By Rebiya Kadeer
The Wall Street Journal Asia

It was the most agonizing moment in my life: worse even than being jailed for six years in China on trumped up charges. Earlier this month, I listened helplessly, as my daughter screamed down a cell phone from the side of a road in northwestern China that one of my sons was being beaten half to death by thugs in uniform.

Moments later, the phone line went dead and I was left to contemplate the high price I have paid for speaking out about the plight of my people, the 10 million Turkic Uighurs who have suffered under Communist Chinese rule since 1949. That price began with my arrest in 1999 while on my way to meet a U.S. congressional delegation in Urumqi, the capital city of my homeland, Xinjiang, in the far northwest of China. Newspaper clippings I'd sent to my husband in the U.S. were used to convict me of "leaking state secrets," a term so broadly defined in China that it can be used to encompass almost everything.

Had it not been for the Bush administration I would still be in prison today, serving my eight-year sentence for this "crime." Washington applied significant political pressure for my early release and in March 2005 it yielded results. Just days before a visit to China by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, I was handed over to American officials in Beijing and exiled to the U.S.

But even then I was not truly freely. Before I left Beijing, Chinese officials warned me that if I spoke out about the plight of the Uighurs, my children and my businesses would be "finished." Despite misgivings, I ignored these warnings. I knew that I would never have won my release without sustained international pressure. And now that I was free to speak, I felt I had a duty to try to apply the same pressure to secure the release of so many others who remain behind bars.

So I testified before the U.S. Congress and spoke to human-rights groups about the oppression being suffered by Uighurs. I told them about how Uighur women are sterilized or forced to have abortions because the Chinese government says they are too poor to afford to have families. I told them about how Uighur mosques are closed, their imams jailed, while parents are forbidden from teaching religion to their children. Human-rights groups estimate that there are thousands of Uighur political prisoners, and Xinjiang has the dubious distinction of being the only place in China where executions still take place for political crimes.

Recently I paid the price for speaking out when the Chinese government made good on its promise to retaliate against my family. A U.S. congressional delegation had requested to meet my family during their visit to Urumqi. On May 29, Chinese authorities responded by warning my three adult children living in the city to decline any such invitation.

Three days later, police took more drastic steps to prevent a meeting. The three children were driven out of the city, and the van stopped by the roadside, where two of my sons were badly beaten by police. In a further effort to intimidate me, one of the officers conducting the beatings handed my daughter Rushangul a cell phone, and told her to call me so that I could hear them screaming. One of my sons, Ablikim, was so badly beaten that he lost consciousness and had to be hospitalized before being taken to a detention center.

On June 13, Ablikim, together with Alim, the other son who was beaten, were charged with "plotting to split the state." No reason has yet been given for these charges. But if the Chinese authorities can jail me for eight years simply for mailing some newspaper cuttings, it shouldn't be difficult for them to find some similar pretext -- such as simply speaking to me on the phone -- to use against my sons.

Together with a third son, Kahar, aged 42, they have also been charged with tax evasion, in keeping with Beijing's usual strategy of using ostensibly nonpolitical offences as an additional way of targeting their political opponents. As part of their "investigation" into these charges, Chinese authorities have confiscated all of the financial records of my family companies. That makes good on the second part of their threat, to retaliate against my businesses if I dared to speak out. It also makes it almost impossible for my sons to prepare a defense against these charges.

China chose to use a U.S. congressional delegation visit to demonstrate its contempt for American and international concerns over its human rights abuses. Given their behavior, it is clear that engaging them on improving human rights and democratic reform is futile. The Bush administration has tirelessly lobbied Beijing on my sons' behalf, but their efforts have been ignored.

As a mother, I am left worried sick about the fate of my sons, since the charge of "plotting to split the state" carries the death penalty, and has been used to execute many Uighurs in the past. My greatest fear is that -- unless the world speaks out, as it did on my behalf -- Ablikim and Alim will suffer the same fate, after a trial in which they will be denied any real opportunity to defend themselves.

Beijing claims to be working to improve human rights. Recently, in Geneva at the inaugural meeting of the new U.N. Human Rights Council, China's Vice Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said in his address that Beijing will "continue to make efforts to promote all human rights." But, from my own experience, and that of my children, I can say there is no sign of any such improvements.
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Ms. Kadeer now lives in Virginia and is president of the Uighur American Association.