Uighur academic to appear in Chinese court next week

A prominent Uighur academic, charged with separatism by Chinese prosecutors, will appear in court on Wednesday, his lawyer said.
Ilham Tohti, who taught at a university in Beijing, has been a vocal critic of the government's policies toward his mostly Muslim Uighur minority, who are concentrated in the restive western Xinjiang region.
Tohti will be tried by a court in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi, said Liu Xiaoyuan, his lawyer and a Chinese human rights specialist.
Prosecutors in the Xinjiang region last month announced they were charging Tohti with separatism following his detention earlier this year, sparking renewed international calls for his release.

Maya Wang, China researcher for Human Rights Watch, wrote on Twitter today that Tohti faces between 15 years and life in prison if convicted.
China's courts have a near-100 percent conviction rate.

The charges come as China is cracking down over a series of violent attacks that it blames on religious extremists and "terrorists" seeking independence for the region.
Such violence has grown more frequent over the last year and has occurred in areas far beyond Xinjiang.
China blames militants from Xinjiang for an attack in Urumqi that killed 31 people in May, and for a March stabbing spree at a train station in the southwestern city of Kunming in which 29 people died.

Rights groups and many analysts and academics counter that the cause of the unrest can be found in state cultural and religious repression of Uighurs.