The Chinese government says the mastermind behind the violent clashes between Muslim Uighurs and ethnic Han Chinese in China’s Xinjiang region is a diminutive grandmother with long, salt-and-pepper braids living in exile in a suburb of the US capital.
Once one of the richest women in Xinjiang and held up as an exemplar of China’s purported multi-ethnic harmony, Rebiya Kadeer now heads two prominent Uighur exile groups, speaking out against Beijing’s oppression of the Turkic-speaking minority. Beijing has accused Kadeer of organizing the protests that have left at least 156 dead and more than 1,000 injured, accusations she has denied.
Kadeer’s persecution by the Chinese and her stature as a public face of the Uighur people have earned her comparisons to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.
Before her exile, Kadeer, 62, rose from poverty to become a successful entrepreneur, running trading companies and department stores. Beijing named her in China’s official delegation to the 1995 UN conference on women in Beijing and to the country’s legislature.
By 1997 she had formed an organization to aid Uighur women and had opened a Uighur language school, an action tinged with enough separatism to earn her scrutiny from Chinese security agencies. In August 1999 Kadeer was detained in Urumqi as she headed to meet US congressional staff members. She was charged with passing state secrets to foreigners and sentenced to eight years in prison.
The US government and human rights groups across the world pressed for her release. In 2005, the Chinese government released her from jail and put her on a plane to northern Virginia.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
COMMUNITY CONFLICT: Concerns about disease spread from corpses has run up against friends and families’ desire to bury their dead as infection spreads in the area Angry residents of a town at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) attacked and burned a tent that was part of a health center where people are being treated for the virus, the staff there said Saturday. It was the second such attack in the region in a week. No one was hurt in the attack, according to reports but as patients ran out to escape the fire, 18 people with suspected Ebola infections fled the facility and are unaccounted for, a hospital director said. Angry residents arrived at the clinic in the
Forecasters in Europe yesterday warned of exceptional heat as record temperatures driven by a “heat dome” push temperatures well above seasonal norms across the continent. The surge follows a record-breaking Monday, with France logging its hottest day in the month of May on record, its weather agency said, and the UK also posting unprecedented highs. A so-called “heat dome” of warm air from northern Africa trapped under a high-pressure system over western Europe is behind the high temperatures not usually seen until high summer. Restrictions on outdoor work were imposed in parts of Italy, beaches in southwest France filled earlier than usual and
RSS