WASHINGTON: The Nobel Peace Prize will raise expectations for US President Barack Obama to stand up for human rights around the world, exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer said on Friday.

Kadeer, who has often been tipped for the prestigious prize for her fight on behalf of the Chinese minority group, offered congratulations to Obama.

"I am very happy that he got it. Now he has to do something with the award. It raises expectations on him to stand up for oppressed nations," she told AFP.

"Uighurs are getting killed even know. With the award, he should know how to talk to dictatorships like China," said Kadeer, head of the World Uighur Congress who lives in exile in the Washington area.

Kadeer, who spent six years in a Chinese prison, has become a top nemesis to Beijing for her campaign on behalf of the largely Muslim Uighur community based in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang.

Some 200 people died in Xinjiang in July in China's worst ethnic blood-letting in decades that pitted Uighurs against China's majority Han.

Obama is set to pay his first visit to China next month. Some lawmakers sharply criticized Obama this week for declining to meet Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who is also under pressure from China, ahead of the president's trip to Beijing.