Media Release
For immediate release
5 October 2009

Rebiya Kadeer visit to NZ highlights Amnesty International’s concerns for the Uighurs

Amnesty International Aotearoa NZ welcomes the Green Party’s announcement that Rebiya Kadeer will visit New Zealand next week. Kadeer will visit both Auckland and Wellington where she will meet with Members of Parliament and hold two public meetings.

Rebiya Kadeer is a Uighur business woman and a former Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience. She was charged with ‘providing secret information to foreigners’ by the Chinese Government after sending newspapers to her husband in the USA. Since her release from jail in March 2005, she has lived in exile in the USA.

“Kadeer’s fundamental right to freedom of expression has been denied to her by the Chinese Government, but that has not stopped her travelling the world to raise awareness about China’s repression of the Uighur people,” says Patrick Holmes, CEO of Amnesty International Aotearoa NZ.

“The Uighur people have been the target of systematic and extensive human rights violations for over 20 years. They are subjected to arbitrary detention, violence and killings. As a people, they face severe restrictions on their religious freedom and their social and cultural rights,”he adds.

The family of Madam Kadeer has experienced increased persecution by Chinese authorities since the recent unrest in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) which broke out on 5 July and left at least 197 people dead and more than 1,680 injured.

Madam Kadeer’s sons Kahar and Alim (who is in prison) and her daughter Rushangul were interviewed on state-controlled television on 4 August, condemning their mother and her alleged role in the unrest in Urumqi, but they appeared to have been interviewed under duress.

Another of Kadeer’s sons, Ablikim Abdiriyim, is serving a nine year sentence and is also an Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience. The increased pressure being applied to the rest of Kadeer's family suggests that Ablikim Abdiriyim's treatment in prison may get worse.

Amnesty International is calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Ablikim Abdiriyim. The organisation is also calling for the release of those detained in conjunction with the recent unrest in the XUAR who have been detained solely for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association, including website editor Dilixiati Paerhati.

Rebiya Kadeer will be speaking in Auckland on Tuesday 13 October, 7.30pm, Room ENG 1401 (Engineering Building), University of Auckland, 20 Symonds Street; and Wellington on Wednesday 14 October, 7.30pm, St John's in the City Hall, corner Dixon and Willis Streets, Wellington.

An action on behalf of Ablikim Abdiriyim will be available at www.amnesty.org.nz during Kadeer’s visit.

Background

Before her arrest Rebiya Kadeer was among the top 10 wealthiest people in China. Kadeer, who has 11 children, set up free classes in her department store to educate poor Uighur children and started a group called the 'Thousand Mothers Movement', to empower Uighur women to start businesses.

In 2004, while still in jail, she was honoured with Norway's human rights award the Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize – laureates of the award include Myanmar's democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and former South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung. And in 2006, Rebiya Kadeer was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Uighurs are a mainly Muslim ethnic minority who live primarily in China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Since the 1980s, they have been the target of systematic and extensive human rights violations, including arbitrary detention and imprisonment, incommunicado detention and have faced severe restrictions on their religious freedom and their cultural and social rights.

In recent years, China has exploited the international "war on terror" to suppress the Uighurs, equating even peaceful expressions of dissent with terrorism, separatism and religious extremism.

Amnesty International Aotearoa NZ continues to raise concerns about the repression of Uighur people with the New Zealand Government.

ENDS