Once seen by the Chinese government as a role model for impoverished Muslims, the exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer is now accused of engineering separatist violence in her native Xinjiang province
THE MOST prominent face of opposition to the Chinese government right now is a small grandmother with greying black hair tied into two braids, a matriarch who speaks little English and whose career has seen her rise from humble launderer in Xinjiang province to millionaire businesswoman and communist hero to exiled activist in Washington.
In Urumqi, where tensions between ethnic Han Chinese and Muslim Uighurs erupted into violence last weekend and caused scores of deaths, Rebiya Kadeer (62), mother of 11 children, is a revered figure.
Urumqi used to be a predominantly Uighur city, but decades of migration by Chinese settlers seeking new lives in the western province have seen the balance shift in the Hans’ favour in the Xinjiang capital.
The Uighur community in Urumqi is tight-knit, and everyone seems to know each other or someone’s relative in the same way, as often happens in Ireland. Uighurs will often cautiously ask visitors from abroad if they know how Kadeer is getting on in the US. There was keen interest in 2006 when Kadeer was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Uighurs describe her as their mother, although she tends to characterise herself as a “daughter of Xinjiang”.
The Chinese government describes her as an “ironclad separatist” who is not qualified to represent the Uighur community, a woman who uses “terrorism and separatism to destroy Xinjiang’s stability and prosperity”.
Beijing accuses her of inciting last weekend’s riots, and in Chinese media she has been portrayed as a ringleader in the same way the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, was depicted as inciting the riots in Tibet in March last year.
She makes an explicit link between her role and that played by the Dalai Lama, describing it as “common practice” for Beijing to accuse both of them for any unrest in their respective regions.
Uighurs say the riots started after Chinese police attacked a peaceful protest, and Kadeer has led demonstrations outside the Chinese embassy in Washington against the police reaction to the protests. She believes that hundreds of Uighurs died in the fighting, a charge the Chinese police deny, putting the death toll at 156. Grisly footage online shows ranks of Han Chinese bodies lined up.
Chinese officials point to a transcript of a phone call with her brother in which she discussed the riots ahead of the event as evidence of her role in the violence. She says she was merely telling him to stay home that day, because she had read on the internet that something could happen, and condemns the violence.
KADEER DENIES SHE is a separatist and has strongly condemned the violence in Xinjiang, which she refers to as East Turkestan. “We absolutely oppose violence in any form. Most of all, we want to condemn China’s six-decade long state-sponsored violence against peaceful Uighurs,” she said soon after the riots took place.
In China, last weekend’s violence is seen as yet another attack on ethnic Han Chinese, similar to the riots in Tibet, and a sign of ingratitude after Beijing has done so much to improve the region’s economic wellbeing.
But like the Tibetans, the Uighurs see their culture under attack by the central government and fear being overwhelmed by Han Chinese settlers.
“The violence that has taken place in Urumchi and throughout East Turkestan reveals deep-rooted, serious problems that the Chinese government has failed to address or mitigate. The killings and beatings belie the constant proclamations of Chinese government officials that Uighurs are treated fairly and that all ethnic groups live in harmony in East Turkestan,” she said.
Kadeer’s life story has a remarkable trajectory. A former Communist Party member, her business empire of department stores and trading companies earned her the nickname “The Millionairess”, and she was appointed to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference — a leading government advisory body — in recognition of her success. She attended a UN conference on women in Beijing in 1995 as part of a government delegation.
Kadeer was held up by Beijing as a role model for the impoverished Muslim minority. She was a leading member of the Xinjiang Chamber of Commerce and set up the Thousand Mothers Movement, an organisation that helped Muslim women start their own businesses, in 1997.
However, she also used this prominence to highlight Uighur issues, and this ultimately cost Kadeer her freedom. Her role began to change after her husband, the activist and former political prisoner Sidik Rouzi, fled to the US in 1996. Kadeer organised opposition after the killing of Uighur protesters by Chinese security forces in the city of Gulja, and regularly sent Chinese newspapers to her husband.
She was arrested in August 1999 while en route to a meeting with visiting US Congress officials, carrying local newspapers and documents about human rights abuses in Xinjiang. She was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment in 2000 for “illegally providing state secrets overseas”. Her initial eight-year sentence was reduced by one year in 2004. She had 17 months left on her sentence but was freed on medical parole in March 2005 ahead of a visit by then-US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to Beijing. She subsequently flew to the US and became head of the World Uyghur Congress, which represents the two million Uighurs outside the province.
“Uighurs face arbitrary detention, torture and execution, severe discrimination in the areas of healthcare and employment, religious repression, forced abortion; the removal of Uighur as a language in schools at all levels of instruction and the forcible transfer of young Uighur women and men to eastern China, as millions of Chinese migrants are encouraged by the government to come to East Turkestan to work,” she said.
The violence of last weekend came about because there is no way for Uighurs to express their grievances, she said. Her family in Xinjiang has suffered. Two of her sons were detained in 2006 and one of her daughters was held under house arrest on tax evasion charges.
According to the Human Rights in China group, one of her sons was seriously beaten in front of his children. Another was jailed for seven years for tax evasion, while a third was given nine years in prison for “secessionist activities” in 2007.
Despite the suffering of her family, Rebiya Kadeer sticks to a simple message in exile.
“I am now free and I hope my people will also be free some day.”