An overseas advocacy group says a Uighur journalist working for an official Chinese radio service was sentenced to life in prison for transmitting information about the 2009 ethnic riots in far western China.
Dilxat Raxit of the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress says Memetjan Abdulla, with the Uighur language service of China National Radio, was sentenced in April in Urumqui, the capital of the Xinjiang region, where the unrest took place.
Raxit told The Associated Press late Thursday that information about the sentencing has only recently emerged from local Uighurs.
Abdulla was charged with helping incite the July 2009 riots between Han Chinese and ethnic minority Uighurs that left nearly 200 dead, according to a report on Thursday by Radio Free Asia.