The prisoner smiled at his 13-year-old son through a window in the hot meeting room of the No. 3 prison in Urumqi, the provincial capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, one day in August.
"You've grown up a lot!" 42-year-old historian Tohti Tunyaz said to his son, who had traveled to northwest China from Japan after being separated from his father for more than four years. The inmate, an ethnic Uighur, was moved to tears seeing that his son had grown taller than himself.
Tohti, a University of Tokyo graduate student who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for inciting separatism, has received support from international human rights groups, including Amnesty International. Those calling for his release have criticized the Japanese government for ignoring his case.