Rebiya Kadeer's Employees Released After Seven-Month Detention

June 2, 2006

Chinese authorities released two employees of a company belonging to Uighur dissident Rebiya Kadeer on December 14, 2005, after detaining them for seven months without charges, according to a December 16 report from Radio Free Asia (RFA). Authorities detained Kadeer's former assistant Aysham Kerim and company secretary Ruzi Mamat on May 11, 2005, at Kadeer's company offices in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). According to RFA sources, police returned to the offices again on May 13 and confiscated documents and money. RFA had no further information on the impetus for Kerim and Mamat's release.

Chinese authorities released two employees of a company belonging to Uighur dissident Rebiya Kadeer on December 14, 2005, after detaining them for seven months without charges, according to a December 16 report from Radio Free Asia (RFA). Authorities detained Kadeer's former assistant Aysham Kerim and company secretary Ruzi Mamat on May 11, 2005, at Kadeer's company offices in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). According to RFA sources, police returned to the offices again on May 13 and confiscated documents and money. RFA had no further information on the impetus for Kerim and Mamat's release.

Authorities detained Kadeer, a prominent Uighur businesswoman and civic leader, in mid-1999 and sentenced her in 2000 to eight years in prison for "unlawfully supplying state secrets or intelligence to entities outside China." They released her on medical parole on March 17, 2005, after she served over five years of her sentence. Since then, Kadeer has lived in exile in the United States, where she has spoken out about her experiences and about human rights abuses against Uighurs in China. Kadeer said that prison guards warned her before her release that her business interests and relatives who remain in the XUAR would face repercussions if she disclosed sensitive information overseas, RFA reported on March 28, 2005. Police attempted to take into custody Kadeer's son Ablikim Abdurehim during the May raid on Kadeer's offices, but he dodged his pursuers. In August 2005, Kadeer's son Alim Abdurehim told RFA that police in the XUAR had created a special unit to monitor Kadeer's relatives and business interests.

Other Uighurs who have left China also report that Chinese authorities monitor relatives who remain there. A January 5, 2006, RFA article highlighted the situation of a Uighur permanent resident in the United States who says Chinese officials have restricted movement of his family in the XUAR until he agrees to provide information on overseas Uighurs to Chinese state security.

For more information on conditions for Uighurs in China, see sections on Rights Violations in Xinjiang and Religious Freedom for China's Muslims in the 2005 CECC Annual Report.