Threats and Abduction: The Chinese Tactics to Control the Uyghur Genocide

Rushan Abbas, founder of Campaign for Uyghurs, in Washington on Sep. 12, 2023. (Alejandro Heredia/The Epoch Times)

In a recent episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek spoke with Rushan Abbas, founder and executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs. In 2018, six days after Ms. Abbas spoke at a Hudson Institute event about the genocide of the Uyghurs, authorities from the Chinese Communist Party arrested her sister and her aunt. Her sister was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Jan Jekielek: It’s the fifth anniversary of your sister’s abduction. This abduction is a case in point around what you were testifying about today in Congress. What happened?

Rushan Abbas: Five years ago, I was a business development director, enjoying my family and advocating for my people against the genocidal policies implemented against them. In 2017, we heard that about one million Uyghurs were detained and put in concentration camps.

On September 5, 2018, I participated in a panel at the Hudson Institute here in Washington, D.C. I talked about China’s genocidal policies and outlined the fate of my in-laws. By that time my husband Abdulhakim Idris’s entire family had gone missing: his parents, his three sisters and their husbands, his brother and his wife, and 14 of our nieces and nephews. My talk was televised on YouTube.

Six days later, my sister, Gulshan Abbas, a retired medical doctor, and my aunt, a retired school teacher, both got arrested over 900 miles apart in two different cities as retaliation for my speaking out against the CCP. My freedom of speech cost my sister her freedom.

I realized the Chinese government did this to intimidate and silence me. I didn’t want them to have power over me, so I became a full-time activist as the voice for my people and my sister, and to expose China’s crimes.

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What the Chinese government didn’t realize when they took my sister is the power of love, because they never understand the power of love, the love I have for my sister, for my people, and for freedom and democracy.

Mr. Jekielek: How do you respond when people say you’re endangering your relatives by doing this?

Ms. Abbas: I feel guilty about my sister being in jail, but I can’t think only about myself or my family. The future of the free world is endangered, and the Chinese government is the biggest threat to our democracy.

We see CEOs, talk show hosts, Hollywood celebrities, and others protesting injustice, but where are they when the Chinese government is conducting genocide against the Uyghur people, when Uyghur women are facing forced sterilization, forced abortions, and forced marriages to Han Chinese men, when a million children are taken from their families?

If we don’t stop the Chinese government now, it will be our children and grandchildren who will pay the consequences.

Mr. Jekielek: You’ve been working at this for a long time. Can you chart that course for me?

Ms. Abbas: I was a reporter at Radio Free Asia in 1998 when it added a Uyghur service. I was the first Uyghur reporter and lived in Washington at that time. I was extremely frustrated when most favored nation status was granted to China because the only leverage the United States had over China was its human rights records.

Then we brought them into the World Trade Organization. I talked to people in the State Department and the Pentagon, and would list what the Chinese government was doing to the Uyghurs, the Tibetans, and the Falun Gong practitioners. Unfortunately, many people believed that if we invested in China, giving them technology, money, and privileges, they’d become a more democratic society.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics was actually China’s turning point on human rights. They acted like they respected freedom, when they were really oppressing the Falun Gong practitioners, the Tibetans, and the Uyghurs. The United States government knew what China was doing, but we did nothing about it.

Organ harvesting, for example, started with Falun Gong practitioners, but now it’s common for Uyghurs. There were video clips advertising halal organs in the Muslim majority countries and in Arabic speaking countries, yet we continue to appease the genocidal CCP regime.

Nobody can claim ignorance anymore. This is the information era, and there is overwhelming evidence. Even the United Nations Human Rights Council released their report on mass detention, forced labor, torture, and sterilization. All these are elements of the United Nation’s own description of the crimes of genocide.

Mr. Jekielek: For those that might not be aware, genocide doesn’t just mean the mass killing of people. Genocide means policies designed to eliminate a group of people by whatever means, including cultural assimilation and sterilization.

Ms. Abbas: Exactly. And while the Chinese government is conducting sterilization against Uyghur women, who serves in the United Nations as a special envoy for women rights? Peng Liyuan, Xi Jinping’s wife.

Mr. Jekielek: How is the CCP targeting Uyghur Americans?

Ms. Abbas: Mainly by holding their family members hostage. In some cases, the Chinese government makes the family members call their kids living in America and ask them to stay away from political activities like the hearing this morning. They’ll say, “If you want to see us alive, and if you want to see us outside instead of in detention, please don’t do anything.”

Mr. Jekielek: What is the path forward for the United States?

Ms. Abbas: The United States needs to enact legislation to protect Uyghur American rights. We need legislation that will address the social media being used by the CCP’s trolls. The Chinese government is using democracy to destroy democracy, to suppress American citizens.

The Uyghur activists, some politicians, and some journalists like yourself are making a difference, and we will continue to fight. I left my homeland in 1989 and came to the United States because I was looking for freedom. I will protect that freedom and democracy, and fight against the CCP.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.