Date of publication: June 2007
416 pages, 13.5 x 21.5 cm, 5.3 x 8.5 inches
ISBN: 978-3-453-12082-2

China’s Public Enemy Number One Tells Her Story

Rebiya Kadeer, China’s most well-known dissident, was at one time the richest and most powerful woman of the People’s Republic. But when she began to struggle for the rights of her people, the Uigurs, an Islamic minority in China, she became the most hated woman in the regime. She spent five years in prison, where she witnessed torture, rape, and executions. Her moving life story is just as dramatic as it is politically volatile. Rebiya Kadeer has been tirelessly fighting for the rights of her people for decades, who in the former East Turkestan of northwestern China, have been peacefully demanding their basic religious, cultural, and economic rights from Beijing. But the Chinese government has not been charitable. Justifying its rigid attitude against the Uigurs as a fight against international terrorism, it mercilessly persecutes, tortures and kills its enemies.

The price that Rebiya Kadeer must pay for her political engagement is high, far more than just the value of her department store empire. After human rights organisations around the world demanded her release from prison, she moved with her husband to the USA. Yet five of her eleven children are still in China, used by the government in effect as collateral against even minor political activities of their mother. Because of all that has happened, she came to the decision to work with Alexandra Cavelius in publishing her dramatic autobiography and so to bring attention to the prevailing conditions in China – a tremendously volatile and explosive political topic.

In the meantime, Kadeer’s struggle in exile against oppression and injustice has found worldwide interest. Early this year, 2006, while she was still in prison, her family accepted in her name the Norwegian Rafto Prize, presented in Washington, which is often seen as a precursor to the Nobel Peace Prize (as it was for Auung San Suu Kyi in 1991 and Shirin Ebadi in 2003). Not only by insiders is she is considered a prime candidate for this honour.
 
“I want to be the mother of the Uigurs, the medicine for their sufferings, the cloth to wipe their tears, and the shelter to protect them from the rain. -  Rebiya Kadeer