Boxun has learned from Ilham Tohti’s attorney, Liu Xiaoyuan, that the Xinjiang Higher People’s Court has decided to hear in secret Tohti’s appeal of a life sentence, and without the presence of an attorney representing him.
On Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2014, attorney Liu Xiaoyuan issued a news release: “At 7:10 p.m. I received a telephone call from Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Higher People’s Court Judge Zheng. He said that the panel of judges had already decided to try Ilham in secret.”
On September 23, 2014, the Urumqi City Intermediate People’s Court sentenced Tohti to life imprisonment, deprivation of political rights for life, and confiscation of all his assets. He had been accused of separatism (“splitting the motherland”), Beijing’s euphemism for resistance movements in territories that China insists are “autonomous regions.” Beijing dissident Hu Jia angrily said that this is the Chinese Communist Party’s way of putting Tohti in a black box to reduce international attention.
Tohti had been an economics professor at Minzu University in Beijing. He was best known, however, for his advocacy of greater autonomy for Xinjiang Province’s Uighurs. They are a Turkish-speaking, Muslim minority who have been protesting oppression and discrimination by the province’s Chinese Han population, which has greatly increased.
Xinjiang democratic rights defender Zhao Haitong was recently sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment for the crime of inciting subversion of the government. The severity of the sentence is second only to Ilham’s. Both are in prison for expressing views unpopular with Beijing.
