BEIJING: Seven students of a prominent scholar from China’s Uighur minority have been convicted of separatism in a secret trial and given prison sentences of three to eight years, a lawyer said yesterday.
They were students of Beijing economics professor Ilham Tohti, who was convicted of separatism in September and sentenced to life in prison. The move was seen as part of Beijing’s efforts to silence criticism of government policies in the violence-wracked far-western region of Xinjiang, home to the mostly-Muslim Uighur group.
A court in the regional capital Urumqi on Monday found the seven guilty of actively aiding in Tohti’s “separatist activities”, his lawyer Li Fangping said. “The sentences were not as severe as I had expected,” he said. One student was given eight years behind bars, with the shortest sentence being three years, said Li.
China blames attacks and clashes in Xinjiang, which have claimed several hundred lives in the past year, on terrorists seeking independence for the region, while rights groups say official repression of Uighur religion and culture has stoked violence.
Six of the students are Uighurs while one is a member of China’s Yi minority, the state-run Global Times newspaper reported. The paper added they were alleged to have helped maintain Uighur Online, a bilingual website launched by Tohti.
Authorities have previously described Uighur Online as “a platform... to create conflicts, spread separatist thinking, incite ethnic hatred and advocate ‘Xinjiang independence’”, the Global Times reported. AFP
