BEIJING - China allegedly denied entry to a prominent U.S. professor who championed Tibetan issues after supporting his colleague who is a Chinese minority academic.

After a 12-hour flight from New York, Elliot Sperling, a professor at the University of Indiana, was immediately ordered by authorities to go home upon arriving at Beijing's international airport.  

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This scenario has been an all too common one when several US-based scholars who are doing research about Chinese politics and policies about ethnic minorities were also denied entry in the recent years. Although Sperling had a valid visa, these scholars were denied visas altogether.

Sperling believes he was turned away by the Chinese authorities for advocating and supporting a fellow colleague, Ilham Tohti, who is an ethnic Uighur economic professor at the Minzu University in Beijing. 

Through his website and and lectures and interviews online, Tohti argued that the government's cultural restrictions has alienated the Uighur minority. After criticizing repeatedly the policies in his ethnically divided homeland, XInjiang, Tohti was arreasted earlier in February and was charged by the Chinese authorities with separatism. 

This arrest sparked some interest and concern from the US and EU but more so from the international rights group, Amnesty International. Tohti's arrest was also denounced by the United States State Department and a myriad of human rights groups across the globe.

The tension between the mostly-Muslim Uighurs and the ruling Han ethnic groups has been sharply growing over the recent years. Apart from that, violent uprisings have been reported in the western frontier region of Xinjiang where the Uighurs reside.

According to Sperling,Tohti was earnest in promoting meaningful dialogue between the Uighurs and Han but never took sides as he clearly did not advocate Uighur independence.  

Even though Sperling received a one-year tourist visa from the Chinese Consulate in Chicago, border officers at the airport blocked his entry.

The officers allegedly cancelled his visa, removed him from the entry line and questioned him for an hour where these officers took photos of him as if posing for a mugshot. Chinese authorites could not be reached for comment and the United States Embassy in Beijing declined to give one.

Sperling and Tohti were not the first scholars to get arrested and blacklisted by the authorities, some 13 scholars who contributed to the 2004 anthology on Xinjiang were also included in China's visa blacklist among many others.

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