{"id":43514,"date":"2014-11-14T15:17:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T15:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=43514 "},"modified":"2014-11-14T15:17:00","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T15:17:00","slug":"43514-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=43514","title":{"rendered":"Appeal of Uighur scholar\u2019s life sentence to be heard in closed court"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><\/div><div><\/div><div>Boxun has learned from Ilham Tohti&#8217;s attorney, Liu Xiaoyuan, that the Xinjiang Higher People&#8217;s Court has decided to hear in secret Tohti&#8217;s appeal of a life sentence, and without the presence of an attorney representing him.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mzzg.org\/UploadCenter\/ArticlePics\/2014\/46\/20141114201410292357china1.jpg\" alt=\"20141114201410292357china1.jpg (396&#215;304)\" \/><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>On Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2014, attorney Liu Xiaoyuan issued a news release: &#8220;At 7:10 p.m. I received a telephone call from Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Higher People&#8217;s Court Judge Zheng. He said that the panel of judges had already decided to try Ilham in secret.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>On September 23, 2014, the Urumqi City Intermediate People&#8217;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 (&#8220;splitting the motherland&#8221;), Beijing&#8217;s euphemism for resistance movements in territories that China insists are &#8220;autonomous regions.&#8221; Beijing dissident Hu Jia angrily said that this is the Chinese Communist Party&#8217;s way of putting Tohti in a black box to reduce international attention.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>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&#8217;s Uighurs. They are a Turkish-speaking, Muslim minority who have been protesting oppression and discrimination by the province&#8217;s Chinese Han population, which has greatly increased.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Xinjiang democratic rights defender Zhao Haitong was recently sentenced to 14 years&#8217; imprisonment for the crime of inciting subversion of the government. The severity of the sentence is second only to Ilham&#8217;s. Both are in prison for expressing views unpopular with Beijing.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><a href=\"http:\/\/en.boxun.com\/2014\/11\/13\/ilham-tohtis-second-trial-to-be-carried-out-in-secret\/\">Continue reading the original article<\/a>.<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;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&amp;#8217;s Uighurs. They are a Turkish-speaking, Muslim minority who have been protesting oppression and discrimination by the province&amp;#8217;s Chinese Han population, which has greatly increased.&lt;\/div&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}