Uighur Leader Says Children's Letters Were Coerced

China has repeatedly said Kadeer triggered the unrest and this week Xinhua news agency quoted a letter from one of her children explicitly saying she was responsible.

"I believe it is against their conscience, against their will, to force them to say things against me. I believe that it is a form of dictatorship imposed upon them by the government," Kadeer told journalists.

Xinhua said the letters were written by Kadeer's son, Khahar, and daughter Roxingul, as well as younger brother Memet. Some of her children still in Xinjiang have been jailed or held under house arrest for years.

State television also broadcast interviews with the two children, and Kadeer's brother, in which they castigated the exiled leader. The government denies coercion was involved.

"Kadeer's relatives wrote the letter and were interviewed of their own will," the state-run China Daily paraphrased an unnamed Xinjiang government official as saying. "They were not forced by the government."