Rebiya Kadeer: Curriculum Vitae
a Uighur human rights activist and former prisoner of conscience



©Photo: Andrei Liankevich


· 1947: born on November 15, 1946 in the City of Altay, Xinjiang.


· Kadeer was born into poverty but enjoyed a successful career as an entrepreneur,
starting first with a laundry service and then expanding her activities to eventually own a trading company and department store in Xinjiang.


· 1995: Rebiya Kadeer was appointed to China's national advisory group, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), and sent as one of the country's delegates to the United Nations World Conference on Women.


· 1996: Kadeer’s husband and former political prisoner Sidik Rouzi fled China for the US.


· 1997: Kadeer established the 1,000 Families Mothers` Project, a charity intended to help Uyghur women start their own businesses.


· 1997: Kadeer was barred from reappointment to the CPPCC for failing to condemn her husbands statements in the US


· 1999: in August on her way to meet a visiting delegation from the United States
Congressional Research Service to complain about political prisoners in Xinjiang,
Kadeer was detained by the Chinese authorities on charges of “leaking state secrets” after sending local newspaper clippings to her husband Sidik Rouzi in the US. She was convicted of endangering state security by the Urumqi Intermediate Peoples Court on 10 March 2000.


· 2004: her eight-year sentence was set to expire on 12 August, 2007, but was cut by 12 months in 2004 for good behaviour. The US Congress had repeatedly voiced concerns about her imprisonment to Chinese authorities.


· 2004: Rebiya Kadeer was awarded the 2004 Rafto Prize for human rights. As she was still imprisoned at the time the Rafto Foundation was not able to hand over the Prize to Mrs. Kadeer directly.


· 2005: Representatives from the Rafto Foundation delivers the 2004 Rafto Prize to Rebiya Kadeer’s husband and daughter in a ceremony held in the US congress
building in January 2005


· 2005: on 17 March 2005 Kadeer was released from prison early, nominally on
medical grounds, to US custody. Her release came in advance of a visit by US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region. Mrs. Kadeer was sent in exile to
the US and joined her family in Washington D.C. In response to Kadeer's release, the United States agreed to drop a resolution against China in the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights, causing human rights organizations including
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to moderate their praise somewhat.


· 2005: Rebiya Kadeer visited Bergen for the first time in October 2005. During her
visit she opened the exhibition “In World of Good and Evil” (graphical drawings
made by schoolchildren in Bergen within a project “Art and Human Rights”) at the Rafto Human Rights House.


· While still in custody, Rebiya was warned that if she engaged with members of the Uighur ethnic community or spoke publicly about "sensitive issues" after her release, her "businesses and children will be finished". Despite numerous threats, she continued her human rights work. In January 2006 Kadeer was involved in a
mysterious traffic accident where her car was rammed twice by heavy utility truck.

She managed to get out of her vehicle when the driver in the truck seemed to be
preparing for a third hit. After a week in hospital, she slowly recovered from injuries.


· 2006: Rebiya Kadeer was elected as the president of the World Uyghur Congress by its II. General Assembly meeting held on November 24−27, 2006, in Munich,
Germany.


· Kadeer’s family members who stay in Xinjiang are targeted by the Chinese
authorities. In November 2006, three of her sons were made to pay heavy fines on
politically motivated charges. One of them received a prison sentence of seven years, and another was sentenced to nine years after they were reported to have been severely beaten.


· 2007: On 5 June 2007 at a conference on democracy and security held in Prague
Rebiya Kadeer met privately with President of the United States of America George W. Bush and Mrs. Bush. In his speech President sad about Kadeer: “Another dissident I will meet with here is Rebiya Kadeer, whose sons have been jailed in what we believe is an act of retaliation for her human rights activities. The talent of men and women like Rebiya is the greatest resource of their nations - far more valuable than the weapons of their army or oil under the ground. So America calls on every nation that stifles dissent to end its repression, thrust its people and grant its citizens the freedom they deserve.”


· 2007: a biography of Kadeer, "Die Himmelsstürmerin (The Stormer of the Sky)",
written by German writer Alexandra Cavelius in German, was published in June,
2007 by German publisher Heyne.


· 2007: on 17 September House of Representative of 110th United States Congress
passed by a voice vote House Resolution 497, demanding the Chinese Government to release the imprisoned children of Rebiya Kadeer and Canadian citizen Huseyin Celil and change its suppressive policy towards Uyghur people. Speaking in support of the bill, Congressman Chris Smith said: " At turning points in history...one honest and courageous man or woman often comes to represent the entire people in the eyes of the world...For the Uyghur people, deprived of their religious freedom, robbed of their cultural and linguistic rights and marginalized in their own homeland by the government-organized Han Chinese migration, it is Rebiya Kadeer."


· Since her release in March 2005 Rebiya Kadeer has lived in Washington D.C., where she has spearheaded a peaceful campaign against China’s rule in Xinjiang. Yet hundreds of Uighur activists remain in jail and serious human rights violations are being committed in the province, according to Amnesty International.


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