China onsentenced the son of exiled Uygur rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Rebiya Kadeer to nine years in prison for "secessionist activities".
BEIJING: China on Tuesday sentenced the son of exiled Uygur rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Rebiya Kadeer to nine years in prison for "secessionist activities".
A court in Urumqi, the capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, sentenced Ablikim Abdiriyim to nine years in prison on charges of instigating and engaging in secessionist activities. He was also deprived of political rights for three years, the Intermediate People's Court of Urumqi announced after the first trial.
Abdiriyim was reportedly found having spread secessionist articles over the Internet, instigated public against government, and written articles distorting China's human rights and ethnic policies.
Rebiya Kadeer, a millionaire businesswoman before her arrest, is an Uygur, the largest Muslim ethnic group in the Xinjiang region. She was imprisoned for six years after being accused by Beijing of leaking "state secrets" to a US congressional delegation visiting the region in the 1990s.
She was released in March 2005 and allowed to go into exile in the United States on "medical parole".
Kadeer was among nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Two other sons of Kadeer were fined or jailed for alleged tax evasion in October last year.
Uygur militants, whom Beijing calls terrorists or separatists, have been struggling for decades to make oil-rich Xinjiang an independent state called East Turkistan.
Since the 9/11 terrorist strike against the United States, China has conducted counter-terrorism campaign in Xinjiang, arresting top separatists of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), the main separatist group.
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