Rushan Abbas is a leading Uyghur human rights activist whose exercise of free speech in the United States led to the imprisonment of her older sister in China, now for seven years. In response, she left her career to become a full-time activist and founded Campaign for Uyghurs — an organization nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize twice. Through her work, Abbas shines a light on the Uyghur genocide and the repression of the Chinese government.
Read the episode transcript
Andrew Kaufmann: We are joined today by Rushan Abbas, who’s a leading Uyghur human rights activist and the founder of Campaign for Uyghurs, an organization that was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. She began her advocacy as a student in Xinjiang and has since spent decades working with US lawmakers, international organizations and grassroots groups to raise awareness of China’s genocide against the Uyghur people.
Since she’s been in the US, she and her family have been targets of transnational repression by the Chinese Communist Party, which is a fancy way of saying that the Chinese have continued to try to silence her despite being here in the US. She’s a powerful voice for justice speaking globally and advising leaders.
And she’s just released a new book. “Unbroken” one Uyghur’s Fight for Freedom. Rushan thank you so much for visiting us here in Dallas today
Rushan Abbas: Thank you so much for the opportunity. Actually, just to add on your introduction, Campaign for Uyghurs was also nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for this year, for 2025.
Andrew Kaufmann: For 2025. Well, you know, I probably wrote this introduction three years ago, which is why we’re three years behind. We’ll also here some more laughter that is the ever affable and delightful Chris Walsh, director of Global Policy at the Bush Institute. Chris, thank you.
Chris Walsh: Andrew, a real pleasure. I think we get to say this a lot, but really and truly mean it, talking to a real life superhero today,
So, looking forward to Rashan sharing her story and her great work. So thank you Rashan, for being here.
Andrew Kaufmann: Well, let’s, go right into that. Tell us about your work and, and the story that led to it.
Rushan Abbas: Thanks Andrew. And thank you Chris. So the Uyghurs today, we are facing a war on truth, war on humanity, war on faith, religion, and the war on our ethnicity. And this is not something just happening last several years.
Ever since the occupation of our homeland by the Chinese Communist Party. Establishment of the so-called Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region 70 years ago. The Uyghurs has been labeled and persecuted under the different names, different pretaxes. First, during the fifties, the intellectuals thought leaders, religious leaders, or anybody who can lead the community, they were targeted and persecuted and executed under the name of nationalists.
During sixties, while cultural revolution was happening, the oil intellectuals were targeted under the name of Counter Revolutionists. Which was the time for my father, mother, my parents, and as well as my grandpa. My grandpa was in jail for three years. My parents were always taken away. And then after that, now this recent, mass detention of the Uyghurs and the genocide of the Chinese Communist Party.
So, I wrote this book because it was time to share my story. Last seven years since I became a full-time activist, after my innocent sister’s detention on September 10th, 2018. I have been subject to relentless attacks and harassment, death threats as part of China’s transnational repression.
They took my sister as part of transnational repression when I first publicly spoke out against China’s genocidal policies and mass detention. 24 members of my husband’s family disappeared by 2018. On September 5th, 2018 I spoke in one of the public panels at Hudson Institute describing the mass detention and the genocidal policies, as well as outlining the fate of my in-laws. Five days later, they went after my sister, a retired medical doctor, not a political person. She’s kind, generous, very caring, very introverted, quiet soul, just living her very ordinary life. But last seven years, she’s suffering in jail because I practice my freedom of expression, freedom of speech in United States as an American citizen.
So this book tells the story of my family and it has a couple chapters of my father’s memoir, what he and my mother and my grandpa went through during the cultural revolution. And it also traces my journey as an advocate and the how we can seek accountability to hold China accountable for decades of my advocacy actually starting from co-organizing December 12th, 1985, university students protest in Urumchi. That is actually the first ever against the communism that we were able to organize and mobilize more than 20,000 Uyghur students from seven university and institutions. And that was the first ever protest against the communism in Eastern block, before the Tianmen Square protests or before the Eastern Europe and all that. So more than anything, I wrote this book to preserve the memory and break the silence the Chinese regime tries to impose. And they give voice for the millions of workers who cannot speak out freely.
Chris Walsh: And Rushan, if you could, just so our listeners know who your sister is, what is her name?
