to China, the authorities released her from the hospital without executing the abortion, but have continued to subject her and her family to harassment and surveillance. While I strongly condemn the subjection of any ethnic group to coercive population planning, this practice is particularly harmful to the continuity of the Uyghur people, as the Uyghurs make up less than one percent of China's population. Furthermore, Uyghurs in Xinjiang are being subjected to strict limitations on the number of children they can have at the same time as the Chinese government sponsors the mass resettlement of Han Chinese in the region. In the wake of the July 2009 unrest in the regional capital of Urumchi, a group of Uyghur women gathered on the streets of Urumchi on July 7, 2009 to ask Chinese security forces what had happened to their husbands, fathers and brothers, who had been arrested en masse in indiscriminate security sweeps of Uyghur neighborhoods. Without the actions of these women, the international community may not have known about the mass detentions and forcible disappearances that were taking place in the city, since the Chinese government had used intimidation, detention and even beatings in an attempt to manage the actions of foreign reporters who had come to Urumchi. Many of those women simply disappeared after the July 7 protest. The long arm of the Chinese security apparatus also targeted Uyghur women as the state sought reprisal for the 2009 unrest. A 19-year-old Uyghur student Pezilet Ekber was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve following a closed trial in April 2010 on charges of involvement in violence in Urumchi. It is unclear what criminal charges Ekber was convicted of. Authorities ordered her father to leave Urumchi when he attempted to visit her prior to her trial. Officials also reportedly warned Ekber's parents to refrain from telling anyone about her sentence. Prior to the 2009 unrest, 32-year-old Gulmire Imin was invited to become an administrator for the Uyghur language Salkin website after having published a number of poems online. Gulmire was arrested on July 14, 2009, but her family did not receive any official documents regarding her detention. On April 1, 2010, she was sentenced to life in prison for the crimes of "revealing state secrets", illegally organizing a demonstration, and "splittism". Gulmire was sentenced on the same day as being tried in a closed trial. The intended result of such harsh sentencing is to frighten Uyghur women from becoming active in opposing Chinese oppression. I have experienced first-hand the repression of Uyghurs, through my own imprisonment and the imprisonment of two of my sons, Alim and Ablikim Abdureyim. Alim and Ablikim are currently serving lengthy prison sentences in Urumchi, in clear retaliation for my international human rights advocacy. There are reports that they have been tortured in prison, and that they have not been treated for serious medical ailments. As a businesswoman and philanthropist in the XUAR, I, like the Uyghurs around me, witnessed the slow eradication of my people's religion, language and identity. I tried to help my people out of poverty, give opportunities to marginalized Uyghurs and speak out against the injustices. Through the "Thousand Mothers Movement" I attempted to empower Uyghur women to start their own businesses. For these activities I paid a price- nearly six years in a Chinese prison. 3