Rebiya Kadeer

Along the ancient Silk Road where Europe, Asia, and Russia converge stands the four-thousand-year-old homeland of a peaceful people, the Uyghurs. Their culture is filled with music, dance, family, and love of tradition passed down by storytelling through the ages. For millennia, they have survived clashes in the shadow of China, Russia, and Central Asia. Rebiya Kadeer's courage, intellect, morality, and sacrifice give hope to the nearly eleven million Uyghurs worldwide on whose behalf she speaks as an indomitable world leader for the freedom of her people and the sovereignty of her nation. Her life story is one of legends: as a refugee child, as a poor housewife, as a multimillionaire, as a high official in China's National People's Congress, as a political prisoner in solitary confinement for two of nearly six years in jail, and now as a political dissident living in Washington, DC, exiled from her own land.

Rebiya Kadeer (född 1948) växte upp i Östturkestan, det som kineserna kallar Xinjiang, när Mao Zedong tog makten i Kina. Den nya politiken innebar förtryck och lidande, Rebiya blev ett ögonvittne till orättfärdigheterna. Trots att hon blev bortgift som femtonåring och födde elva barn, lyckades hon utmana det kinesiska kommunistpartiet till den grad att hon betraktades som en farlig fiende. Hon behandlades också som en. Hennes berättelse är en appell för det folk som sedan århundraden bor i oaserna kring den mäktiga Taklamakanöknen, längs den mytomspunna Sidenvägen. Rebiya Kadeer har uppmärksammats av Amnesty International, Human Right Watch, norska Ratio-stiftelsen och har även nominerats till Nobels fredspris.

Along the ancient Silk Road where Europe, Asia, and Russia converge stands the four-thousand-year-old homeland of a peaceful people, the Uyghurs. Their culture is filled with music, dance, family, and love of tradition passed down by storytelling through the ages. For millennia, they have survived clashes in the shadow of China, Russia, and Central Asia. Rebiya Kadeer's courage, intellect, morality, and sacrifice give hope to the nearly eleven million Uyghurs worldwide on whose behalf she speaks as an indomitable world leader for the freedom of her people and the sovereignty of her nation. Her life story is one of legends: as a refugee child, as a poor housewife, as a multimillionaire, as a high official in China's National People's Congress, as a political prisoner in solitary confinement for two of nearly six years in jail, and now as a political dissident living in Washington, DC, exiled from her own land.