, a car driven by plainclothes security agentsrammed into his vehicle,
and the men threatened to kill his wife and children if he did not stop
speaking to the foreign news media. The episode occurred days after a
deadly attack near Tiananmen Square in which a Uighur man drove a sport
utility vehicle along a sidewalk, striking numerous pedestrians and
killing two before the vehicle hit a bridge and exploded. A security
official later blamed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement for the attack,
although he provided no evidence of the group’s involvement.

Last February, the authorities stopped Mr. Tohti at Beijing International
Airport as he prepared to travel for a visiting scholar position at
Indiana University. After eight hours of interrogation, Mr. Tohti was
released, but the police refused to let him leave the country.

During the raid of his apartment this month, security agents carted off
documents, computers and cellphones while his wife and two young children
looked on, unable to leave, his wife, Guzaili Nu’er, said in an interview.
At least six of his students were also taken into custody, she said.

Mr. Tohti was acutely aware that his freedom was tenuous. In one interview
in 2010, he expressed resignation over his fate, noting the constant
police harassment was wearing him down.

“If things here don’t change as quickly as I’d like, sooner or later I
will be doomed,” he said. “Perhaps I will be sent to hell, but I don’t
care because in some ways I am already there.”