China's government charged that Rebiya Kadeer, a millionaire-turned-dissident based in Washington, masterminded the riots that began Sunday in the city of Urumqi and have left at least 156 dead.

Mrs. Kadeer has worked since being released from a Chinese jail in 2005 to lift the profile of her ethnic group, the Uighurs, who populates the Xinjiang region of northwestern China.

Rebiya Kadeer at her home in Fairfax, Virginia, in 2006. Associated Press

China's official Xinhua news agency said police have evidence that the separatist World Uyghur Congress, led by Mrs. Kadeer, masterminded Sunday's rioting. The report said police in recent days had intercepted telephone calls from Mrs. Kadeer to her younger brother predicting, "something will happen in Urumqi."

In a telephone interview Monday from Washington, where she has worked since being exiled from China after her release, Mrs. Kadeer said she champions self-determination for the Turkic-speaking Muslim minority, but did nothing to foment unrest.

"I consider myself as the voice of the voiceless Uighur people in the West," Mrs. Kadeer, a 62-year-old grandmother who wears her hair in two thick gray braids that drape to her waist, said in a high-pitched tone, speaking through an interpreter. "It is a new cause, a new thing."

Mrs. Kadeer says that as Muslims, Uighurs have a difficult time winning sympathy in the West, and she expressed regret that no government has officially endorsed her cause. After the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., former President George W. Bush accepted Beijing's contention that one Uighur group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, should be labeled a terrorist organization.

"This created a negative impression. We have many difficulties in introducing ourselves," Mrs. Kadeer said. Mrs. Kadeer did meet twice with Mr. Bush, including in July 2008 shortly before he traveled to Beijing to attend the Olympics.

A shattered windscreen falls off as demonstrators rock a bus in Urumqi, Xinjiang, on Monday, in an image from China Central Television. Reuters

Far less scrutinized internationally than China's thorny rule over the Tibetan region is its control of the massive Xinjiang territory where Urumqi is located and which is home to Uighurs and other ethnic minorities.

Though the territory is steeped in history as the crossroads between China and Western Europe known as the Silk Road, Uighurs have little of the mystique of the Dalai Lama with his Buddhist people.

In the U.S., the ethnic group may be best known for the political headache Washington found recently in handing a group of Uighurs freed from the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay and once suspected of terrorism. Washington concluded the Uighurs could face trouble in China if they were returned home, but it was also unwilling to allow them to settle in the U.S., and instead reached a deal to send a group to Bermuda.

Two decades ago, Mrs. Kadeer looked like just another Chinese entrepreneur making it big. She had opened a major department store in Urumqi that introduced stylish clothes to a remote province better known for raisins and desert.

By her own estimate, Mrs. Kadeer was soon China's wealthiest woman. The Communist Party embraced her success by offering her official positions.

In another Chinese television image, a man sits bleeding on a street in Urumqi. Agence France-Press/Getty Images

Yet when Mrs. Kadeer was granted the rare opportunity in 1997 to speak to an official assembly in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, she took the risky step of highlighting the plight of her fellow Uighurs, from taxes to political prisoners, according to her new autobigraphy.

"I'm quite sure that the president and the delegates in this hall aren't accurately informed about the true conditions I've spoken of. The right to self-determination in our Autonomous Region should be put into action," she recalls in the book.

While she was admonished by some officials for her frank remarks, Mrs. Kadeer says she was encouraged by others. And she remained in political favor until two years later, in August 1999, when she was blocked from meeting a U.S. delegation during its trip to Urumqi.

Mrs. Kadeer was then jailed for over five years and claims in her book that she was tortured during that period.

Under pressure from Washington, Chinese authorities released Mrs. Kadeer in 2005, and she was immediately exiled. When she ignored instructions to keep quiet in exile by speaking widely in the U.S., her adult children were arrested and at least two remain in prison, she says.

Today, Mrs. Kadeer operates from offices on Pennsylvania Avenue, a short stroll from the White House. She heads various Uighur groups, including the World Uyghur Congress and the Uyghur American Association. The National Endowment for Democracy says it supports some of her groups with grants totaling around $600,000 annually. "Her mind is always going forward, not back," said Louisa Greve, director for East Asia at the National Endowment for Democracy.

Write to James T. Areddy at