An Internet Where Nobody Says Anything

• BY DAVID WERTIME-SEPTEMBER 25, 2014

Ilham Tohti's unjust fate says much about the Chinese Communist Party's dark vision for the web's future.

Here is what a court in Urumqi, the capital of China's western Xinjiang region, concludes Ilham Tohti, a balding, thick-set, 44-year-old professor, did: "Using 'Uighur Online' as a platform, and taking advantage of his role as a university professor," Tohti "spread separatist notions" and "bewitched and coerced" seven of his students to join into an eight-person, web-powered splittist clique with international reach. Here is what Tohti, by all appearances, actually did: 

An Internet Where Nobody Says Anything by Thavam