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It is the story of false pretense and a fading portal.

Drifting through Kashgar, animating this ancient anachronism that stretches China westward, are the smells of naan bread dipped in onion and sesame, fresh yogurt, and the atmosphere created by the preserved 17th century tombs, a 15th century mosque, and a hotel that was once the Russian consulate built at the height of the "Great Game" -- the intense Britain/Russia competition for conquest in Central Asia.

It is also the center of life and culture for the Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs; also spelled Uyghurs), a Muslim Turkic people struggling for recognition and independence. And Chinese bulldozers have been erasing it from the map.

The Chinese government claims the demolition is necessary because the old buildings are vulnerable in the event of an earthquake, but many see the destruction of Kashgar's Old City -- which Uighurs consider their Jerusalem -- as emblematic of China's oppression of the Uighurs.

"This is our crime -- just being a Uighur became a crime to be punished," Rebiya Kadeer, the Uighurs' leader-in-exile told The Jewish State Jan. 22 in a wide-ranging interview about Kadeer's leadership of the Uighurs and current state of affairs of the Uighur people vis-a-vis China. Rebiya spoke through her translator, Zubayra Shamseden, who is her assistant at the International Uyghur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Kadeer's claim of China making it criminal to be a Uighur isn't meant as hyperbole. She opens her memoirs, published this year in English, by recounting the story of her conviction in 2000 of revealing state secrets for sending her husband newspaper clippings about the treatment of the Uighurs. She expected to be executed; she was imprisoned for five years instead.

"From this, I can confirm that truth -- or justice -- is far stronger than dictatorships," Kadeer said of why she was left alive. "And this also shows the greatness of God."

The Chinese government's clemency toward Kadeer may have been a public relations ploy, but Kadeer's survival elevated her own confidence that she and her movement were on the right path.

"I always thought and I always believed that through myself, with my leadership, my people would achieve the freedom they hoped," Kadeer said. With her release, that belief was strengthened; with her exile, it has remained.

The story of the Uighurs

The Uighurs live in what is known as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in western China, also referred to as East Turkestan. Turkic rebels have declared independence each time there has been upheaval in the territory, but China has ruled the area since 1949, declaring it an autonomous region in 1955.

China has used the presence of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a separatist movement that has employed violent tactics against China's government, as pretext to crack down on all resistance or protest by all Uighurs, to export ethnic Han Chinese to Xinjiang to dilute the Uighur population, and cut the Uighurs off from the outside world.

On that last note, last month Cambodia deported 20 Uighurs back to China and promptly received $1.2 billion in Chinese foreign aid. Human rights groups believe that those Uighurs are in grave danger; in fact, the United States would not deport Uighurs captured in Afghanistan back to China for fear they would be imprisoned, tortured, or executed.

"The deportation of 20 Uighurs to China from Cambodia is a kind of signal or message to the world -- not only to the Uighur people, actually to the world as well," Kadeer said. Throughout the interview, Kadeer stressed that the international community's standoffish response to the China-Uighur conflict only emboldens China.

Kadeer is mystified as to why Western nations won't send observers to Xinjiang; she isn't naïve, but rather dryly noted the seeming lack of interest in the Uighurs as compared to their neighbors in Tibet.

"Because there is no action from the international community, that's why the Chinese authorities are kind of comfortable to believe that they can do however they wish to do," Kadeer said. "That's what is happening right now."

During the administration of former President George W. Bush, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Kadeer. In an indication of how China's influence has increased among Western nations -- notably the U.S. -- that same courtesy has yet to be extended by the current administration.

"Due to the relationship with China, the request for a meeting with Hillary Clinton has been denied," Kadeer said of the current secretary of state. Kadeer was quick to add that she has a good relationship with human rights specialists at the State Department.

'The demolition of Uighur culture'

Because she considers herself to be the voice of the Uighur people, yet doesn't want her persona to undermine the populist optics of the Uighur struggle, Kadeer must strike a balance between speaking for her people and directing them. The latter, she said, is something she doesn't do, but that China claims she does in order to undermine the Uighurs by painting Kadeer as an absentee troublemaker.

This was the case, she contends, with the July riots in Urumqi. The incident started when thousands of Uighurs gathered to protest the murder of two Uighurs by Han Chinese. The protests turned violent, with China blaming Kadeer for incitement and Kadeer pointing the finger right back. (China's media blackout made it impossible to determine which side was responsible.)

Kadeer also dismissed the implication that encouraging peaceful protest is out of line.

"Although I don't have any connection with this July incident that took place in Urumqi, however, even if I call my people to do such a peaceful demonstration, I don't think it would be the wrong thing to do," Kadeer said.

The riots in Urumqi halted -- temporarily, China says -- the demolition in Kashgar. A public relations campaign touting the city's planned modern incarnation is still going forward.

Kadeer said Kashgar is the center of East Turkestan in every meaningful way, and therefore the Uighurs have been known -- more accurately, she says -- as Kashgari rather than Turkestani. Kashgar, she said, is the "cultural, historical, and national center of the Uighur people."

Other parts of East Turkestan, Kadeer said, have been assimilated into Chinese culture, but Kashgar has kept its Uighur identity.

If you were to travel to Kashgar or the surrounding area, she said, "you can see the marks of the Uighur culture and the civilization everywhere. The demolition of Kashgar is kind of the mark of the demolition of Uighur culture and civilization because this is another way of eradicating or assimilating Uighur culture and identity."

Finding inspiration in Israel

When asked about her family back home, Kadeer flatly said: "I don't have any connections with them right now."

She hears rumors that the Chinese government has evicted her children from their home and their school, but she offers that they may have left their school of their own accord. In a shot at Kadeer's exiled status, her children denounced her activities -- forced by China to do so, Kadeer said.

After the unrest in Urumqi, Kadeer's daughter Roxingul, jailed son Alim, and Kadeer's brother Memet publicly condemned her. "What my mother has done has no result. Separatists cannot separate such a great nation, neither can she," Alim reportedly said from prison.

"I believe in my children; they wouldn't do that voluntarily," Kadeer said.

Kadeer is the president of the World Uyghur Congress and the Uyghur American Association, the former of which has chapters throughout the world, which serve as communication and outreach centers on behalf of the Uighurs.

"We will struggle, and we will continue to publicize our cause through different information channels," Kadeer said, adding that China must be held to account for what amounts to an ongoing attempt at genocide, in that the "Chinese authorities are actually trying to destroy, or completely wipe out, the Uighur people, Uighur culture altogether."

Kadeer finds common cause with the Jewish struggle, she said; the response to her work has included an outpouring of support from the Jewish community.

"I believe in the Jewish people, because since I came out from jail and I got lots of support from lots of people, at the end, whenever I check who they are, in the end they [often] ... belong to the Jewish community," Kadeer said. "Because I'm thinking that whatever we have been through, you have been through as well -- the Jewish people also have been through."

The success of the state of Israel even serves as a source of encouragement for Kadeer with regard to the nationalist ambition of the Uighur people.

"Although the Jewish people have struggled for so long, in the end you had your own state," Kadeer said. "That's what we learn from you."