By Stuart Biggs
Oct. 30 — Rebiya Kadeer, the exiled Uighur activist, said violence in Xinjiang in China that left 192 people dead in July may have stemmed from the forced movement of Uighur women to mainland China to work in factories and hotels.
Kadeer, the head of the Washington-based World Uighur Congress, said China has transferred as many as 300,000 women to work in areas outside Xinjiang under a government program to assimilate ethnic minorities.
“Beautiful girls are sent to work in hotels and bars. Others are sent to factories where they have no freedom and no contact with their families,” Kadeer said at a press conference in Tokyo today. “The media talks of providing economic opportunity but the reality is these women are miserable.”
China’s government accuses Kadeer of orchestrating the clashes between ethnic Uighurs and Han Chinese in Urumqi, capital of China’s westernmost Xinjiang province. Kadeer has repeatedly denied the claim and says the government is suppressing human rights and religious freedom in Xinjiang.
“I’m not an enemy of the Chinese people, I’m not even an enemy of the Chinese government,” she said. “I’m only asking one thing from the government, to give the Uighurs a chance to live their lives in peace.”
Ismail Tiliwaldi, vice chairman of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, said at a July media briefing that the movement of Uighur workers to other regions of China outside of Xinjiang was normal movement of people in the pursuit of better jobs and livelihoods.
Prison Time
Muslim Uighurs, who make up less than half of Xinjiang’s population of 20 million, complain of discrimination by the Han, China’s dominant ethnic group, and unfair division of the region’s resources. The Han make up more than 90 percent of China’s 1.3 billion people.
The landlocked region, about three times the size of France, has China’s second-highest oil and natural gas reserves and was its biggest cotton producer.
Kadeer, a mother of 11 children, was once ranked as China’s 34th-richest person with a fortune of $25 million, according to the Shanghai-based Hurun Report, and was on China’s top political body for people who aren’t members of the Communist Party.
She spent six years in prison after criticizing the government for its policies in Xinjiang. Under pressure from the Bush administration, China released Kadeer in 2005 and she moved to Washington, to head an organization of exiled Uighurs.
Alleged Discrimination
“They say the economic development has happened, but the benefits have gone to the Republic of China,” she said. “We can’t write books or poetry ourselves. Our children can’t study, our people can’t get jobs.”
Kadeer is visiting Japan for the third time, giving speeches at universities and non-profit groups to coincide with the publication of her biography in Japanese. An earlier visit after the Xinjiang riots in July prompted criticism of Japan’s government by China.
Taiwan’s government banned Kadeer from visiting in September citing what the government said were security concerns.
The Dalai Lama, the exiled religious leader of Tibet, which borders Xinjiang, is also in Japan this week. He visits the country about twice a year to give speeches to religious groups on Buddhism. He’s scheduled to hold a press conference in Tokyo tomorrow.
Riots broke out in Tibet in March last year leaving as many as 200 people dead, according to the Tibetan government-in-exile. China’s government said 19 people died.
“Some time I want to discuss the issues with him because our fate is the same, but there is no plan to meet him in Japan,” Kadeer said. “What is happening in East Turkestan is the same as what’s happened in Tibet over the last 60 years,” she said, using the Uighur name for Xinjiang.
To contact the reporter on this story: Stuart Biggs in Tokyo at sbiggs3@bloomberg.net.
