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China Rejects Prominent Xinjiang Businesswoman's Jail Appeal
BEIJING (AFP) - A Chinese court has rejected an appeal against an eight-year prison sentence by prominent Uighur businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer despite pressure from Washington for her to be set free, officials said on Monday.
Kadeer's appeal was rejected on November 28th and she was sent to Bajiahu prison in Urumqi, the capital of China's restive northwestern Xinjiang region, said a spokesman for Xinjiang High Court who identified himself as Mr. Yang.
Both the U.S. State Department and human rights groups have taken up her case aggressively since she was convicted in March of "illegally passing intelligence outside China" and jailed.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution demanding Beijing free Kadeer, her secretary and her son, who were all jailed for allegedly sending clippings of public newspapers out of Xinjiang.
U.S. officials have repeatedly raised the case of Kadeer, who was arrested in August 1999 shortly before she was to meet U.S. congressional staffers in Xinjiang to complain about political prisoners in the far west Chinese region.
The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy warned in a statement Monday that Kadeer was suffering from serious heart disease, a gastric ulcer and gall bladder problems.
"Her heart disease is worsening and she has not been given any medicine for one year," said the statement, adding that a daughter had managed to see her once in jail during which the pair were forced to speak in Chinese instead of their native Uighur and the conversation was taped.
China has refused to comment on why Kadeer's appeal was left hanging for many months, but it has always insisted she was fairly convicted under the law.
A wealthy businesswoman, Kadeer was a representative of Uighur (mostly Muslim) minorities in the nationwide Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body comprising people from various walks of life, between 1993 and 1997.
Her husband Sidik Rouzi, a former Chinese studies professor at Xinjiang University, was a political prisoner for many years before he went to the United States.
He worked as a broadcaster for Radio Free Asia in the United States and has been highly critical of China's treatment of the Uighur minority in Xinjiang.
Tensions between the majority Muslim population, most of them Turkic-speaking Uighurs, and the ruling Han Chinese government have long plagued Xinjiang and have been exacerbated by China's policy of moving millions of the majority ethnic Han Chinese into the region.
China has executed at least 24 Xinjiang separatists this year alone.
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