Rebiya Kadeer

Rebiya Kadeer (Uyghur: رابىيە قادىر, romanized: Rabiye Qadir; born 15 November 1946) is an ethnic Uyghur Chinese businesswoman and political activist. Born in Altay City, Xinjiang, China Kadeer became a millionaire in the 1980s through her real estate holdings and ownership of a multinational conglomerate. Kadeer held various positions in the National People's Congress in Beijing and other political institutions before being arrested in 1999 for, according to Chinese state media, sending confidential internal reference reports to her husband, who worked in the United States as a pro-East Turkistan independence broadcaster. After she fled to the United States in 2005 on compassionate release, Kadeer assumed leadership positions in overseas Uyghur organizations such as the World Uyghur Congress.

Rebiya Kadeer was born in the city of Altay in Xinjiang. Along with her mother and siblings, she moved to Wensu County of Aksu to join her elder sister, who already lived there. In April 1962, she married her first husband, her sister's neighbor Abdurehim Tohti, after he pitied them and offered them accommodation.

According to her autobiography, Dragon Fighter: One Woman's Epic Struggle for Peace with China, her family were descendants of migrants who moved across the Tianshan Mountains to Gulja, Merket was the hometown of her mother's father and Khotan was the hometown of her father's parents.

According to her autobiography, Rebiya Kadeer's father served with pro-Soviet Uyghur rebels under the Second East Turkestan Republic in the Ili Rebellion (Three Province Rebellion) in 1944–1946, using Soviet assistance and aid to fight the Republic of China government under Chiang Kai-shek. Kadeer and her family were close friends with White Russian exiles living in Xinjiang and Kadeer recalled that many Uyghurs thought Russian culture was "more advanced" than that of the Uyghurs and they "respected" the Russians a lot.

Due to poverty, Rebiya had to enter her first marriage as a housewife and gave birth to six children from 1964 to 1976. But at some point she began independently making and selling clothes and other small articles for additional income.

During the Chinese cultural revolution she was suppressed for her efforts, as the Chinese government attempted to break up her family. She claims that the Chinese government told her ex-husband to divorce her. She recounts "They put pressure on him to divorce me because they accused me of secretly doing business. They said that it was wrong for me to do secret business."

Following her divorce, Kadeer opened a laundry service in 1976. She later remarried in 1981 to Sidik Haji Rouzi, then an associate professor, who is divorced by his ex-wife Mehmusa, a colleague of Rebiya's elder sister, for his activism. They moved to Ürümqi, having 5 children together.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kadeer engaged in cross-border trade, accumulating assets which at their peak were worth more than 200 million yuan. She became one of the five richest people in China, and her success earned her the nickname "the millionairess". The trading company she operated had businesses in China, Russia and Kazakhstan. Kadeer founded the Akida Industry and Trade Co, which owns a number of properties in Xinjiang province. These include The Akida Trade Center, the adjacent Kadeer Trade Center and the Tuanjie, or Unity, theatre in Ürümqi.