China sentences prominent Uyghur scholar to life in prison for 'separatism'

Beijing (CNN) -- Less than a week after a tightly controlled trial, a Chinese court Tuesday found a prominent Uyghur scholar guilty of "separatism" and sentenced him to life in prison, his lawyer said.

Ilham Tohti, an economics professor at Beijing's Minzu University, was tried for two days last week at the Intermediate People's Court in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang.

The trial took place in China's restive western region where a spate of recent violent incidents have been blamed by the government on Muslim Uyghur separatists seeking to establish an independent state.

The court also ordered the confiscation of all of Tohti's assets, said Liu Xiaoyuan, one of Tohti's lawyers,

Police detained the 44-year-old academic -- along with several of his students -- in Beijing in January and took him to his native Xinjiang. Tohti spent months in jail before state prosecutors charged him with the serious crime of "splitting the country."

 

Uyghur scholar on trial for 'separatism' 

 

Liu told CNN before the court announcement that he and his client were prepared for a guilty verdict and would appeal.

The ruling Communist Party controls all aspects of China's judicial process and, according to the country's supreme court, the conviction rate for criminal trials stood at 99.9% at the last count.

"Whatever the result, he said he would face up to it," Liu said, while anticipating a heavy sentence for Tohti. "But he emphasized he's not a separatist, just someone who offered constructive criticism on the government's ethnic policies."

"He maintained that he'd always been trying to preserve ethnic unity, not to destroy it," the lawyer added. "What he wanted was the implementation of human rights, rule of law and genuine autonomy in Xinjiang."

'Respected professor'

In a statement, The White House called on Chinese authorities to release Tohti, describing him as a "respected professor who has long championed efforts to bridge differences between Uyghurs and Han Chinese."

Although Tohti was indicted only in late July, Xinjiang police said in a statement in January that they had gathered firm evidence of him colluding with overseas forces to "spread separatist ideas, incite ethnic hatred and advocate Xinjiang independence."

The police statement also accused Tohti of teaching students about "violent Uyghur resistance" in his class and encouraging them to overthrow the Chinese government.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the harsh sentence appeared to be "retribution for Professor Tohti's efforts to promote human rights for China's ethnic Uyhgur citizens."

He added that Tohti and those like him were "indispensible in helping to resolve the underlying causes of unrest and violence" and "silencing them can only make tensions worse." 

Tohti's defense team has challenged the Urumqi court's jurisdiction over the case and complained about the poor treatment of their client in jail, which at one point caused him to stage a ten-day hunger strike in protest. The lawyers recently said that Tohti was put in shackles and denied warm clothes in a cold cell.

READ: Uyghur scholar goes on trial

The Xinjiang government did not immediately respond to CNN's call for comment Tuesday.

Lawyer Liu said Tohti was mostly calm and relaxed during the trial but launched an eloquent and passionate hour-long self-defense toward the end of the hearing, prompting the judge to warn him "this is not your lecture hall."

Human rights campaign group Amnesty International said the verdict and heavy sentence was an affront to justice.

"Ilham Tohti worked to peacefully build bridges between ethnic communities and for that he has been punished through politically motivated charges," said William Nee, China researcher at Amnesty International.

"Tohti is a prisoner of conscience and the Chinese authorities must immediately and unconditionally release him."

International attention

Tohti's fate has attracted great international attention.

Western diplomats -- including representatives from the U.S. embassy in China -- and journalists trying to attend the "open trial" last week were kept at bay, as uniformed and plainclothes police flooded the area around the court.

The authorities allowed in four Tohti family members -- his wife and three brothers -- who had not seen him for nine months.

The U.S. government has expressed deep concern over the scholar's case and called for his release on several occasions.

"His arrest silenced an important voice that peacefully promoted harmony and understanding among China's ethnic groups, particularly the Uyghurs," a spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Beijing told CNN after the trial. "We stress the importance of Chinese authorities differentiating between peaceful dissent and violent extremism."

Tohti is known for his research on Uyghur-Han relations and has been a vocal critic of the government's ethnic policies in Xinjiang, a resource-rich region long inhabited by the Turkic-speaking Uyghurs.

The arrival of waves of Han, China's predominant ethnic group, over the past decades has fueled ethnic tensions.

Some Uyghurs have expressed resentment toward the Han majority in recent years over what they describe as harsh treatment from Chinese security forces and loss of economic opportunities to Han people in Xinjiang.

