The exiled Uighur activist whom Beijing blames for inciting recent ethnic violence in China accused the Chinese government yesterday of forcing her imprisoned children to say she was responsible for the unrest.
China released a letter on Monday that it said was penned by close relatives of Rebiya Kadeer — including two of her children — blaming her for last month’s deadly riots by minority Uighur Muslims in her native Xinjiang, which the government says left 197 people dead and more than 1,700 injured.
But the 62-year-old US-based activist, who arrived in Australia yesterday, told reporters in Sydney that the Chinese government forced two of her children to speak against her. They are both in prison in China, where one was convicted of tax evasion and the other of subversion.
“If they ... refused to cooperate with the Chinese government, then their lives would be jeopardized,” she said through an interpreter. “In order to live in China, you have to lie.”
Kadeer, who lives in the US state of Virginia, is in Australia to attend the Melbourne International Film Festival, which will feature a documentary about her life.
The festival has been besieged by objections to Kadeer’s appearance, and several Chinese filmmakers said they would boycott the gathering. China — one of Australia’s most important trading partners — made repeated requests to the Australian government to refuse her a visa.
Kadeer said she did not understand why the “Chinese government so aggressively tries to sabotage” the film festival.
“Regrettably, this festival has nothing at all to do with politics, but the Chinese government has made it politicized,” she said.
Festival director Richard Moore said an official from the Chinese consulate in Melbourne asked him to pull the film about Kadeer, entitled 10 Conditions of Love. The festival’s Web site was also hacked — an attack Moore blames on his refusal to scrap the Kadeer film or her visit.
Protests by Uighurs in Xinjiang degenerated into communal violence last month, with Uighur and Han Chinese groups beating each other in the streets of Urumqi, the capital.
Beijing blames Kadeer for instigating the violence — the country’s worst ethnic unrest in decades — while Kadeer denies responsibility.
Kadeer served six years in a Chinese prison on charges of endangering state security before going into exile in the US in 2005.
Last week, she demanded that Beijing allow an international investigation into the disappearances of about 10,000 Uighur protesters whom she said were still missing after the unrest.
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