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Rebiya Kadeer

STATE ENEMY: A July 5 report by the state-owned CCTV channel accuses Rebiya Kadeer of instigating the Urumqi violence. Kadeer has denied the charge.

Mother Courage and the Dragon ‘If the international community had threatened to boycott the Beijing Olympics, then the government would have allowed the human rights situation to improve.’

The story of this mother of 11 is as eventful as that of the Dalai Lama, maybe even more volatile. Kadeer, who is now fighting from Washington DC against Chinese oppression of her people, is often compared to the Tibetan Buddhist leader.But if you listen to her, this fragile-looking woman with the gentle smile can appear more like a tempest, even through a telephone line. Her sentences come sweeping like a tsunami, the staccato of her words reveals strong passion, but her vocabulary is controlled and precise. These days, Kadeer may be even more emotional. Five of her 11 children are still in Xinjiang, held as “human collateral” against even minor political activities. And two of her sons, Ablikim and Alim, both in their early 30s, are in jail. Ablikim, who in April 2007 was sentenced to nine years in jail for “instigating and engaging in secessionist activities”, has fallen seriously ill, according to Kadeer. “Ablikim’s situation is really terrible,” his mother says. “During a visit in December [2007], which lasted only 10 minutes, Ablikim was not able to recognize his own father and his own nephew. When he was talking about his situation in prison, he fainted twice. I believe that my son was tortured in the prison.” But the terrible fate of her children in Xinjiang doesn’t stop her from campaigning. “I will never give up,” she says. “The suffering of my children is not their own – it is symbolic of the suffering of all my people.” Kadeer, whose business in Urumqi was shut down after she left and whose employees were put under surveillance, feels that the conditions of her fellow Uyghurs are worse than in years. “Starting from May 1 in 2007, the Chinese government confiscated the passports of all Uyghurs so that they cannot travel overseas,” she says. There is no official explanation for this campaign, but at the Uyghur Human Rights Project in Washington DC, manager Amy Reger believes “it is intended to prevent them from making the pilgrimage to Mecca.” According to Kadeer, China’s authorities had also been dispersing young Uyghur men into rural areas of China. The country officially recorded 240,000 “instances” of such transfers. “We are in the process of issuing a report on this development, it’s a huge number,” Kadeer says, as she tries to illustrate the extent to which the campaign is destroying her people: “When Uyghur parents meet other parents, they don’t ask for the well-being of the other family any more, because they are so concerned about the children, whether they were taken into prison or have been forcefully transferred.”

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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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