Scholar with IU ties sentenced to life in Chinese prison
Editor's note: This story from The Bloomington Herald-Times is being published here as a courtesy for readers of IU in the News.
By MJ Slaby
At 10 p.m. Monday night, Elliot Sperling sat down to follow the trial of his friend Ilham Tohti in China.
A trial with international attention -- especially from human rights activism organizations -- Sperling, an Indiana University associate professor of Tibetan studies in the department of Central Eurasian studies and a friend of Tohti, read blogs, tweets and text messages to keep up.
Nearly three hours later, followers started to worry that there was no verdict. But then it arrived: life in prison.
It is the most severe penalty in a decade for a person convicted of illegal political speech in China.
Despite the signs the trial would be unfair and a “show trial,” Sperling knew based on the charges, Tohti -- an ethnic Uighur economics professor who is outspoken about Uighur issues in China -- would be sentenced to at least 10 years in prison, and at worst, the death penalty.
But the life sentence was absolutely shocking, Sperling said. “He’s a scapegoat.”
Tohti, who has been detained since January, received a life sentence Tuesday from the Urumqi People’s Intermediate Court, which convicted him of separatism in a two-day trial. The court also ordered that all of Tohti’s possessions be confiscated, leaving his wife with no way to care for their two young children.
Tohti had once planned to be a visiting scholar at IU, but was detained by the Chinese government when he tried to fly to the U.S. in February 2013. His daughter, Jewher Ilham, still boarded the flight and has since been studying at IU and advocating for her father.
“He wanted me to stay in a land that has freedom,” she told the Associated Press. “I’m speaking out for him. I won’t stop.”
In July, Sperling was denied entry into China, and he believes it was because he also had advocated on Tohti’s behalf.
Tohti is known as a moderate voice for the Uighur ethnic group — Turkic Muslims who traditionally live in what is now the Xinjiang region in northwestern China. He created a website that raised issues no one else talked about and asked questions about people who were arrested and disappeared.
The region has had several recent outbreaks of violence, including one on Sunday in which explosions killed two people.
The court ruling said Tohti “bewitched and coerced” students, seven of whom were also detained in January, to work for his website.
“Tohti organized this group to write, edit, translate and reprint articles seeking Xinjiang’s separation from China,” said the Chinese government’s Xinhua News Agency. “Through online instigation, Tohti encouraged his fellow Uighurs to use violence.”
Tohti was a professor at an elite institution -- Minzu University in Beijing -- and never advocated separatism, said Gardner Bovingdon, associate professor in Central Eurasian studies and international studies at IU who studies the Xinjiang region.
“He was under suspicion from the government for years,” Bovingdon said.
He said the Xinjiang region is especially oppressed by the Chinese government, but the government says it is concerned about violence, Muslim extremists and terrorists in the region and says that most people in that region are otherwise happy with the Chinese government.
“That’s not true,” Bovingdon said.
He said the people there are not able to express their dissatisfaction, and although the majority are Muslim, there are very few -- if any -- extremists.
Sperling said the Chinese government is unable to ask itself what it is doing wrong, so it asks “who is doing this to us?” and finds scapegoats such as Tohti.
That’s why, even though Tohti was arrested in Beijing, which is common, he was then transferred to a different prison, which is less common, and requests from various international officials to attend the trial were denied by the Chinese government, Bovingdon said.
This trial was unusually closed, even for what’s expected in China, Bovingdon said. He said he was “astonished and appalled” by the sentence, and Tohti’s lawyers have indicated they will appeal.
“Of course, this life sentence is too much,” said Tohti’s lawyer, Li Fangping. “But he has said that no matter what the result, this should not lead to hatred. He has always said he wants to create a dialogue with the Han Chinese.”
The Han are the dominant ethnic group in mainland China.
Bovingdon said the appeal will likely do no good, and his hope is that foreign governments who were watching the trial will pressure the Chinese government to appeal the sentence or release Tohti.
The European Union condemned the “completely unjustified” sentence and urged that Tohti be released. And Sperling said many activists are working to see what they can do for Tohti as well.
“The most important thing is he is not being forgotten,” Sperling said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.