Kadeer, 62, ranked as China's 34th-richest person a decade ago with a fortune of $25 million, said Rupert Hoogewerf, publisher of the Shanghai-based Hurun Report, which tracks the country's rich. In the 1990s, Kadeer was named to a leading government council. "She was a high-ranking political person, favored by the Chinese government, and now they regard her as enemy No. 1," said Kurban Haiyur, an official at the World Uighur Congress, an exile group based in Munich that Kadeer heads. Kadeer is a slight mother of 11 children who often wears a traditional square Uighur cap over a long braid. She is from Xinjiang, the western province where native ethnic Uighurs long have complained of discrimination by China's dominant ethnic group, the Han. Kadeer denied any role in the riots, telling a July 6 news conference in Washington she had made no calls except to ask her children in Urumqi to stay at home because rising tensions risked violence. Yesterday she led about 100 protesters in a march on the Chinese embassy in Washington. "What they want is what I want, and they want freedom," Kadeer said at the rally, speaking of Chinese Uighurs. She said her sources report that as many as 1,000 people have been killed in the violence. Journalist James Rupert, head of Bloomberg's international bureau in Islamabad, Pakistan began his career abroad as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching mechanics and welding in Morocco.
James Rupert writes: China Blames Exiled Grandmother Rebiya Kadeer, for Deadly Rioting
China Blames Exiled Grandmother for Deadly Rioting (Update2)
By James Rupert
July 8 (Bloomberg) -- Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled Uighur activist China blames for instigating its deadliest riots in decades, is a former millionaire businesswoman and Communist Party favorite who fell from grace and into prison.
Kadeer, 62, ranked as China's 34th-richest person a decade ago with a fortune of $25 million, said Rupert Hoogewerf, publisher of the Shanghai-based Hurun Report, which tracks the country's rich. In the 1990s, Kadeer was named to a leading government council.
"She was a high-ranking political person, favored by the Chinese government, and now they regard her as enemy No. 1," said Kurban Haiyur, an official at the World Uighur Congress, an exile group based in Munich that Kadeer heads.
Kadeer is a slight mother of 11 children who often wears a traditional square Uighur cap over a long braid. She is from Xinjiang, the western province where native ethnic Uighurs long have complained of discrimination by China's dominant ethnic group, the Han.
Uighurs in Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi, rioted July 5 over killings of Uighur migrant workers in southern China. At least 156 people died and more than a thousand were detained in the riots, which a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, called a "premeditated attack" by separatists on China's national unity.
‘Ironclad Separatist'
China's official news agency, Xinhua, said yesterday police recorded phone calls in which Kadeer "masterminded" the riot. Kadeer "is an ironclad separatist colluding with terrorists and Islamic extremists," said a commentary in the official People's Daily.
Urumqi demonstrators on July 5 were initially protesting over the government's inaction following racially motivated killings of migrant Uighur workers at a factory thousands of kilometers away in Guangdong, southern China. The protests spilled over into rioting because of heavy-handed policing, Kadeer wrote in today's Wall Street Journal.
"Years of Chinese repression of Uighurs topped by a confirmation that Chinese officials have no interest in observing the rule of law when Uighurs are concerned is the cause of the current Uighur discontent," she wrote.
Kadeer denied any role in the riots, telling a July 6 news conference in Washington she had made no calls except to ask her children in Urumqi to stay at home because rising tensions risked violence. Yesterday she led about 100 protesters in a march on the Chinese embassy in Washington.
"What they want is what I want, and they want freedom," Kadeer said at the rally, speaking of Chinese Uighurs.
She said her sources report that as many as 1,000 people have been killed in the violence.
Surprise Speech
In the 1990s, Kadeer prospered in retail, real estate and the travel business, said Hoogewerf in a telephone interview. China sent her to a United Nations women's conference in 1995 and named her to the top political body for those who aren't members of the Communist Party. It was there, at the People's Political Consultative Conference in March 1997, that Kadeer took the plunge into conflict with China's government.
Before an audience that included powerful government figures, Kadeer ignored the written speech she had submitted for official approval and instead declared the frustrations of 8 million Uighurs with communist rule.
"She demanded that the Chinese government honor the autonomy conferred on the Uighur people and respect their human rights," says an account by the Uighur-American Association, which she also heads.
Twelve years later, Kadeer, now a grandmother, lives in exile near Washington, campaigning for Uighur rights. Her company has been seized by Chinese police, the Uighur-American Association says.
‘Clearly Retaliation'
Two of her sons, Ablikim and Alim Abdureyim, were sentenced on charges "that were clearly retaliation for Rebiya Kadeer's activities," said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher on China with Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong.
Kadeer came from a poor family among the Uighurs, a Muslim, ethnically Turkic group living in the dry steppes and deserts of westernmost China. Amid the collapse of China's nationalist government at the end of World War II, Uighur leaders declared an independent East Turkestan Republic that quickly was overwhelmed by the Communist Party's army.
Kadeer took advantage of China's increasingly free economy to start her Akida Trading Co., which included a prominent Urumqi department store.
U.S. Bound
As her business grew, Kadeer and her husband, Sidik Rouzi, espoused Uighur causes. Rouzi fled as a dissident to the U.S. in 1996, while Kadeer established the Thousand Mothers Movement, an effort to educate Uighur women, partly by holding business classes at her department store.
After Chinese security forces suppressed a Uighur student demonstration in the Xinjiang city of Yining in 1997, Kadeer decided to make the speech criticizing China's policies, she wrote, and life suddenly changed.
Authorities quickly stripped Kadeer of her official positions and, two years later, jailed her for allegedly stealing state secrets. She spent six years in prison, two of them in solitary confinement, according to the publishers of her autobiography, Dragon Fighter, released in April.
Under pressure from the Bush administration, China released Kadeer in 2005, and she joined her husband, moving to the Virginia suburbs of Washington.
Uighurs have rioted in Urumqi because they say China's government permits no peaceful dissent about policies suppressing their ethnic identity, Kadeer said.
"Any Uighur who dares to express the slightest protest, however peaceful, is immediately met with brutal force."
To contact the reporter on this story: James Rupert in New Delhi at jrupert3@bloomberg.net.
