Newsletter No. 823
News-Analysis
November 24, 2007

 

UIGHUR RIGHTS ACTIVIST REBIYA KADEER MAKES TOKYO TOUR

Another Uighur activist visited Japan this month. This time it was 60-year-old Rebiya Kadeer, a very prominent and successful businesswoman who was imprisoned in China for five years for “leaking state secrets.” The “secrets” she leaked were that she had sent Chinese newspaper clippings to her husband in the USA.

Released in March 2005, she has since been living in the United States and has become active in calling attention to the human rights situation of Uighurs within China. Her visit here was organized by Amnesty International Japan.

Both the Asahi and the Yomiuri produced short articles on Kadeer’s Japan tour. Her talks in Japan seem to have focused on young Uighur women who are being sent to the China coast under “slave labor” conditions, a policy which apparently began last year. She commented: “The dispatch is a means to assimilate Uighur people into Han and, as a result, destroy Uighur culture. The suppression of the Uighur people has intensified further.”

She called on international human rights organizations to boycott the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. She also said, “I want a democratic Asian country like Japan to have an interest [in Uighurs] and support them.”

Recall that in Shingetsu Newsletter No. 526 we reported about the Japan tour of Uighur independence activist Dolkun Isa. This means that at least two prominent Uighurs have given speeches in Japan this year. However, from what I gather, Kadeer is not calling for Uighur national independence, but rather protection of their human and cultural rights within China.