UNE 26, 2014
Ilham Tohti, a scholar and advocate for China’s beleaguered Uighurs. Credit Andy Wong/Associated Press
HONG KONG — Ilham Tohti, a prominent Uighur scholar charged with separatism after he repeatedly criticized China’s increasingly uncompromising policies in Xinjiang, his ethnically divided homeland, told his lawyers on Thursday that he would fight the charges, one of the lawyers said.
The meeting with his two defense lawyers brought the first word conveyed from Mr. Tohti since he was detained in January and arrested in February on charges of inciting separatism, an accusation condemned by international human rights groups and Chinese rights advocates. They have said Mr. Tohti advocated peaceful change in Xinjiang, the far-western region of China that has been increasingly torn by tensions pitting ethnic Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic-speaking people, against the government and China’s ethnic Han majority.
Ilham Tohti, a scholar and advocate for China’s beleaguered Uighurs, was arrested on Wednesday.China Charges Scholar With Inciting SeparatismFEB. 26, 2014
Mr. Tohti is adamant that the charges are spurious, said Li Fangping, one of his lawyers, who met with him for nearly five hours in a detention center in Urumqi, the regional capital of Xinjiang.
“He rejected the charges,” Mr. Li said in a telephone interview from Urumqi, where he had traveled from Beijing to seek a meeting with his client. “But he wasn’t aware of the specific police accusations against him, and only today did we show them to him.” Mr. Li explained that he and the other lawyer showed Mr. Tohti a news report with the charges that came out at the time of his arrest.
