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.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
SKEPTICAL: Given the challenges, which include waste disposal and potential domestic opposition, experts warn that the 2032 nuclear timeline is overambitious Indonesia is hoping going nuclear can help it meet soaring energy demand while taming emissions, but faces serious challenges to its goal of a first small modular reactor by 2032. Its first experiment with nuclear energy dates to February 1965, when then-Indonesian president Sukarno inaugurated a test reactor. Sixty years later, Southeast Asia’s largest economy has three research reactors, but no nuclear power plants for electricity. Abundant reserves of polluting coal have so far met the enormous archipelago’s energy needs, but “nuclear will be necessary to constrain the rise of and eventually reduce emissions,” said Philip Andrews-Speed, a senior research fellow at the
RSS