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Protesters in Hong Kong protest Uighur oppression of Beijing in Xinjiang, China, December 22, 2019 REUTERS / Lucy Nicholson

The Chinese government denied on Friday December 27 that the Uighur academic arrested in 2017, Tashpolat Tiyip, was sentenced to death.

UN experts want to know where Tashpolat Tiyip, an internationally renowned professor who received an honorary doctorate at the Sorbonne for his work on the environment, was held in 2008. Is he held incommunicado in one of the re-education camps in which more than a million Uyghurs are interned? Is it at risk of execution ? Many questions remain unanswered.

Denial of Beijing

For its part, Beijing denies. The Chinese government says that the trial of the ex-rector of Xinjiang University is underway and that he is being prosecuted for corruption. As usual, the foreign ministry calls on the UN to " refrain from any interference " in the internal affairs of China.

In a statement, UN special rapporteurs had expressed the previous day their " concern " over the fate of Tashpolat Tiyip, the former president of Xinjiang University, a Muslim-majority region in northwest China. . Still according to UN experts, " information has reported his death sentence with a two-year suspended sentence after being found guilty, in a closed trial, of separatism ".

Arrested in May 2017

Tashpolat Tiyip was arrested in May 2017 at Beijing Airport while on his way to a conference in Germany. A video shows the researcher alongside five other Uighur personalities. All accused of having played a " double game ", that is to say of having been loyal to the Communist party but also faithful to their Uighur origins.