Rebiya Kadeer: making a difference

Rebiya Kadeer: China's communist rulers rue the day they set her free, she believes

Rebiya Kadeer is a slightly built, 62-year-old grandmother who lives in the Washington, D.C. suburbs.

To the authorities in Beijing, Kadeer is a terrorist, an Islamic radical, and a separatist for her activities on behalf of her fellow Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group whose historic homeland is in Western China.  They blame her for the recent violence in Urumchi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region that resulted in nearly 200 reported deaths.  Like the Tibetans, but without the benefit of the world’s attention, the Uyghurs have been victimized for many years by efforts of the authorities to marginalize them.

Who are the Uyghurs? What are the sources of their grievance with Beijing? And why are Chinese officials so obsessed with Rebiya Kadeer, that they continue to harass her after sending her into exile, making at least one harrowing attempt on her life?

In April of this year Kales Press brought out an English version of Kadeer’s autobiography, “Dragon Fighter: One Woman’s Epic Struggle for Peace With China.” Written in a poetic tone, it is a deeply moving account of a life of devotion to both her family and her people at a personal cost that is almost unimaginable.

From a childhood of extreme poverty, dislocation, and hardship, Kadeer somehow managed to develop the business skills that would make her, by the early 1990s, the wealthiest woman in China. How she achieved this extraordinary feat in the face of discrimination against both her gender and her ethnic minority is reason enough to read this book.

But Kadeer always regarded her business success as but a means to the end of helping her people.  She relates the story of how, during the Cultural Revolution, a particularly threatening time for Uyghurs, she witnessed the public humiliation of an intellectual who was the president of the Writer’s Guild. Stripped to his underwear and slathered with white paint, he was forced to dangle a large wooden sign held with iron wire from his neck, reading “Counterrevolutionary, follower of Soviet-bourgeoisie, and nationalist.” Kadeer noticed that the weight of the wooden sign was digging the wire into his skin. Instinctively, risking her own life, she reached into her jacket pocket for the bills she had earned from selling her home-made shoes, and, pleading for the release of the writer, dropped them into the hands of the leader of the mob. This leader, in turn, demanded that the man be released, lest he die before admitting his sins.

Kadeer continues, “A cold shudder passed through my body, I actually held the power to make a difference with my money. That revelation gave me the courage to continue.”  Later, after applying some “subtle” makeup, she visited the same Communist leader and told him that she would do her best to provide his relatives and friends in the city with whatever he requested.

This story reveals many of the traits that would serve Kadeer so well in her adopted role as “Mother of the people”:  compassion, fearlessness, a willingness to take personal risks, and above all, an uncanny ability to make use of her own resources in advancing her objectives.

Much of her story, which is based upon interviews she gave in her native Uyghur language, revolves around her family (including her parents, siblings, eleven children, and first and second husbands) and her quest for success in business. The deep affection she held for her family was often in conflict with her business dealings, and she does not spare herself criticism for the periodic absences from her family during the periods in which she was building up the distribution networks in eastern China and Central Asia that would become the source of her phenomenal success. But all the while she never lost sight of her objective of serving the needs of both her family and her people.

Her activism would also come at the cost of constant surveillance by the authorities as well as efforts to co-opt her by offering her a comfortable life in return for an end to her political activities. She responded to all such efforts with contempt, and even during periods of diminished political repression, she had no illusions about the nature of the system that she was up against.

Eventually, Kadeer was elevated to a position in the National People’s Political Consultative Committee, where she used the platform to call attention to the plight of her people. In a particularly dramatic scene, she outwits the authorities seeking to censor an upcoming address by providing them with a “decoy speech” praising the Party for the advances made by the Uyghurs.   In the book, she expresses remorse for having to use such deception, but always the savvy operator, she knew not only that she would have the attention of thousands of Committee delegates and dozens of journalists, but also that protocol prohibited anyone from interrupting her.

Although she could not read Chinese, Kadeer knew that she was able to communicate in “proper, respectful, colloquial” Chinese, and she took the opportunity to concentrate upon three areas: impoverished farmers, education, and political prisoners. She talked about how the government extracted natural resources without compensation, how it forced Chinese middlemen on Uyghur businessmen, and how political prisoners were being murdered with impunity.

It was only a matter of time before she was stripped of all official titles and responsibilities, which brought her a sense of relief, since they “kept me boxed in an uncomfortable and often unethical position simply by my association with the government. By shedding these status symbols, I felt I had regained my status as a human being with some common sense.”

Soon her business activities would be forcibly curtailed and causes with which she was associated, such as the Thousand Mothers Movement she founded to provide economic opportunity and social services for women, were dissolved.  As Kadeer notes, the walls were closing in on her people:

“This was a time during which those in power dropped their masks. The high functionaries decided that our Uyghur nation was a part of China and should therefore be settled by even more Chinese. There were scenes in the streets where Chinese would beat Uyghurs, forcing them off sidewalks or buses with the words, ‘Get out of here! This is our land!’”

Kadeer decided to step up her activities by documenting human rights violations and sending them to the U.S., where her husband, a dissident writer, was already in exile with her four youngest children. Finally, in August 1999, as she was on her way to meet with staffers from the U.S. Congress and share newspaper clippings, she was apprehended and taken into custody, the beginning of a five-year period of incarceration that she describes in chilling detail.

Prison interrogators wanted to know about her relationship with “foreign resistance movements,” her husband’s role in them, and why she wanted to send “state secrets” abroad. Her interrogations were held within earshot of the screams of young Uyghur men being physically tortured.

Much to her surprise, her sentence, handed down by the Superior People’s Court of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, was not execution but eight years in prison. Eventually, international pressure from abroad, which she credits her husband with helping to stimulate, would result in her release and forced exile.

As had been the case over the years, the authorities would offer a deal: discontinue her activism and she would be able to return to China and resume her business activities; involve herself in human rights causes–including revealing the nightmarish experience she endured while in prison—and her remaining children would be punished.  “Today,” Rebiya Kadeer asserts, “the Chinese government deeply regrets that they set me free.”

In a brief foreword, His Holiness the Dalai Lama expresses the hope “that this book by Mrs. Kadeer will enable the readers to comprehend the experience of the Uyghur people.” That it has done, and so much more.

David E. Lowe, is Vice President for Government and External Relations at the National Endowment for Democracy