Xinjiang official Nur Bekri says evidence against Uygur academic Ilham Tohti ‘irrefutable’

A top official from China’s restive Xinjiang region said on Thursday the evidence against a prominent Uygur academic whose detention has been condemned by Washington was “irrefutable”.

Ilham Tohti, an economist who teaches at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing, has been a vocal critic of Beijing’s policies toward his mostly Muslim Uygur minority, who are concentrated in Xinjiang.

He has been charged with separatism, which can carry the death penalty.

“The facts are clear and the evidence is irrefutable,” Xinjiang regional government chairman Nur Bekri said, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Bekri was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the rubber-stamp National People’s Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People, five days after a group of machete-wielding assailants killed 29 people and wounded 143 at Kunming railway station.

The attack has been dubbed “China’s 9/11” by state media and officials have blamed separatists from Xinjiang.

Chinese authorities detained Tohti at his Beijing home in January, charging that he had “organised a group with the disguise of his identity, colluded with leaders of overseas East Turkestan separatist forces, and sent followers overseas to engage in separatist activities”.