Australia is uniquely positioned to play a crucial role in helping China to improve its human rights record, said Ian Cohen, the greens member of the NSW Legislative Council after meeting one of China's most famous dissidents Rebiya Kadeer last week.
During her first visit to Australia, Mrs Kadeer met with Mr Cohen to discuss the continuing repression of the Uyghur Muslim minority in China.
Mr Cohen says that although he has heard of the persecution of the Uyghurs in China, it is the first time he has been made "fully aware" of the extent of the violations.
Last week, he became the first Australian politician to table a motion in Parliament that acknowledges Mrs Kadeer's humanitarian work. He also called upon the Chinese Government to say "Sorry" to the Uyghurs for the crimes it has committed, especially in the lead up to the Beijing Olympic Games.
Once China's eleventh richest person, Mrs Kadeer lives in exile in the US. She travels the world and has become the voice for the Uyghurs, who she says have been subjected to systematic "cultural genocide" for almost six decades in China.
Mrs Kadeer was also imprisoned for six years, after being charged with "leaking state secrets" in 1999. Her crime – possession of a few newspaper clippings, which she was planning to send to her husband living in the US. She was released in 2005, under pressure from the US Congress and human rights organisations.
International travel is, however, becoming increasingly difficult for Mrs Kadeer.
"Chinese Government has a habit of preventing me from any kind of international visits, saying that I am an international terrorist," she said at an Amnesty International forum in Sydney on February 28.
"So before I came to Australia they pressured Australian Government not to give me a visa."
Australia has the largest Uyghur community living in the West, numbering around 2000 members, the majority of which are in Adelaide. Around 200 Uyghurs live in Sydney.
Most Uyghurs living in Australia have escaped their homeland in East Turkistan—a land-locked country bordering China on one side and Pakistan on the other – as refugees.
"It is incredibly hard to escape our homeland," says Mr Zumbik, who requested his name be altered for this report. "After I come to Australia [in 2006] police took my parents four times," he said.
At age 17, Mr Zumbik and his twin brother started a new life in Sydney. Now they only speak to their parents a few times a year, fearing that their escape to the West will bring reprisals for family remaining in East Turkestan.
Mr Zumbik and his brother were among the lucky ones who could afford to pay to leave. Most cannot afford the $US10,000 and opt for the more dangerous "high mountain route" via Tibet, India or Pakistan.
There they attempt to seek refugee status at UN quarters. Some succeed, but many others are deported back, where they are charged as "terrorists" and face immediate imprisonment or execution.
The Chinese Communists annexed East Turkestan in 1949. It is now part of Mainland China and is formally known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region.
A charismatic and passionate speaker, Mrs Kadeer paints a disturbing picture of violence, ethnic cleansing and discrimination that continues to this day in East Turkestan.
"Today there is no religious freedom, they cannot enter a mosque or do their prayer. Those who do, are arrested or imprisoned," said Mrs Kadeer via a translator, while speaking at the Amnesty International forum.
The mainly Muslim community were once the majority in East Turkestan – a region rich in oil, natural gas, uranium, coal and gold and silver mines. Now over 50 per cent of the population are Mainland Chinese.
The Uyghur language was banned in 2003 under the so-called "bilingual policy". Children are now forced to learn in Chinese and many teachers were fired as they were unable to teach in the foreign language. Few can afford to send their kids to school and universities are virtually out of the question.
Particularly disturbing is the implementation of China's forced abortions in the region, despite the Autonomous Laws clearly stating that Xinjiang is excluded from the one-child policy.
"When women were pregnant they were loaded onto trucks and taken to cheap clinics and their babies aborted. Many mothers suffered post-abortion trauma and got sick."
"But the Government did not care. Many of them suffered psychological traumas and many died," said Mrs Kadeer, 60 and herself a mother of 11 children.
Two of her sons remain in jail, charged with subversion in 2006 after she was appointed to become the president of the World Uyghur Congress in Berlin. Mrs Kadeer believes that the move was to send a message of intimidation to stop her from speaking out in the West.
"Chinese police, after they beat up my sons very badly, they shamelessly gave the phone to my daughter to call me in the US…I was on the phone hearing my daughter crying that he is bleeding really badly, that he is almost dead...then the phone was taken away from her…Since then I have not heard the voice of my own sons."
And while the plight of the Uyghurs remains a long battle with the largest remaining Communist regime in the world, it is Mrs Kadeer's own words that leave many inspired to keep going.
Among those is Amnesty International's coordinator for the China campaign, Sophie Peer, who worked for months to help bring Rebiya Kadeer to Australia.
"When Rebiya landed in US she said: 'Now I can talk to anyone I want, I can see anyone I want, I can walk on the streets with bigger steps, I can hug my relatives, I can kiss my children'," said Ms Peer, fighting back her own tears.
Last month the Uyghurs marked the 11th anniversary of the Gulja Massacre. In 1997 an untold number of mainly youths were killed, 8000 disappeared and around 50,000 detained or abused, for seeking to peacefully end the continuing oppression by Beijing.
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