Link: https://lens.civicus.org/interview/china-my-sister-has-been-in-a-chinese-prison-for-eight-years-because-i-exercised-my-freedom-of-speech/

Archived

[...]

Rushan Abbas, an Uyghur human rights activist and founder and executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs and chair of the Executive Committee of the World Uyghur Congress, explains how the danger of China's repression followed her into exile.

[...]

"[The repression] hit my family directly. In the early 1990s, as soon as I started working with US politicians, my father, a high-level academic in Ürümchi, lost his job at 59 in retaliation for my advocacy. In 2018, just days after I spoke publicly at the Hudson Institute, a Washington DC think tank, about the mass detentions, Chinese authorities abducted my sister Gulshan Abbas. She’s a retired physician, a mother of two and a grandmother of four, and she had never been political."

In December 2019, Chinese state media outlet CGTN denied my sister existed and accused me of making up cases and spreading rumours overseas. In December 2020, the authorities finally acknowledged Gulshan had been secretly sentenced to 20 years in prison, obviously on fabricated charges. Her case is one of the clearest examples of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses kin punishment and transnational repression to silence Uyghurs. My sister turned 64 this June. She’s still in a Chinese prison because I exercised my freedom of speech. We have no picture or video of her. No one has been able to visit her and we have received no independent report on her health or wellbeing.

[...]

Transnational repression has followed me ever since, in the form of cyberattacks, defamation, fabricated court documents, harassment and intimidation. A video appeared on YouTube calling for my execution and that of my husband, Abdulhakim Idris. I have received emails asking what colour rifle I would prefer to be shot with. After I published my memoir, fake books claiming to tell my life story appeared on Amazon. My organisation, Campaign for Uyghurs, has experienced persistent cyberattacks. My case is not unique. Uyghurs in the diaspora and those who speak out continue to suffer transnational repression.

[...]

Governments should use existing sanctions tools, including the Global Magnitsky Act, which allows sanctions on individual human rights abusers, to hold officials responsible for the genocide accountable.

Governments should also refuse to extradite Uyghurs to China. No one should be sent back to a country where they may face genocide.

Governments and international institutions must keep individual cases and the broader human rights crisis on the agenda. They should keep existing official genocide determinations in place and secure the release of political prisoners such as my sister. Human rights should never be treated as secondary to broader relations with Beijing.

[...]

The CCP imposes forced labour, mass arbitrary detention and imprisonment, mass surveillance and restrictions on cultural and religious life. In 2025, there were 3.36 million forced labour transfers and over a million children were placed in state-run boarding schools, where they are raised cut off from their cultural heritage. The Uyghur language is banned in schools. Uyghur books and religious texts have been burned. Uyghur women are subjected to forced abortion, sterilisation and marriage to men from the dominant Han ethnic group.

China’s government claims these policies bring stability, but stability for who? This is a system where the government exercises unchecked power to detain, punish, silence and watch people for their beliefs, their identity and their demands for human dignity.

[...]

I work for Radio Free Asia and am paid by the US to spread propaganda about China, and now they're punishing me...

Is this in reference to the subject matter of this post?

That's the author. She is a propagandist and you are spreading misinformation on behalf of the us state department. I'd recommend checking out Max Blumenthal or some othrr journalists' digging into this "genocide" narrative because it falls apart when you do the slightest amount of research... Also it's not a genocide when you have people whose culture became infested with salafist Islam and that's the element that China has worked to remove. There are a couple Uyghurs who run restaurants down the street from me. They speak Mandarin and aren't fundamentalists. China didn't force them to be that way. It's pretty normal.

You are coming off as the person spreading propaganda.

I've spread nothing. I've asked you a question because I wanted clarification. If you want to make points about what I should be looking at for clarification, share links please.

Also, punishing someone's family is fucked up, but you seem to only highlight it as punishment for the "perpetrator".

Edit: fixed perpetrator

Sorry thought you were OP. Literally all that account does is post anti-China stuff.

Also how exactly am I coming across as a propagandist for telling you the source here is a propagandist... I already recommended checking out Max Blumenthal. Also research who made this nonsense article (tHeY HaTe mY fReE SpEeCh) and while you're at it look up who Adrian Zinz is connected to. He is the source of this fake genocide narrative and is a crazy evangelical who thinks he's on a mission from God to fight Chinese communism... or just keep saying anyone who points out blatant US propaganda is the propagandist...

I appreciate the apology.

It's helpful to provide sources for your claims, that's why I asked for you to post links. It's also not hard.

You come off as spreading propaganda because you are making all these claims and providing no sources.

You also basically made a statement like knowing a couple Uyghers means the problem doesn't exist. And made it sound like Kin Punishment is acceptable because someone in the family is spreading propaganda.

