Rebiya Kadeer, a human rights activist for the Uighur people of northwestern China, spent six years in jail in China for "leaking state secrets" in fact sending local newspaper articles to her husband in the US. She was released in 2005 and has since then made her home in the Washington, D.C. area, where she advocates for Uighur rights and for greater US support of Uighur issues. In 2006, Ms. Kadeer was a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. She sat down for an interview with EurasiaNet at the offices of the Uighur American Association, just a block from the White House.
EurasiaNet: What do you believe is the greatest threat facing Uighurs in China now? Kadeer: We're facing an existential threat, that the Chinese government's policies will eliminate us as a people. The Chinese government is immigrating millions of ethnic Chinese to our homeland. The Chinese government gave us the so-called autonomous status but never respected it, and transferred millions of their own people. Now you can see more Chinese than Uighurs in our own homeland
Editor's note:
Joshua Kucera is a Washington, DC,-based freelance writer who specializes in security issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East.
