Originally published by AFP,24 December 2010 

  BEIJING – An overseas rights group has called on China’s judiciary to make public the trial documents of an ethnic Uighur journalist reportedly jailed for life after being convicted of inciting riots last year.

Memetjan Abdulla, 33, a journalist with the Uighur language service of China National Radio, was sentenced during a closed-door trial in April in China’s westernmost province of Xinjiang, said Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Germany-based World Uighur Congress, in statement Thursday.

There has been no official confirmation of the trial, verdict, or sentence.

Raxit said authorities had charged Abdulla with helping to instigate deadly ethnic rioting between Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese in July 2009 that left nearly 200 dead and up to 1,700 injured, according to official figures.

The riots exploded as Uighurs in Urumqi were protesting the June 2009 killing of a Uighur factory worker in an ethnically-charged brawl in south China’s Guangdong province.

Abdulla, in Beijing at the time, had translated an appeal to peacefully protest the Guangdong killing and posted it on a Uighur language website, Raxit said.

“The court trial and verdict proceeded entirely from the political needs of the authorities,” Raxit said.

“We demand that the court publicise the details of the trial.

“He (Abdulla) was only acting out of his professional morals as a journalist. He challenged the official censorship of information in order to provide information to more people.”

Neither the Urumqi intermediate court nor China National Radio would comment on Abdulla’s case when contacted by AFP.

Chinese authorities blamed the Urumqi rioting on “separatists” but have provided no conclusive evidence of any organised campaign. More than 25 people have either been executed or sentenced to death for their involvement in the violence, state media has said.

Uighurs have long seethed under Chinese rule in Xinjiang, which has experienced several violent bouts of unrest in recent years.

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