Amnesty International has said Uyghurs face widespread discrimination in employment, housing and education, as well as curtailed religious freedom. Other critics, including exiled Uyghur activists, have attributed the rise of violence in Xinjiang to Beijing's increasingly repressive rule there -- a claim the government vehemently denies.

India's spacecraft reaches Mars orbit ... and history

(CNN) -- India's Mars Orbiter Mission successfully entered Mars' orbit Wednesday morning, becoming the first nation to arrive on its first attempt and the first Asian country to reach the Red Planet.

"We have gone beyond the boundaries of human enterprise and human imagination," declared India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who watched from the space agency's nerve center in Bangalore. "We have accurately navigated our spacecraft through a route known to a very few."

The staff at the Indian Space Research Organization erupted into applause and cheers after learning that the Mars Orbiter Mission, also known as Mangalyaan, reached the planet's orbit and made history.

Before Wednesday, only the United States, Europe and the Soviets have successfully sent spacecraft to Mars.

India's space agency and Prime Minister Narendra Modi cheer the Mars mission. 

 

"The odds were stacked against us," Modi said. "Of the 51 missions attempted so far, a mere 21 had succeeded. But we have prevailed."

And India reached Mars with significantly less money.

With a price tag of $74 million, the Mars Orbiter Mission cost a mere fraction of the $671 million NASA spent on its MAVEN spacecraft, which arrived to Mars earlier this week. Some space observers noted that India's Mars orbiter cost less than the $100 million budget for the space thriller film "Gravity."

Interactive: Exploring Mars from Viking to MAVEN

"It shows how optimal is the design, that way we're able to cut cost and we're not compromising quality," said S. Satish, a space expert based in Bangalore.

The groundbreaking Mars mission wasn't without controversy -- with some critics who said India should spend the money on other issues.

The spacecraft launched on November 5, and has traveled over 650 million kilometers to enter Mars orbit. Its mission is to orbit the Red Planet, mapping its surface and studying the atmosphere. The Mars Orbiter kicked off its interplanetary debut with its own Twitter account.

The mission has been freighted with patriotic significance for India since its inception and is seen as a symbolic coup over its rival, China, which is also ramping up its space ambitions.

 

India launches mission to Mars

 

Open Mic: India's Mars mission

China's joint mission with Russia in 2011, which contained the Chinese Mars satellite Yinhuo-1, stalled and eventually fell back to Earth. Japan's 1998 attempt with the spacecraft Nozomi was also unsuccessful due to fuel problems.

READ: Is India's Mars mission the latest escalation in Asia's space race?

Once nears Mars' orbit, India's spacecraft had to execute a series of complicated and critical maneuvers. About half of all spacecraft sent on missions to the planet have veered off course, malfunctioned or crashed.

India's Mars Orbiter Mission is in the company of NASA's two Mars rovers on the ground, a European orbiter and NASA orbiters including the MAVEN, which has been there since Sunday.

The United States has expressed interest in cooperating with India as their spacecraft gather data about the planet.

Loo taboo: The past, present and future of toilet architecture

London (CNN) -- In an era of porn star politicians, legalized marijuana trade and same-sex marriage, it might seem that our liberalism knows no bounds. But this idea runs aground at the door of the bathroom, a subject still abjured in polite society.

"Nobody knows better than me," laughs Professor Barbara Penner, Senior Lecturer at The Bartlett School of Architecture and a leading toilet specialist.

 "Everybody asks why I don't talk about Shakespeare or something nice. It's hard to talk about toilets in a serious or critical way."

But the author of Bathroom 2014 wants us to try, because she believes there is something deeply unhealthy about the way we perceive and relate to our most intimate facilities. In a new exhibition Toilets: Evolution or Revolution, hosted by Japanese manufacturer TOTO as part of the London Design Festival, Penner critiques the designs that have dominated the era, as well as exploring the possibilities of more progressive ideas.

"We tend to think of our model as normal and natural," says Penner. "An underlying aim of the exhibition is to make people think why a toilet looks the way it does, and how else it could look."

The collection of classic images shows the dominance of the modernist aesthetic over the 20th Century in the West, which the professor defines as: "white, functional and utilitarian...the toilet was a symbol of modernist values of hygiene and cleanliness, supposed to represent progressive civilization."

Penner contrasts this with ancient civilizations such as Rome, with its culture of communal bathing, and contemporary mores abroad, such as the Indian disregard for privacy. She highlights the futuristic designs of Buckminster Fuller, who envisioned a portable bathroom with inbuilt recycling features in his Dymaxion house.