Rushan Abbas: Her name is Gulshan Abbas. Gulshan means flower garden. She is five years older than me. And since my mother passed away in 2004, she was like a mother figure to me. Very caring person. She retired early from practicing medicine due to health reasons, but yet she’s spending last seven years in dungeon.
Chris Walsh: Thank you. Thank you for telling us about her.
Andrew Kaufmann: So what precipitated that happening? What had you said that then came next? That the Communist Party took her.
Rushan Abbas: At Hudson Institute, the panel was named Xinjiang Emergency and the Mass Detention of the Uyghur Muslims. I had five minutes for my opening remarks, and I just give a brief introduction of the background, as well as what’s happening to the Uyghur’s under the communist rule since 1949 and recent policy under Xi Jinping with mass detention, how they are targeting the thought leaders, religious leaders, educators, professors, and I give names, and they put the face and the names to the million people disappeared at that time.
There were enough evidence and the satellite imageries of Chinese government detaining around million Uyghur people because of their ethnicity and religion. So I talked about this and I was giving the names and the ages of my in-laws, my parents in-laws, and four of my husband’s siblings and their spouses. And the 14 of their children, age from two, three years old to 17, 18 years old. 24 people from one family.
At that time actually, one of the CNN reporters asked former Chinese ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai about those camps. Why are you taking those Uyghurs to so-called reeducation camps, because that’s what they were saying.
And Cui Tiankai said, oh, by reeducating Uyghurs we are trying to make them normal persons. Imagine that, you know, because of the beautiful culture that we have, that we are proud of because of the language we speak, because of the religion that we believe, in front of this dictatorship government. In front of the Chinese government,
We are not even being recognized as these normal human beings.
That was the policy that I talked and the putting the names and the ages and the pictures to that mass detention. And because any kind of dictators and authoritarian regimes, they are afraid of the truth and I was speaking the truth.
And they want to silence me because the silence is the oxygen of the dictators. And what can they do? I’m in United States, I’m a free person. I can say whatever I want. While I was describing this situation and this speaking the truth, I have the truth in my hands.
So they did what they can do the best, taking our family members as a hostage.
And they went after my innocent sister. Actually, they took my sister and my aunt. Two closest relatives I had left back home after my parents passed away. These two women, they both are well educated, speaks fluent in Chinese, and they both are retired. My sister is a retired medical doctor. My aunt is a retired, school teacher and they live about 1400 kilometers. That’s over 900 miles, away from each other.
Yet the Chinese government went after both of them on the same day, just five days after my first public speech. So that was a very clear temptation of silencing me. Tried to intimidate me and after that I quit my full-time job. I was working as an international business development director for an architecture firm, and I had very successful life, successful business career. Instead of staying silent, I show them that it’s not going to work. I have the truth and I’m going to speak the truth. So I quit my job and I became a full-time activist after my sister’s detention. And I was writing op-eds, giving speeches and then telling the world about what China did.
While I was telling them the story of my sister and my aunt, a few months later, by January, February, 2019, we heard from some distant relatives in Europe that my aunt was being released. So they wanted to take that point away from me, that my aunt and my sister both are in jail right now because of me.
So they released my aunt, but my sister, first, the Chinese government denied her existence after I doubled down my efforts. The China Global Times Network and the Chinese News did the special articles on me, tried to demonize me.
And the China Global Times Network said Rushan Abbas was stealing other people’s photo and claiming this is her missing relatives and spreading lies about China. And Lin Jian who was the deputy director at the foreign ministry and then later became a spokesperson for MoFA in China, he tweeted with my photo and calling me CIA and Guantanamo torturer and a liar after he blocked me, of course.
When I did not stop, when I was traveling around the world, protesting in front of United Nations, protesting in the front of European Parliament and the front of Chinese embassy in United States, all of my social media has a picture of my sister or me holding my sister’s photo.
I continuously doing advocacy, try to be a voice for my sister and the millions of the other Uyghur people. About a year later, after the article actually calling me a liar, denying my sister’s existence, we heard from Radio Free Asia Uyghur Service that my sister was sentenced 20 years. So, we immediately called a press conference at the Congressional Executive Commission in China. Several lawmakers from both parties, Republicans and Democrats. They demanded my sister’s immediate release and the next day, it was covered all over the major media, including AP Reuters, BBC and Al Jazeera.
