UIGHUR scholar Ilham Tohti was sentenced to life imprisonment yesterday in the Urumqi People’s Intermediate Court, having been convicted of a separatism charge.

His lawyer Li Fangping said that the court had also ordered the confiscation of all his possessions. “I don’t accept this,” Mr Tohti shouted when the sentence was read. A Communist Party member and professor at Beijing’s Minzu University, he ran a website, Uighur Online, that highlighted issues affecting the ethnic group. “Of course, this life sentence is too much, but he has said that no matter what the result, this should not lead to hatred,” said Mr Li.

The court ruled that Mr Tohti had “bewitched and coerced” students into working for the website and had “built a criminal syndicate,” according to the official Xinhua News Agency.