Tashpolat Tiyip

Tashpolat Tiyip (; ; born December 1958) is a Chinese geographer of Uyghur ethnicity who was president of Xinjiang University from 2010 to 2017. He was sentenced to death in a secret trial.

Biography Tashpolat enrolled at Xinjiang University in 1978 to study geography and graduated in 1983. In 1988, he went to Japan to study for a master's degree and PhD at Tokyo University of Science, where he received a Doctorate of Engineering in Applied Geography in March 1992. In 1993, he was appointed as professor in the Department of Geography at Xinjiang University. In 1996, Tashpolat was appointed Vice President of Xinjiang University and in 2010 he was promoted to President of Xinjiang University and Vice Secretary of the Communist Party at the university.

Arrest and trial In March 2017, when Tashpolat was on the way to a conference in Germany, he was detained at Beijing airport, accused of being a "two-faced" person.