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'Free My Wife From Prison'
Sidik Rouzi
Saturday, February 16, 2002
Dear President Bush,
I am from the place the Chinese government calls
Xinjiang. As a member of the Uighur ethnic minority
now living in America, I wanted you to know how
grateful I was for your support when you said in
Shanghai in October that the Chinese leadership should
not use the
war on terrorism to excuse persecution of ethnic
minorities. I wanted you to know that my whole family,
including my wife, who is in prison in Urumqi (Xinjiang's
capital), and all our children oppose terrorist acts
of all kinds. So does just about every Uighur.
The Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon
deeply wounded me and my family and many other Uighurs.
Americans offer safety and a haven to people like me
who are in terrible danger in their own countries. On
Oct. 17, 1996, America granted me political asylum.
Now, President Bush, I ask you to help free my wife
from prison, so she can join her family in America.
When I was a student I organized a demonstration
against the Chinese government's policies. The court
sentenced me to 10 years in prison. After I got out of
jail and began teaching at the Xinjiang Education
University, I wrote some articles criticizing Chinese
historians. In China, a nation without freedom of
speech and the press, the articles got me into more
trouble. I found out that my name was on a government
blacklist, and I fled to America.
My wife, Rebiya Kadeer, is a successful businesswoman
who began work as a laundress and achieved much
through hard work and struggle. In 1997 she formed the
Thousand Mothers' Project to help Uighur women learn
skills so they could support themselves, and she ran a
free language school for Uighurs, many of whom were
illiterate.
She decided not to come to America with me because she
wanted to continue her projects and to help as many
Uighurs who needed her as she could. Rebiya was an
active member of China's official delegation to the
U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 in
Beijing.
But in March 1997 the Chinese government took Rebiya's
passport. Even though America had issued her a visa,
she never got her passport back. Our family had to
separate. My wife, along with five of my children, the
older ones, stayed behind in Xinjiang. My other five
children and one grandson are living with me in
America.
In May 1999, I called my wife and asked her to send me
some newspapers published in Uighur. She sent a few.
The Chinese government regarded this as a crime and
arrested her on Aug. 11, 1999. On March 9, 2000, she
was sentenced to eight years in prison. The
authorities said she was guilty of "illegally passing
information across the border." In November her appeal
was denied.
The newspapers my wife sent me are sold on the streets
of Urumqi. There was no law that prohibited sending
newspapers across the border.
Rebiya right now is locked up in Bajahu prison,
outside Urumqi. The letters that my children have
written and the one that I wrote and that we sent
through express mail have never been given to Rebiya.
In the Chinese system, family members can visit
prisoners once a month. But Chinese officials allow
some of my children in Urumqi to visit their mother
only once every three months, and for less than an
hour each time.
Since she was arrested almost 23 months ago, she has
had only five visits. I worry about her health and
whether she is getting any treatment for her ulcer. I
think she is not getting enough to eat. I worry that I
will never see her again. I worry that the children
here will never have their mother back.
When you visit Beijing next week, I hope you will
raise my wife's case with China's highest leaders, and
I hope you urge that she be freed on humanitarian
grounds so she can join me and other members of her
family here in the United States.
The writer is a former professor of literature at
Xinjiang Education University and a former contributor
to the Uighur service of Radio Free Asia.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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ETIC REPORT 2000 
