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Rebiya Kadeer

TRUTH WANTED: Rebiya Kadeer was singled out by the Chinese government for allegedly ‘masterminding’ the protest in Urumchi on July 5. Source: Nick O’Neill/Vimeo

Mother Courage and the Dragon ‘In China, many people are converting to Christianity. Many young Uyghurs are becoming Christians and Beijing is afraid they’ll have links with the West.’

Beijing would have liked Kadeer to fade into irrelevance in the US capital, but she isn’t someone who silently slips off the radar screen. In 2006, the former entrepreneur – once China’s richest and most powerful woman – was nominated by Swedish parliamentarian Annelie Enochson for the Nobel Peace Prize. That opened a lot of doors for Kadeer in Western countries to excel in her second career: Lobbying for the difficult plight of the eight million Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in the most western part of the country. Throughout the 1990s, until her arrest in 1999, Kadeer pursued her first career. She built up and ran a multimillion-dollar trading company and a department store in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. And she never forgot that she herself was born into poverty. While piling up solid profits, she turned out to be a passionate philanthropist, organizing free classes for Uyghur children from poor families. The classrooms were set up in any available space of her department store. And she started the “Thousand Mothers Movement” at the end of 1997 with the goal of empowering Uyghur women to start their own companies and liberate at least part of her people from fear and paralysis. Beijing was full of praise for the Uyghur model. She was appointed a member of the country’s National People’s Congress (NPC) and the People’s Political Consultative Conference, supposedly China’s main legislative body. For the laundress-turned-millionaire, this was a golden opportunity to improve her people’s fate from within the system. But the political mission didn’t last for long. In 1997, a massacre took place in Ghulja City, where several hundred Uyghurs were killed and thousands arrested. Kadeer went to Ghulja and investigated what had happened and, in the process, was detained several times. Then she traveled back to Beijing to report to high-level Chinese officials what had happened and how wrong the massacre was. They simply ignored her and she realized they would not change their policies. That was her breaking point. When she criticized the central government’s treatment of her people during an NPC session shortly after the disheartening experience and demanded that Beijing honor the autonomy conferred on the Uyghurs, she fell out of favor. Overnight, she was dangerous for a regime that was deeply concerned that the Muslim minority with an ethnic Turkish-Persian background might develop a secessionist momentum and call for independence. This was a nightmare for Beijing because the province was strategically important. Xinjiang is rich in resources and it is a testing ground for China’s nuclear weapons.

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Rebiya Kadeer in exile in Washington DC ribeya kadeer pic 1

The Kadeers: A broken family portrait ribeya kadeer pic 1

With former US president George W. Bush

Who’s afraid of Rebiya Kadeer?

FIGHTING FROM AFAR: Rebiya Kadeer, a 62-year-old Uyghur mother of 11 children, has been through much in her life. She was once China’s richest woman, having built up and ran a multimillion-dollar trading company and a department store in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang province. She has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and has spent five years in China’s harsh prison system. Today, she continues to lobby from the US for human rights in her homeland, as she faces arrest if she ever returns to China. Source: Courtesy of the Uyghur American Association

IN EXILE: Rebiya Kadeer poses with her daughters – from left, Reyila Abdureyim, Kekenos Rouzi and Akida Rouzi – and husband, Sidik Rouzi, in Washington DC at an event sponsored by Amnesty International after she was released from a Chinese prison. Kadeer was jailed on charges of ‘leaking state secrets’ and had spent five years in prison, where she said she witnessed constant torture of fellow Uyghur inmates. She was released on March 17, 2005 – three days before a scheduled state visit to China by then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

BACKING: In June 2007, Rebiya Kadeer met the former president of the US, George W. Bush, in Prague, where he spoke at a conference on democracy and security – and mentioned Kadeer’s name. Kadeer has received plenty of support from Western nations on the Uyghur human rights issue, but none has officially embraced her cause. Sh also believes that the international community missed an opportunity by not asking China to improve its human rights record before awarding the 2008 Olympics to Beijing.

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