Taking a Stand for China’s Uighurs

Posted July 8, 2009

(Editor's Note: This article first appeared in the March 2007 edition of The Far Eastern Economic Review.)

On the morning of June 1 of this year, the Abdureyim family traveled with a police escort to what they believed would be an “International Children’s Day” celebration. But on a deserted stretch of the road, in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, China, the cars suddenly came to a halt. Within minutes brothers Ablikim and Alim were pulled outside and beaten to the ground. As their sister begged the officers to stop, one of them retorted, “Call your mother.”

It was then that Rebiya Kadeer’s phone rang in Virginia. She could hear her daughter crying and immediately understood what was happening -- this was the reason why she left China in the first place.

Little more than a decade ago, Ms. Kadeer was a symbol of China’s modernization. She is a Uighur, a Muslim ethnic minority inside the country. And as one of the wealthiest business owners in Xinjiang, she was touted by the government as an example of Beijing’s tolerance of economic prosperity for all. But today, the petite and soft-spoken mother of 11 is one of China’s highest-profile enemies. The government considers her an Islamic terrorist engaging in the forbidden “three forces” of terrorism, extremism and separatism. Yet internationally Ms. Kadeer has grown into a celebrated democracy activist for her one-woman campaign to liberate the Uighurs, winning support from the White House, U.S. Congress, human rights groups and a nomination for the Nobel Peace Price by a Swedish parliamentarian.

“The Chinese government thought I would stop my activities after my children were taken, but I can see now that they don’t truly know me,” she says.

Dressed in a vivid teal-blue suit with her graying hair twisted high into a bun, Ms. Kadeer, who spent six years in Chinese prison for her efforts, sits with her hands in her lap and legs crossed at the ankles in her offices in Washington, D.C. In a drive to “let China humiliate itself,” she has defied Beijing’s threats since being released from prison last spring, testifying before Congress, organizing demonstrations outside China’s U.S. embassy and giving numerous speeches and interviews. Recently, she began learning English.

Yet the work has come at a price. In November, China sentenced her son Alim to seven years in prison for alleged tax evasion in his role as caretaker of her commercial real estate and department store businesses. Her son Ablikim is awaiting trial on charges of subversion and has been seen taken from a detention center on a stretcher.

Ms. Kadeer describes what is happening to China’s Uighurs as a “moral crisis” and believes Beijing’s goal is to turn them into a “faithless” people. In response to China’s terrorist accusations, she has sniped: “If I terrify the Chinese government, then yes, I am a terrorist, and long may it last.”

More than half a century after Mao Zedong defeated Chiang Kai-shek in China’s civil war, the nation of 1.3 billion is finally emerging as the world’s next potential superpower. Yet China’s ascent remains a long one. Its human rights record is under constant attack on a number of issues, including its treatment of Falun Gong and the Dalai Lama, and now, Ms. Kadeer.

Not the typical portrait of a political dissident, Ms. Kadeer was a wealthy businesswoman who parlayed her financial success into positions in China’s parliament and was initially a willing partner to the Communist Party. But her success also emboldened her to begin demanding greater rights for China’s citizens, at first cautiously and then openly. “My people were losing their hope,” she says. “I wanted to expose the lies of the Chinese government and be a voice for my people in the international community -- it was a mission for me.”

“Our cultural and traditional values are being deteriorated,” she says. “This is a moral crisis for the Uighur people. While the liberalization of people in the world is moving forward, for the Uighur people it is moving backwards.”

It isn’t surprising the ruling party views Ms. Kadeer with contempt and alarm. Known as the “spiritual mother” of the Uighurs, the charismatic businesswoman is becoming a rallying figure for the Uighur movement, much as the Dalai Lama is for Tibetans. Less than two years after leaving China, Ms. Kadeer was elected president of the World Uighur Congress and Uighur American Association, which counts nearly all of the 1,000 Uighurs in the U.S. as members. In the process, she is single-handedly igniting interest in a heretofore little-known ethnic minority.

It is here that Ms. Kadeer poses the largest problem for China. As one former U.S. State Department official involved in her case says, “The difference between Rebiya Kadeer and other dissidents is that she hasn’t disappeared since leaving jail, and that is the real problem China has with her -- she’s not following the script.”

Ms. Kadeer’s most significant dint has been in simply calling attention to the Chinese government’s heavy hand toward Uighurs -- forced abortions, the closing of mosques, the prohibition against teaching the Uighur language in schools. She points out that China targets anything that highlights Uighurs’ cultural differences, which in her view amounts to an admission by China that the Uighur identity is indeed distinct. That is, Uighurs are unmistakably un-Chinese, an argument that forms the basis of their bid for independence.

Still, Ms. Kadeer hasn’t made politcal independence for China’s Uighurs the focus of her advocacy efforts. “The tactics I use are to make the most of living in a free democracy,” Ms. Kadeer said in testimony before a Congressional panel in April. “Simply telling the truth about what is happening to my family and my people. And I have faith in the power of democracy and truth.”
Though never formally educated, Ms. Kadeer, the daughter of farmers and small business owners, is a natural entrepreneur who prospered as China’s economic reforms began bearing fruit. She opened her first business, a laundry, in 1987, and went on to launch a department store and commercial real estate business.

As her wealth and philanthropy won her prominence, Ms. Kadeer says she felt she had the chance to improve the lives of her fellow Uighurs, the majority of who live in poor rural areas. Ms. Kadeer says she believed that Beijing would put a stop to the local government’s harsh tactics against Uighurs in Xinjiang as soon as high-level officials in the central government knew what was happening.
Her tipping point came in 1997, when a peaceful Uighur youth demonstration ended in a violent clash with Chinese police. Ms. Kadeer says she repeatedly tried to convince Beijing that change was needed, but to no avail. She felt she had no choice but to openly criticize the government, and so she did -- in a speech before parliament.

Beijing promptly kicked her out of the National People’s Congress and revoked her passport. At that point, her husband had already fled to the U.S. after being politically blacklisted for his own human rights efforts. Knowing there was no turning back, she began using her stature to reach out to the international community. In August 1999, she was on her way to meet a delegation of U.S. Congressional researchers when Chinese police caught up to her. She was arrested, charged with revealing state secrets to foreigners, and sentenced to eight years in prison, two of which she spent in solitary confinement. “The hell in this world is Chinese prison,” she says, though she says the prison guards “didn’t dare” torture her because her case was too well-known in the international community.

To her surprise, China released her from prison in March of last year -- two years early -- on “humanitarian” grounds in response to heavy pressure from the Bush administration. She says she would consider returning to her birth country, not as a political leader, but as a human rights and democracy advocate if Xinjiang’s Uighurs were to eventually win their independence.

“I personally believe China must be a democracy some day,” she says. “All of the international community believes China is becoming more powerful, but although they have more money now, they have no legitimacy.”

Ms. Miniter, a former journalism fellow at the Phillips Foundation in Washington, D.C., is a freelance journalist. This article first appeared in the March 2007 edition of The Far Eastern Economic Review.