Her job is to be a propagandist for the sake of encouraging the US public to support hostility towarda China. If she's telling the truth about her family (doubt) then I have very little sympathy for someone who wants to start ww3.

https://thegrayzone.com/tag/adrian-zenz/

Here's a link. You've got a lot of work ahead of you by the sounds of it...

Then provide more than 1 link. You aren't convincing anyone by saying so much and sharing so little. What, trying to be mysterious? Worried you won't get your link back?

Also, I've seen Chinese-posted videos of the way the Government works and handles people they don't like, this "propaganda" doesn't seem that far fetched.

You weren't kidding about OP though. They seem to have a vendetta against China.

Hey buddy, click the link. There are a ton of articles because it's every article with Adrian Zinz tagged in it. Like I said, a lot to dig into.

And yes, the Chinese government doesn't really screw around. That doesn't mean you should believe literally US state funded propagandists making insane claims. They're also less authoritarian than US allies so...

So putting her elderly sister in prison to punish her is ok?

Or are you straight up assuming that didn't happen?

It's still a single source. I clicked it, it brought me to the Gray Zone, which IMO, is not great journalism.

Edit:
Just to clarify, I don't like having to peel my facts out of a heavily opinionated article. The Gray Zone is written with so much opinion already added, I find I have to spend four times as long reading anything to actually find the facts.

If she's telling the truth about her family (doubt) then I have very little sympathy for someone who wants to start ww3.

Yeah but literally what about the family? You know, the person they put in prison? No sympathy for them?

As I've said multiple times, she is a paid propagandist. She is either lying about whay China did, which to be clear is her literal job, or she is lying about why her family is being detained.

I'd assume it's something along the lines of her sister is not allowed to communicate with her and/or her sister was detained for colluding with the US.

Here's another link hope it won't be too much. I kind of doubt you're botherihg to read anything since you keep replying so fast.

https://monthlyreview.org/articles/the-idea-of-the-uyghur-genocide-and-the-realities-of-xinjiang/

As I said elsewhere I doubt that her family member was arrested unless she was actively colluding with her US state funded family member. It's wild nobody here has any critical thinking when it comes to literally US propaganda. You all must have taken a while to realize Iraq wasn't behind 9/11...

Lmfao "I don't want to read a heavily opinionated article. Unless it's by someone who works for the US State Department."

Yikes

You're putting words in my mouth. I never said I trust the OP source either. You come out the gate aggressive at me.

You fail to provide more than 1 source for your own claims.

Have a nice day.

"Hope it won't be too much"

My guy that was a short novel of a read lol

That's a lot of words to not answer the question about punishing someone by imprisoning a family member instead.

Interesting that you made this account solely for talking about this.

Their user is also less than one day old. You made an admirable attempt to engage, but at the end of the day it was engagement with a burner account. I recommend a client that points out comments from new accounts.

Meh, I could see the <1day tag next to their username. I knew what I was wasting my time with. Still wanted to see if they actually had anything to provide.

Did point out that OP almost exclusively posts anti-china content, which I wouldn't have even checked if burner-boi hasn't pointed it out.

Taiwan is its own free country

She is either lying about whay China did, which to be clear is her literal job, or she is lying about why her family is being detained.

https://www.uscirf.gov/religious-prisoners-conscience/forb-victims-database/gulshan-abbas

https://humanrightscommission.house.gov/DFP/Countries/China/Gulshan-Abbas

https://hrf.org/latest/hrf-calls-to-free-uyghur-doctor-gulshan-abbas/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_1989

@cmonbuddy@piefed.social

Do you take yourself seriously?

You are accusing others of lying and being biased - and then you post the Monthly Review. This is a medium which has been openly spreading pro-Chinese propaganda. In 2020, for example, this outlet republished the outline of a report by the so-called "Qiao Collective" that disputed allegations of genocide and slavery in China's persecution of Uyghur Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.

On its website, the Qiao Collective says explicitly that they are supporting the Chinese Communist Party (I don' want to link to this site as it is full of garbage, everyone willing to see it will easily find it).

This "Monthly Review" and its 'peers' are explicitly spreading pro-Chinese propaganda, they don't even try to hide it.

You then accusing others of being biased and then posting such sources shows how out of touch you are.

Edit: Others have already posted better sources to inform about China and Xinjiang, you'd better be clicking these links.

Less than a day old, and childishly grinding an Axe. Because someone doesn't post good things about China. We can all guess with high accuracy which of three instances is likely their main. Actually I think it could probably be narrowed down to two even.

Not to mention, even if the woman or her sister were publishing/spreading propaganda. Imprisonment etc is unjustified. Fucking statist brain rot.