Talk: Human rights defender Rebiya Kadeer - London

Date: Mon 1 October 2007

Come and listen to  Rebiya Kadeer's amazing story of courage and adversity and help her fight to win basic human rights for the Uighur people of north-western China.

Rebiya Kadeer stood up for repressed people from her Uighur homeland and spoke out against human rights abuses. The Chinese authorities silenced her by sentencing her to prison and she spent two years in solitary confinement. Determined campaigning by groups such as Amnesty International led to her early release and she went into exile in the USA. Despite threats against her family from the Chinese authorities she has continued to speak out against brutality towards her people.

Now her family back in China are being made to pay the price: Rebiya's adult children have been beaten and imprisoned. Amnesty International has good evidence that this  was done as a punishment for Rebiya Kadeer continuing to voice her critisism of Chinese government policies and also her calls for self-determination for her homeland.

Find out more about the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region on the Gulja Vigil website