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Uyghur leader Kadeer ready for talks with Beijing

By Paul Harrington | AFP

Exiled Uyghur leader Rabiya Kadeer gestures as she attends talks about the Uyghur peoples’ struggle with China, at the EU headquarters in Brussels on 1 September 2009. Chinese authorities have accused Kadeer, head of the World Uyghur Congress, of inciting unrest between Uyghurs and Han Chinese in the northwestern city of Urumqi last month that left nearly 200 people dead and more than 1,600 injured.AFP/Getty Images/Georges Gobet/Belgium

Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer, accused by Beijing of fomenting violent unrest in Xinjiang province, said Tuesday she was prepared to hold direct talks with the Chinese authorities.

“I’m ready to discuss with the Chinese government the way we can address its policy failures of the past 60 years and seek political reforms,” she told a session of the European parliament’s human rights committee.

“It is time for the Chinese government to sit and talk with me, his holiness the Dalai Lama and all those leaders of non (majority) Han Chinese communities who have been vilified, imprisoned and slandered just because we happen to disagree with the bankrupt official policy,” she said.

Speaking through an interpreter, Kadeer called on the European Union to “put pressure on the Chinese authorities to respect the autonomy laws that are in their constitution and start a true dialogue with the Uyghur people”.

She referred to “East Turkistan”, the name used by Uyghur separatists in northern China.

“I would like the Chinese authorities to ease the tension in East Turkistan. They cannot solve the problem with violence,” said Kadeer, who was on her first visit to the Brussels chamber.

“They should begin a true dialogue with the representatives of Uyghur people abroad.”

Chinese authorities have accused Kadeer, head of the World Uyghur Congress, of inciting unrest between Uyghurs and Han Chinese in the northwestern city of Urumqi last month that left nearly 200 people dead and more than 1,600 injured.

The 62-year-old mother of 11 adamantly denies the charges and accuses China of repression against the Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim people who speak a Turkic language.

Beijing was “obscuring the truth in order to conceal the mass killing of Uyghur people by Chinese authorities”, she said.

Kadeer, a former department store magnate once said to be one of the wealthiest women in China, accused Beijing of being “obsessed with maintaining control in a resource-rich area”.

She urged the EU to pressure Beijing “to launch a true and independent investigation” into the events of 5 July in Xinjiang, where 197 people died according to Chinese authorities — “many more” according to Kadeer.

Whatever the figures, it was China’s worst ethnic violence in decades.

Kadeer pleaded for attention on the subject, telling the assembled European parliamentarians that “the Chinese government crackdown” in the region “is in full swing”.

She added: “I would like the Chinese authorities to ease the tensions in East Turkistan. They cannot solve the problem with violence, they should begin a true dialogue with the representatives of the Uyghur people abroad.”

She stressed that the Uyghur people were very different from the majority Han Chinese and said her region was an independent state before the Chinese communists came to power.

“We are really different from the Chinese, we are Central Asian people. So we’re very close with the Central Asian people like Kazakh and Uzbek and Turkmens.”

Last week the United States appealed to China not to retaliate against Kadeer’s family after she said Beijing planned to demolish her family’s home.

Copyright © 2009 AFP

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