STATE SECRETS: CHINA'S LEGAL LABYRINTH - HRIC

C A S E S T O R Y
Rebiya Kadeer
An advocate for women’s and Uyghur minority rights in China, Rebiya Kadeer
(热比亚卡德尔), was also a successful entrepreneur who founded and directed
a trading company in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). In
recognition of her work and accomplishments, the Chinese government
appointed her to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and to
the Chinese delegation that participated in the 1995 UN World Conference on
Women. Kadeer was also a standing member of the XUAR Chamber of Com-
merce and additionally founded the Thousand Mothers Movement to promote
women’s rights in 1997.
Kadeer frequently sent newspaper clippings from XUAR newspapers to her
husband, who had left China for the U.S. in 1996. In August 1999, Kadeer
was on her way to a meeting with visiting U.S. Congressional staff, carrying
copies of local newspapers and other information concerning human rights
abuses in the XUAR, when she was detained. Kadeer was sentenced to eight
years’ imprisonment in 2000 for “illegally providing state secrets overseas.”
International human rights activists and organizations, as well as the U.S.
government and over 100 members of Congress, advocated on Kadeer’s
behalf. After the Chinese authorities reduced her sentence by one year in
2004, she was given early release in 2005. Ignoring warnings from Chinese
government officials urging Kadeer not to discuss sensitive issues after her
release, she continues to advocate for Uyghur human rights, and several of
her family members in the XUAR have since been detained.
According to Kadeer’s family and news reports, in May 2006, the XUAR
authorities formally detained two of her sons and were keeping one of her
daughters under house arrest for alleged tax evasion, after seriously beating
one son in front of his children. 65 On November 27, 2006, two of her sons were
fined for tax evasion, one of whom was also sentenced to seven years in
prison. 66 The previous day, another son currently held under subversion
charges was taken from the Tianshan
District Detention Center on a stretcher,
in apparent need of medical attention; it
is feared that he was beaten and tortured
as a result of Kadeer being elected presi-
dent of the World Uyghur Congress on
November 26, 2006. 67 He was formally
sentenced to nine years in prison and
three years’ deprivation of political
rights for "instigating and engaging in
secessionist activities” by the Intermedi-
ate People’s Court of Urumqi on April 17,
2007. 68
18 HUMAN RIGHTS IN CHINA STATE SECRETS: CHINA’S LEGAL LABYRINTH
Rebiya Kadeer