17 September 2014 Last updated at 08:43 ET
 
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File photo: Ilham Tohti, 4 February 2013
Ilham Tohti is a Beijing-based academic from the Uighur minority group
 
Prominent Uighur academic Ilham Tohti has gone on trial for separatism in China’s far western region of Xinjiang.
 
Mr Tohti is an economics scholar who has criticised Beijing’s policies towards the Uighur minority.
 
He has been detained since January, after he condemned the government’s response to a suicide car attack in Tiananmen Square.
 
The United Nations, the EU and US have all called for Mr Tohti’s release. He denies the charges against him.
 
Mr Tohti, 44, is being tried at the Intermediate People’s Court in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.
 
Tight security
 
Prosecutors presented evidence alleging that Mr Tohti advocated that Xinjiang should be made independent.
 
Their evidence included testimony from his former students. Mr Tohti was teaching at Beijing’s Minzu University.
 
Mr Tohti has rejected the evidence, and his lawyers say that his students’ testimony were made under duress.
 
One of his lawyers, Li Fangping, told Reuters news agency: “Most of the students said Professor Tohti had separatist goals or intentions… We believe they weren’t trustworthy statements, that they were made under pressure.”
 
Seven of his students, said to have been working on an Uighur website which Mr Tohti managed, were arrested shortly after he was detained.
 
Guzaili Nu’er, Tohti’s wife, attended the trial with several of his brothers and appeared distraught, according to AFP news agency.
 
“He has never opposed the country or any ethnic group,” she was quoted as saying. “He has never done anything like that.”
 
Human Rights Watch, in a statement, said Mr Tohti had “consistently, courageously and unambiguously advocated peacefully for greater understanding and dialogue between various communities, and with the state”.
 
“If this is Beijing’s definition of ‘separatist’ activities, it’s hard to see tensions in Xinjiang and between the communities decreasing,” said its China director, Sophie Richardson.