Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Plight of Uighurs in China

Jamal Doumani 

ARAB NEWS - Friday 26 September 2014

Like their fellow-ideologues in the former Soviet Union, communist officials in Beijing have kept their promise: They will answer dissent with repression. In China today, if you’re the member of an ethnic minority with a complaint, that you are rash enough to air in public, expect to be dragged into “court” to face a life sentence.
That’s what happened to prominent Uighur intellectual Ilham Tohti last Tuesday. Tohti is widely respected abroad as a moderate voice within China’s eight million-strong Muslim Uighur community, who inhabit Xinjiang Province in the country’s far northwestern corner. The charges were advocating separatism, criticizing the government and “voicing support for terrorists.”

READ MORE....