So one of the Reuters reporters in Beijing asked Wang Wenbin, the Chinese spokesperson for MoFA about my sister, asking several lawmakers in Washington demanding this retired medical doctors immediate release. What do you say about that? And one woman just spelled it out my sister’s name and said, Gulshan Abbas is charged accordance with Chinese law and she’s serving her prison terms.
Andrew Kaufmann: Even though she didn’t exist before.
Rushan Abbas: Exactly. Yeah.
Chris Walsh: Don’t ask those types of questions. Don’t point that out.
Rushan Abbas: Exactly. This is how ridiculous they are. You know, when they are lying, they cannot even keep up with their own lies straight. You called her, she’s a criminal. So which one, you know, am I a liar or is she a criminal?
Chris Walsh: Rushan, your story, I think, exposes how paranoid these totalitarian regimes are to protect their own power and to prolong their survival at any cost, at the cost of innocent people. But it didn’t end there, it wasn’t just attacking your family.
Back in the United States, we’re talking about a five minute speech at a think tank in Washington DC that has caused all this, but it has continued against you personally here in the United States. I know the American people are compassionate. They care about the struggles of freedom, the suffering of others who live under impression around the world.
But I think sometimes we get caught up a little bit in our everyday challenges, putting food on the table, sending kids to school, that kind of thing. And we just kind of miss some of these stories. So I wonder, just for our listeners who maybe weren’t aware of this or only had a passing knowledge of how bad the Chinese Communist Party is.
Would you talk a little bit about how they have targeted you, they being the Chinese Communist Party, has targeted you here in the United States, that being an American citizen and living within the borders of a free society has not protected you. Would you be willing to share a little bit about that?
Rushan Abbas: Our daily lives, actually, we are being targeted by both, digital and the in person attacks, harassments. Basically, those of us who are speaking out against the CCPs crimes, we face psycho psychological warfare. Google and the Microsoft often alerts me about hacking attempts from China. Just two weeks ago actually, my phone was being hacked and this set up all kind of stuff in my front of my eyes, and then there was alert message saying it’s being accessed from Hong Kong and the China. And just this morning actually, when I was sitting at the session over there, one of my staff received an email from me. Asking him to come out and meet me there. So he texted us and said, I just received this, and I told them to send it to the Citizens Lab to, to look for where it came from.
Chris Walsh: And so that people know you’re in Dallas, Texas today and they were asking your staff back in Washington, DC, as you, to come out.
Rushan Abbas: Exactly. So the more visible we are. And the harsher the tactics I received death threats, all because that I’m speaking the truth. There was a video clip on YouTube, calling for me, my husband, and the two other advocates, calling for our execution.
And then when we were attending our general assembly meeting last October, there was a picture, there was a email I received with a picture of the room I’m sitting saying that I know where you are, basically. And the picture of machine guns asking me to choose my favorite one so that they can use it to kill me.
My social media is flooded with attacks and the explicit content and lies and I had to disable the comment section. And also, there were deep fake videos of me speaking just to create problem among our communities.
And actually the funniest one is, one of them was Australian accent with perfect English. My English is not perfect, so.
Andrew Kaufmann: Yeah, that’s quite good.
Chris Walsh: Indeed.
Rushan Abbas: But, when we travel for our advocacy trips, I am being attacked on the streets, even in United States.
When I got to Paris and giving speech at university, there are Chinese students attacking me. And when I am in Vienna, Austria giving a presentation, I was hosted by the US Embassy and Chinese students there, attacking me and someone in Indonesia following me around.
And not like just following me to surveillance, but following me to intimidate me, and when I travel all around the world in Japan and the other part of Europe and Australia, when I get attacked like that, I understand Chinese government is behind this and they are trying to intimidate us.
But in America, in Boston, by my fellow Americans, that scares me. A lot of times people ask me, why am I continuously speaking out with that much risk, that much harassment, and the threats? Why do I continue this? Well, I continue because I left. I escape communism. I left China when I was 21 years old, came to this country without speaking much English at all, without knowing anybody. I came and I found freedom and democracy here in United States. But now that system, that communist authoritarian government, or the influence or their transnational repression followed me here. They are here, they are influencing our academia, our universities, our politicians, and silencing journalists.
