With The Harsh Sentence of Ilham Tohti, China's Moderate Uighurs No Longer Safe

When a court in Urumqi, capital of China's far-western Xinjiang region, sentenced Ilham Tohti to life in prison on charges of advocating Xinjiang's independence from China Tuesday, the result of the trial surprised no one: Tohti, a former economics professor detained in January, is simply the latest outspoken critic of Beijing's ethnic policies to be punished.