TAKE ACTION for the Uyghur People here:

http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/uyghurs


From Amnesty International:

Background
Since the late 1980s, Chinese government policies and other factors have generated growing ethnic discontent in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. In the past few years, thousands of people there have been the victims of gross human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, unfair political trials, torture, and summary executions. These violations, suffered primarily by members of the Uighur ethnic group, occur amidst growing ethnic unrest fueled by unemployment, discrimination and restrictions on religious and cultural freedoms. The situation has led some people living in the XUAR to favor independence from China.

Crackdowns in the region intensified after September 11, 2001, with authorities designating supporters of independence as “separatists” and “terrorists.” Uighurs, most of whom are Muslim, have been the main targets in the region of the Chinese authorities. Authorities have closed down mosques, detained Islamic clergy, and severely curtailed freedom of expression and association.

More on Rebiya Kadeer

Rebiya Kadeer founded and directed a large trading company in northwestern China, championed the rights of the Uighur ethnic group there, and became one of China’s most prominent advocates of women’s rights. All these activities came to an abrupt halt in August 1999 when police arrested her as she entered a hotel to discuss human rights with U.S. Congressional staff who were visiting China.

Rebiya Kadeer has spent more than five years jailed in a region where prison conditions are notoriously harsh. Prisoners in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region receive poor food, inadequate sanitation, and little medical treatment. Amnesty International has expressed grave concern about reports of Rebiya Kadeer’s deteriorating health.

The Chinese government charged Rebiya Kadeer in September 1999 with “providing secret information to foreigners” even though the local newspapers she was carrying at the time of her arrest were all publicly available, as were the newspapers she had sent to her husband in the United States. Authorities tried her in secret and sentenced her in March 2000 to eight years’ imprisonment. In early 2004, authorities reduced her sentence by one year.

A successful and charismatic businesswoman, Kadeer used her resources to provide fellow Uighurs, the region’s predominantly Muslim majority ethnic group, with training and employment. The Chinese government had recognized her contributions by appointing her to its prestigious national advisory group, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. The government also appointed her to its delegation participating in the 1995 United Nations World Conference on Women. She was a standing member of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Chamber of Commerce, and in 1997, she founded the Thousand Mothers Movement to promote women’s rights and economic security.

Rebiya Kadeer’s activism in the strategically important, oil-rich autonomous region of Xinjiang and her husband’s outspoken criticism of Chinese rule in the mostly Muslim region began to draw government reprisals in the late 1990s. Her husband left China in 1996. The following year, the government confiscated Rebiya Kadeer’s passport. Harassment by police was accompanied by further restrictions on her movements. In 1998, authorities barred her from reappointment to the Consultative Conference.