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 Foreign experts and reporters criticized the EU for awarding Ilham Tohti, a Uyghur sentenced to life imprisonment for splitting China, saying the move will encourage separatism and extremism in the name of democracy and freedom of speech. 

The European Parliament gave Tohti the annual Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, BBC reported Thursday.

Tohti, who used to teach at Minzu University of China, was sentenced to life imprisonment by Chinese judicial authorities for separatist crimes. He was found being involved in separatist activities and sowing discord among different ethnic groups, xinhuanet.com reported in September 2014.

At Friday's media briefing, Hua Chunying, spokesperson of China's Foreign Ministry, said it's wrong for the European Parliament to award a criminal. "We hope the EU can respect China's internal affairs and judicial sovereignty," Hua said. "Many awards in the US and Europe have already been politicized. They are not given based on universal value judgments but on the political interests of the West. These awards are not given out of concerns over freedom, peace or equality. We can list dozens of examples. The last one is Ilham Tohti," Tunç Akkoç, Chairman of Aydınlık Newspaper in Turkey, told the Global Times. 

The US and EU have lied many times about China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. They are trying to manipulate the region in line with their geopolitical goals. The award was given to Ilham Tohti in this context, he said.

Predrag Markovic, director of the Institute for Contemporary History in Serbia and vice president of the Socialist Party of Serbia, told the Global Times that the US and EU had often praised people who later became their enemies. It is enough to mention the example of Osama bin Laden, he said. 

"China is a reliable partner helping world stability and prosperity. EU fans of extremists should think carefully: Do they prefer to do business with a peaceful Chinese giant or with a Central Asian extremist movement?" he asked.

It is not surprising for the EU to award Tohti since Tohti is just an excuse for the EU to make trouble for China, just as it awarded other dissidents in other countries outside the West, Erkin Öncan, a Turkish reporter, told the Global Times. 

"Countries outside Europe's political hegemony are subjected to a form of 'democracy control,' and every step that hinders European exploitation policies is considered 'undemocratic,'" Erkin said. 

He added that in the name of democracy, all separatist and terrorist movements in China have been greeted and blessed by the West, which is the same as encouraging extremism and separatism, and awarding Tohti also reflects some European politicians' anti-China attitude. 

"Awards and prizes for human rights issues are constants in the West. Often, if not always, they are used to support geopolitical aims," Fabio Massimo Parenti, a foreign associate professor at China Foreign Affairs University and a member of Italian think tank EURISPES, told the Global Times. 

"Always, these politically motivated prizes are de-contextualized and used to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign nations. This is a blatant violation of international rights," Parenti said. 

The EU Parliament did not say anything about the legal reasons certified by China's judicial system for imprisoning criminals, separatists and terrorism-linked activists. This Western interference in China goes hand in hand with others, such as the US Congress bill "Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act", he noted. 

"They are hypocritical interferences in China's internal affairs, because they are not in favor of victims, but in favor of violent demonstrators and separatists," Parenti stressed. 

The West feels superior in its cultural values and judges the competitors hypocritically for geopolitical purposes. "We have no right to tell the Chinese what they ought to do, how they should act…. Moreover, we hide some reasons and target others out of geopolitical convenience," Parenti said.

The Mission of the People's Republic of China to the European Union released a statement on October 9 after Tohti was shortlisted for the 2019 Sakharov Prize which said "China and the EU have a shared stake in fighting extremism and terrorism. We urge the relevant European institutions and people to distinguish right from wrong, not to be deceived and misled, and not to send signs that could support crimes and separatist activities."