Uygur groups condemn charge against academic Ilham Tohti

Rights groups condemned China on Wednesday for charging a prominent Uygur critic of government policy towards the mostly-Muslim minority with separatism – which can carry the death penalty.

Ilham Tohti, an economics lecturer at a university in Beijing, has been formally accused of the offence, his wife Guzaili Nu’er said.

Tohti has been one of the most prominent critics of Chinese policy in Xinjiang, the vast western region where most Uygurs live and which is periodically hit by violent clashes between locals and China’s security forces.

China maintains that unrest in the region is caused by terrorist groups seeking an independent state, an account denied by Uygur rights groups who complain of widespread religious repression and economic discrimination.

Rights group Amnesty International urged people to send letters to Chinese leaders demanding Tohti’s immediate release.

“He is a prisoner of conscience, detained and arrested solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression,” the group said on its website.

Dilshat Rexit, a spokesman for the World Uygur Congress, an exile group, said that “China’s accusations of separatism are merely an excuse for suppression of those with different political opinions”.

“We call on the international community to monitor China and free this Uighur scholar,” he added in a statement.