Rebiya Kadeer

Uighur Leader and Activist

August 11, 2009

"Address to the National Press Club"

Rebiya Kadeer is the best-known advocate for the rights of the Uighur people of western China, where there has been recurring unrest, most recently in early July.

She is also the subject of the film The 10 Conditions of Love, premiering at the Melbourne International Film Festival. She is visiting Australia for the premiere and to raise awareness of the Uighur people’s issues with MPs and senators in Canberra.

Ms Kadeer built up and ran a multimillion dollar trading company and a department store in Urumchi, capital of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (formerly East Turkistan). Her advocacy for the Uighurs, especially for women and children, was originally within the formal structures of the Chinese system.

However, the authorities reacted strongly to her criticisms in a speech to a National People’s Political Consultative Conference session in 1997. She was stripped of her membership of that body and forbidden to travel abroad. In 1999, she was sentenced to eight years is prison for ‘stealing state secrets’. She was released after six years and now lives in Washington.

In 2000, Human Rights Watch awarded Ms Kadeer its highest human rights award and Norway’s Rafto Foundation honored her with the Rafto Award. She is popularly known among the Uighur people as “Mother of the Uighur nation”.