The exhibition also charts the emergence of alternatives to the "hard, unyielding, standardized space" of modernists, which placed greater emphasis on pleasure and style, placing bathrooms on a par with other rooms of the house. From the soft shapes and warm colors that accompanied the 1960's sexual revolution, to the incorporation of technology in Sanyo's self-cleaning bath of the 1970's - subsequently adapted for nursing homes - innovation thrived in the post-war period.

Today, the modernist style has endured, but is being updated with technology advances that also change and personalize the experience, shown in Toto's display models of self-cleaning, germ-killing, temperature-controlled, resource-efficient "Cadillac" models. But to popularize a new concept requires cultural change that allows openness about the subject.

"It happened with sex and now I believe toilets are the final frontier of taboo", says Penner, who believes we have something approach a psychological disorder. "I would characterize it as schizophrenia. We lavish money on bathrooms, it's common for people to spend $25,000 on them...but in public they are supposed to be invisible."

An imperative to increase our engagement with our bathrooms comes from resource scarcity, which makes the 50 liters of potable water lost with every flush ever less affordable. Penner highlights California's drought, which has driven a movement to recycle toilet water for drinking, as an example of the need to move beyond "flush and forget".

Whether it is through low-tech, off-grid systems, closed-loop recycling, or luxurious experiences for the indulgent, new concepts for bathrooms are finally arriving to meet modern challenges. If only we could face them.

Jordan court clears Abu Qatada of bomb plot charges, orders his release

(CNN) -- A court in Jordan acquitted radical preacher Abu Qatada of charges of plotting to bomb millennium celebrations in Jordan in 2000, semi-state owned newspaper Addustour reported Wednesday.

The court ordered his immediate release if no other cases are raised against him.

Qatada, whose real name is Omar Othman, was cleared in July of charges of conspiracy to bomb a US school in Jordan in the late 1990s, state media reported.

The cleric was deported from the United Kingdom last year, ending a years-long legal battle to force him to leave the country.

A Jordanian national, he was wanted in his home country, where he had been convicted in absentia on two charges of conspiracy to cause explosions.

Britain had been trying to deport him since 2001, but his legal appeals kept him there until last year.

'The Maze Runner' opens at No. 1, lands a sequel

(CNN) -- "The Maze Runner" ran away with the weekend box office, ringing up the best debut since early August.

The post-apocalyptic action flick, based on James Dashner's novel of the same name, cruised to victory with an estimated $32.5 million debut. In the world of young adult fiction turned Hollywood fodder, that's closer to a mega-hit like "The Hunger Games" than a flameout like "The Mortal Instruments."

In "The Maze Runner," Dylan O'Brien stars as the newcomer among a group of teens trapped in a mysterious glade, unsure why they're there or how to navigate the massive, menacing maze that appears to be their only way out. The film's strong opening should help restore some of the faith in YA novel adaptations after the recent weak performance of "The Giver."

In fact, since the "Maze" novel is part of a trilogy -- and since the movie nearly made back its $34 million production budget in just three days -- it was no surprise when Fox announced plans for a sequel before the weekend even ended. "The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials" is scheduled to hit theaters September 18, 2015.

Opening in a sluggish second this weekend was R-rated thriller "A Walk Among the Tombstones," starring AARP action hero Liam Neeson as an alcoholic former detective turned unlicensed private investigator. Its lukewarm total of $13.1 million was still enough to hold off the weekend's other new wide release, "This Is Where I Leave You," which stars Jason Bateman, Tina Fey and Jane Fonda as a dysfunctional family reunited by a funeral.

After a month and a half, "Guardians of the Galaxy" finally fell out of the box office top five, but it didn't go far: It landed in sixth place, with total domestic ticket sales now at $313 million, and $632 million in worldwide grosses. Look for the "Guardians" sequel in 2017.

On a less successful note, writer/director Kevin Smith's comic horror tale "Tusk" managed to pull in just $886,000 after opening in 600 theaters. Justin Long stars as a smarmy podcaster who, while searching for stories, heads to Canada, where a man takes him prisoner and begins turning him into a walrus. Yes, you read that correctly.

