The US badgered China for three years to free Rebiya Kadeer, a wealthy member of that country's Muslim minority who was arrested ostensibly for sending Chinese newspapers to her husband in the US.
She finally was released last week, and Kadeer said Wednesday the real story of her arrest had more to do with documents she was carrying that night in 1999 to a meeting with staff members of the US Congressional Research Service.
The papers outlined human rights and other alleged Chinese abuses of Kadeer's Uighur people. The Uighurs are Muslims who live mostly in Xinjiang province in western China and are ethnically related to the peoples of Central Asia, not China.
"One was an appeal, a call for help basically, to the American people," the 58-year-old Kadeer said in an interview. "It contained human rights problems, issues that the Uighur people were facing and that we needed help with."
Another document she had, Kadeer said, "was a list of political prisoners who were on death sentence."
In the Washington headquarters of Amnesty International USA, the petite woman who spent five years in prison sat erect wearing an off-white coat, her black hair streaked with gray, her folded glasses in her hand. She smiled often.
The fact that Kadeer was involved with US congressional researchers made her case a priority for US officials. Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell pleaded her case, and Condoleezza Rice was due in Beijing within days of her release last Thursday.
Her name was on a list of political prisoners the US had presented to China. Congress had passed resolutions on her behalf. The US ambassador to Beijing, Clark Randt, cited her repeatedly in speeches about human rights.
Before her arrest, the Chinese government had used the businesswoman's success as a showcase of the country's openness. The government accused Kadeer of violating national security but has given no specifics except that she sent newspapers abroad to her husband.
In Wednesday's interview with reporters, Kadeer's daughter, Akida Rouzi, who acted as interpreter, said the family knew no specifics of why her mother had been arrested until her release was announced minutes after the State Department had said in Washington it would not introduce a resolution to denounce China's rights record before the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
Rouzi said the family knew that her mother must have been carrying something, "but we didn't know for a fact what she was carrying and what the content of the letter was."
Kadeer said it wasn't only the family that kept silent but her captors as well.
"The Chinese also kept it quiet ... because they didn't want other people to find out about their human rights problems," she said through her daughter.
"Basically the reason they arrested me to shut me up in the first place was because they don't really want to release that information."
Kadeer and her husband, an activist for Xinjiang's Muslims in the US, laughed when Rouzi translated a question about the Chinese government's accusation that she is trying to create an Islamic state in the province.
"It was never about religion for her. Islam's not the case," Rouzi translated. "She is one of those people that believes state and religion should be separate. She never even like really tried to overthrow the government in that sense.
"Yes, she's Muslim. She of course respects Islam and such, but her wishes, her dreams were to bring human rights, freedom to our people."
Kadeer told of a company she created, "The Thousand Mothers Movement," in which she sought out traditionalist Muslim women who largely kept to their houses and wore Islamic veils and taught them how to use money they had squirreled away to bring profits for themselves and their communities.
"The stay-at-home women actually walked out and made a decent living and supported the people around them. That was the main purpose," Rouzi said. "The Chinese, the government, put a stop to it, of course. They don't want that because it was making the Uighur people love her."
During the period she was accepted by the government, Kadeer kept a large profile. She was a delegate to the 1995 Women's Conference sponsored by the UN in Beijing and even became a government official.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of