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March 21 (Bloomberg) -- Businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer, freed last week after more than five years in a Chinese jail, said today the U.S. must broaden its push for democracy beyond the Middle East to include Muslim parts of western China.

"If it requires the U.S. to get into China and work from inside, that's fine,' Kadeer, 58, said in an interview in Washington as her daughter translated from Uighur. "The U.S. should take it to the next level, push as hard as possible.'

Kadeer, a self-described millionaire, spoke between coughs she developed while imprisoned for sending Chinese newspaper clippings to her husband in the U.S., an activist working for the rights of Uighurs. A U.S. congressional commission in 2002 called her detention a "significant irritant" in U.S.-China relations. Kadeer was released March 17 and flew to the U.S.

Kadeer's call for pressure on China came the same day U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Beijing and urged Chinese leaders to adopt a more open political system.

The Uighur entrepreneur, who was profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal 1994 as Xinjiang province's richest businesswoman, said she will remain in the U.S. as an advocate of Uighur rights, according to her 23-year-old daughter Akida Rouzi.

Kadeer said the Chinese government threatened to arrest her relatives if she continues to advocate for Uighur rights.

"There are thousands of people still in prison suffering like me, and they're as important as my five brothers and sisters back home," Kadeer said.

Kadeer said she hopes the U.S. spotlight will remain on her family there, and that the Chinese government will hesitate to harm them.

Xinjiang Arrests

Thousands of people have been the victims of human rights violations in Xinjiang, including arbitrary arrests, closed political trials, torture and summary executions, according to London-based Amnesty International.

The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China says about 45 percent of the 19 million people in Xinjiang are Uighurs, citing Chinese census numbers from 2000.

The Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic people, are the dominant ethnic group in China's westernmost region, the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

They have a different ethnic, cultural, historical and linguistic background than Han Chinese and have resisted control by leaders in Beijing since 1759.