You don’t see the major media reporting when there is a certain tons of human here, made it over to United States Customs and the Border Patrol seized by the customs and the Border patrol. In today’s world, how many innocent lives does that represent? That came from my homeland.
Why those journalists in mainstream media, they don’t report that. While we have so many advocates, feminists, or the people who supposed to speak out for any kind of social injustice. All these famous celebrities in Hollywood, famous athletes from NBA or famous talk show hosts, they claim to advocate for social injustice rightfully. That’s good. But where are they when the Chinese government is making the Uyghur women’s bodies the battleground of this genocide, while forcibly sterilizing them, forcibly giving them abortion, forcibly taking their children away? 1 million Uyghur children are taken from their parents, sent to state run orphanages, and to raise them as Han Chinese, with a Han Chinese Communist ideologies. Because of that forced sterilization and forced abortions and the forced marriages of the Uyghur women to Han Chinese men, the Uyghur birth rate dropped down to 0% in some of the mostly Uyghur populated areas, and Chinese government is not hiding this. They publicly tweeted the Chinese embassy in the United States, publicly tweeted those genocidal policies by saying, Uyghur women are no longer baby making machines. How come I don’t see those famous celebrities from Hollywood speaking out for those millions of Uyghur women and the 1 million Uyghur children? Millions of workers are taken from their professional lives like universities, from their jobs, from the factories.
They’re working and shipped them out as slaves to the forced labor facilities, and they are being used in the supply chains. In different parts of the China proper. You name it, you know anything from your favorite seafood to your tomatoes you use for spaghetti or cotton being used in all over the world or automobile.
If anybody purchase any new vehicle last five years, the Chinese government deliberately put something that made by Uyghur slaves on that car. The fabrics or the glasses, the windows or the tires, something. Try to make everyone complicit with this genocide while they are making profit out of the Uyghur genocide. The shirt on your back may have made with Uyghur slave. The purse that your wife is using may be made with Uyghur slaves, sweat, blood, and the tears.
Yet the companies are quiet because they are making profit. How do you compete with free labor? So to me, this is not just the atrocity or genocide that the innocent the Uyghur people are facing back home. This is not something the Chinese government is doing within their borders. This is about the freedom and the democracy of the future. This is about everything that the American people work so hard to establish in the last 50, 60, 70 years that is being at stake.
Andrew Kaufmann: So before we let you go, I really just want to know like, when was the last time you heard from your sister and how often do you ever get to speak to her?
Rushan Abbas: Last time I spoke to my sister was end of 2017, actually, even before she was arrested, just to protect her. I stopped talking to her after the mass detention.
But I couldn’t protect her. She ended up in jail anyway, so since her detention, we have not heard anything, any information. Seven years now, no one can visit her because, when some of our distant relatives or family friends went to visit her in the prison that she’s being held at, they said that they are not the immediate family members so nobody can come and visit.
She has two daughters and two son-in-laws and the four granddaughters all live in United States. Me and my other two older brothers. We all live in United States, so she doesn’t have immediate family member back home.
September 10th will be seven years anniversary of her detention, but we have not seen a picture or video or anything to show what kind of condition that she is currently.
Andrew Kaufmann: Well, the book is, Unbroken, by Rushan Abbas. It’s a must read if you want to kind of really truly understand other parts of the world and what’s happening, and the work that you’re doing and the campaign for Uyghurs. Nobel Prize nominated in 2025 is really important and I think it’s important to know that you always have friends here at the Bush Center. This is a place where we believe that this is an important topic and always welcome here.
Chris Walsh: Thank you for being a voice for the Uyghur people.
Rushan Abbas: Thank you so much. As I always say, unless if we speak out now, all of us, not just Uyghurs, anybody, all of my fellow Americans, people here in Texas, if we don’t speak out now, then the only voice left will be one of regret because we are all responsible for what happens next.
Andrew Kaufmann: It is true.Thank you so much.
Chris Walsh: Thank you, Rashan.
Rushan Abbas: Thank you.
