Kadeer at the National Press Club in Washington on Monday. Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images
By Mark Memmott
Though she has just a handful of staff at a tiny office in Washington, Rebiya Kadeer is a thorn in the Chinese government's side because she is fighting for the freedom of her fellow Uighurs in western China, NPR's Frank Langfitt reported on Morning Edition:
She is, as The Washington Post puts it, the "mother of the Uighur movement."
Kadeer tells Frank that the Chinese government is trying to "destroy Uighur culture." As Frank also reports, the government is trying to put much of the blame on recent clashes between Uighurs and Han Chinese in Urumqi on Kadeer's shoulders.
Also on Morning Edition today, co-host Renee Montagne spoke with Columbia University professor Robert Barnett, who studies minority populations in China. He says the Chinese government appears to have taken a much different approach toward the unrest among Uighurs than it has toward Tibetans. He also wonders whether the unrest in western China may force the Chinese government to reconsider some of its migration policies:
categories: Foreign News
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