Comment on Minority scholar denies separatism at China trial

Minority scholar denies separatism at China trial

URUMQI, China (AP) — A Muslim Uighur scholar accused of separatism sought to show Thursday that his writings and classroom lectures, including rhetoric saying Chinese are dragons and Uighurs are wolves, were not a campaign to split his native Xinjiang region from China. Frequent government critic and former Beijing economics professor Ilham Tohti is accused of fomenting ethnic hatred and unrest to overthrow Chinese rule in Xinjiang, which has seen an uptick of violent over the past 18 months that authorities blame on terrorist cells seeking a separate state. Police formed a several-block perimeter around the venue with tape, keeping away journalists, bystanders and Western diplomats from eight nations and the European Union who traveled to Urumqi in an attempt to witness the trial. [...] he was also known as a more mainstream Uighur voice, a Communist Party member and teacher at a top Chinese university who used his website, Uighur Online, as a forum for issues affecting his ethnic group. The Uighurs said many people were being detained in the city after recent ethnic violence, including an attack in May attributed to Uighur separatists who drove two large sport utility vehicles and hurled explosives through an Urumqi market street, killing 43. More than 300 people have been killed over the past year and a half, nearly half of them shot by police in a strike-hard campaign launched by the government to fight what it calls terrorist cells.

 

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