Rushan Abbas, a Muslim Uyghur living in America, delivered remarks at the Hudson Institute in 2018 about China’s persecution of Uyghurs. Six days later, her sister was arrested by the Chinese government.
“My freedom of speech in America as an American citizen, my First Amendment right, cost my own sister’s freedom,” Abbas, founder and executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs, says.
Abbas describes her sister as someone who was living an “ordinary life.”
“She’s not famous. She’s not an educator. She never traveled to any of the Muslim-majority countries. But yet, [the] last five years and nine months, that she’s in jail now,” says Abbas, who was born in China but moved to America 35 years ago.
The Chinese Communist Party views “anything that’s different as a threat,” Abbas says. “So, the Uyghurs believing in religion and speaking a…
