{"id":44058,"date":"2014-12-09T16:17:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-09T16:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=44058 "},"modified":"2014-12-09T16:17:00","modified_gmt":"2014-12-09T16:17:00","slug":"44058-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=44058","title":{"rendered":"China Sentences Uighur Scholar\u2019s Tohti Students to Up to 8 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Dec 8, 2014 3:12 PM ET<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>China sentenced seven students of incarcerated scholar Ilham Tohti, a member of the country&#8217;s Uighur minority, to three to eight years in prison for separatism, Hong Kong government broadcaster RTHK said.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>The verdicts followed a trial held last month, RTHK said on its website, citing Tohti&#8217;s lawyer, Li Fanging. The government had accused Tohti and his students of forming a criminal gang that sought to split northwestern China&#8217;s Xinjiang region from the rest of the country. The students had helped Tohti run a website on Uighur issues.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Tohti, an economics professor, was sentenced to life in prison in September after he was convicted of promoting separatism in Xinjiang in a verdict that underlines China&#8217;s intolerance toward criticism of its ethnic policies. The court also ordered the seizure of all of Tohti&#8217;s assets. The sentence was upheld on appeal last month.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>President Xi Jinping is overseeing a nationwide crackdown against alleged Uighur terrorists, which has included several shootouts, mass arrests and a stadium trial at which people were sentenced to death. Human rights activists charge that Tohti&#8217;s trial was rife with abuses and violated Chinese and international standards.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>A court in Xinjiang sentenced eight people to death yesterday for alleged involvement in two terrorist attacks in April and May in Urumqi, the regional capital, China&#8217;s official Xinhua News Agency reported.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Tohti, who taught at Minzu University in Beijing, China&#8217;s main university for ethnic minorities, ran a website called Uighur Online which carried discussions of China&#8217;s policies in Xinjiang, where Muslim Uighurs face restrictions on their personal and religious freedoms. He was taken into custody in January and was charged in July with &#8220;splitting the country.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2014-12-08\/china-sentences-uighur-scholar-s-tohti-students-to-up-to-8-years.html?hootPostID=6443893a4b2413a974358a72867a2a40\">Continue reading the original article<\/a>.<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;The verdicts followed a trial held last month, RTHK said on its website, citing Tohti&amp;#8217;s lawyer, Li Fanging. The government had accused Tohti and his students of forming a criminal gang that sought to split northwestern China&amp;#8217;s Xinjiang region from the rest of the country. The students had helped Tohti run a website on Uighur issues.&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&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-44058","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\/44058","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=44058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}