Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/24680
MICH TSIKAS/REUTERS global I REPORTS Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer greets pro- Uighur demonstrators outside Chinese consulate in Melbourne, Australia. The Woman Who Unnerves China R From exile, Rebiya Kadeer leads Uighur resistance IN ECENT UPRISINGS Ürümqi, Xinjiang, China’s westernmost province, turned world attention to the Uighurs—a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people. Also newly in the spotlight is the per- son Beijing characterizes as the cul- prit behind the unrest: Rebiya Kadeer, 63, a Xinjiang-born busi- nesswoman and political activist liv- ing in exile in the United States. Since the 1950s, Xinjiang has been under the rule of the People’s Repub- lic of China, which exercises political and military control over the Uighurs while exploiting the region’s natural resources and strategic Central Asian location. To strengthen its authority, Beijing encouraged millions of Han (the dominant Chinese ethnic group) to resettle in Xinjiang; they now comprise about 40 percent of the populace of nearly 20 million. Ethnic tensions between Uighurs and Han have been rising, giving Beijing justi- fication for imposing even more stringent rules. Some Uighurs have argued for greater political, cultural and religious 26 | FALL 2009 autonomy; a smaller number frame their struggle in religious terms. Since the early 20th century, there has been an organized movement by the Uighurs to create an independent East Turkestan, or Uighuristan, but start- ing in the 1950s China cracked down on Uighur separatism, and in the 1990s drew the censure of Human Rights Watch for imprisoning dissi- dents and executing “traitors.” After 9/11, as the United States sought allies in its “global war on ter- ror,” it encouraged Chinese support by placing a Uighur separatist group, the East Turkestan Islamic Move- ment, on its international terrorist list. Yet while the threat of militant Is- lamism has given China certain leeway from the international community to police Xinjiang, religious extremists are not the only Uighurs targeted. Kadeer, a secular activist raised in a poor family, ran a small clothing busi- ness before the Cultural Revolution derailed her entrepreneurship. By the early 1980s, though, she had begun to take advantage of China’s new free- market initiatives, opening a depart- ment store selling Uighur clothing. When the Soviet Union collapsed, she began trading across the border with newly independent republics. Her business success made her one of the wealthiest people in China. A mother of 11, Kadeer is a philan- thropist to aspiring Uighur entrepre- neurs, especially women, for whom she established the Thousand Mothers Movement. In 1993, she was appoint- ed a delegate to the National People’s Congress, a political advisory body analogous to a national senate, and she represented China at the 1995 U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women. But in 1997, Kadeer fell from Bei- jing’s favor when openly criticizing the government’s fatal military crackdown following Uighur student protests. She lost her seat at the National People’s Congress and her passport, and was detained, then imprisoned for six years before her final release in 2005. She was then granted permission to go to the U.S. for medical reasons, and has lived there ever since. Continuing her political and hu- manitarian activities in exile, Kadeer has served since 2006 as president of the World Uighur Congress, repre- senting the diasporic Uighur inde- pendence movement. Called “Mother of the Uighurs” by her people, and described as “warm, charismatic” and “compelling” by a Human RightsWatch spokesperson, Kadeer is termed an enemy of the state by Beijing, which compares her contemptuously to the Dalai Lama. “Instead of blaming me, the Chinese government should start listening to the complaints of the Uighur people,” this tiny, fiery woman told The New York Times. “Until I lose my con- sciousness, I’ll stay on as the leader.” —JAMES D. FRANKEL www.feminist.org