Domestic weekend box office estimates are from Exhibitor Relations Co. (final numbers arrive Monday afternoon):

1. "The Maze Runner" -- $32.5 million

2. "A Walk Among the Tombstones" -- $13.1 million

3. "This Is Where I Leave You" -- $11.9 million

4. "No Good Deed" -- $10.2 million ($40.1 million in 10 days)

5. "Dolphin Tale 2" -- $9 million ($27 million in 10 days)

Ebola lockdown workers find dozens of cases

(CNN) -- One hundred thirty new cases of Ebola were identified during a three-day lockdown in Sierra Leone, Stephen Gaojia, the country's head of emergency operations, said Monday.

Officials are awaiting tests on another 39 potential cases, he said. During the lockdown from Friday through Sunday, no one was allowed to leave home.

More than 75% of the targeted 1.5 million households were contacted, according to the Health Ministry.

The deadliest Ebola outbreak in history has killed at least 2,600 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone -- the countries most affected by the virus -- since the first case was documented in December.

The virus is spread through contact with bodily fluids, and early symptoms include sudden onset of fever, weakness, muscle pain, headaches and a sore throat.

The virus is named after the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), where one of the first outbreaks occurred in 1976.

Ebola: Cuba deploys world’s finest medics in Sierra Leone

Cuba is joining the fight against Ebola by sending a 165-strong army of doctors and specialists to West Africa. Despite decades of financial hardship, the communist country remains at the forefront of the world’s medical expertise and know-how.

The team, which includes doctors, nurses, epidemiologists and intensive care specialists, is due to touch down in Sierra Leone in the beginning of October.

Margaret Chan, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO), has hailed it as the “largest offer of a foreign medical team from a single country” since the start of the outbreak. So far, the deadly Ebolavirus has claimed more than 2,600 lives in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Although Cuba has suffered from a full economic embargo imposed by the United States since the early 1960’s, the island remains one of the best training grounds for health care professionals.

“Cuba is known the world over for its ability to train excellent doctors and nurses,” WHO said, which has previously described the island nation as “a role-model” when it comes to its proactive medical approach and research.

Cuba’s demographic statistics confirm that opinion: the country enjoys the highest average life expectancy in the Americas, at 78 years old. It also has the lowest infant mortality rate, at just 4.2 per one thousand babies born.

‘Health a top priority’
“Health has always been the Cuban government’s top priority,” Latin American expert Jean Ortiz said. According to Cuba’s National Statistics Office, the country has the highest share of doctors per capita – one per 137 inhabitants.

According to Stéphane Witkowski, the head of the Institute of Latin American Studies in Paris (IHEAL), Cuba is also “among the world leaders within the pharmaceutical sector”, adding that it “houses the largest biotechnology centre in the world, with 20,000 staff”.

Cuba’s other strong point is the quality of its medical training. United Nations chief Ban Ki Moon recently described Havana’s Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) as the “world’s most advanced” school for medicine studies. The school has 11,000 students from more than 120 countries.

‘Medical diplomacy’
Ever since the Cuban revolution in 1959, the country has a tradition of applying “medical diplomacy” to foster positive relationships with its neighbours and other countries. In all, the communist regime – led by Fidel Castro and his brother Raoul – has deployed more than 135,000 health care specialists to country’s struck by natural disasters and other humanitarian crises.

According to the Cuban health ministry, there are currently 50,000 Cuban doctors and health care specialists in 66 countries around the world.

One of Cuba’s most celebrated medical contributions include “Operation Miracle”, an eye surgery program launched in Venezuela in 2004 to offer Latin American low-income earners free eye surgery and optical care. In exchange for the Cuban contribution, Venezuela provides Cuba with oil.

Since the launch of the program, more than 2.8 million people have received free glasses and contact lenses. The program has since been extended to cover 14 Latin American countries.

Not free
Even though Cuba’s medical sector has been hit hard by the country’s strained economy, Witkowski said “the quality of the country’s doctors, and in particular its psychiatrists and GPs, remains indisputable”.

In Brazil, more than 10,000 Cuban doctors have been deployed to poverty-struck areas abandoned by their local colleagues. Earlier this year, Cuba also launched a malaria vaccination campaign in some 15 countries in West Africa.

But the expertise doesn’t come for free. Cuba’s massive expertise export – including also sport and education specialists – account for the largest source of revenue for the island, bringing in an estimated $10 billion a year.

The Cuban medical mission in Sierra Leone is expected to last for about six months. WHO has said it hopes the move will “send a strong message of solidarity for Africa to the rest of the world and will catalyse additional offers of support from other countries”.

Culled from Punch