US officials call for release of detained retired Uyghur doctor

Read RFA coverage of this story in Uyghur.

Family members and U.S. officials have called on China to release a retired Uyghur doctor abducted six years ago and later imprisoned in retaliation for the outspoken advocacy of her siblings abroad.

Gulshan Abbas, now 62, was abducted by the Chinese Communist Party on Sept. 10, 2018, as apparent retribution for the advocacy activities of her sister, Rushan Abbas, founder and executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs based in the United States, and her brother, Rishat Abbas, president of the U.S.-based Uyghur Academy International.

In March 2019, authorities sentenced Gulshan to 20 years in prison on “terrorism-related charges,” though she steered clear of politics and was a well-respected retired physician in the Uyghur community.

“Though our efforts, speeches, and tireless activism have not yet succeeded in freeing my sister, Gulshan Abbas, from China’s prison, they have played a crucial role in exposing China’s crimes of genocide on a global scale,” said Rushan, a former Radio Free Asia employee. 

The United States and others have declared that the Chinese government’s mistreatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang, including arbitrary arrests and detentions, amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity.

On Tuesday, a bipartisan group of 12 U.S. congressmen led by Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a joint statement calling for Gulshan’s immediate release.

“Dr. Gulshan Abbas has suffered more than six years of cruel and unjust imprisonment at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party solely because of the tireless political advocacy led by her sister, who is a U.S. citizen,” they said.

“Leaders and human rights organizations worldwide have repeatedly called for her release,” they said. “No human being should be jailed by a foreign government for the perceived crimes of a family member. We reaffirm the call for the immediate release of Dr. Abbas.”

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Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China, wrote on X that Gulshan Abbas has spent six years in prison “on indefensible and politically motivated charges.”

“We repeat our call for the PRC to release her and all those Uyghur and Muslim minorities being held unjustly in Xinjiang,” he wrote, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield also took to X, writing that China must immediately release Gulshan and all prisoners of conscience.

More needs to be done at the U.N. level to free her mother, said Abbas’ daughter, Ziba Murat.

“Especially on the individual cases, this is where the high commissioner for human rights has the weight he needs to keep pushing privately, but also publicly,” she told RFA.

“Until China demonstrates the ‘tangible progress’ demanded by the U.N. human rights office, I urge the Human Rights Council members to step up monitoring and reporting and hold the government accountable,” she said.

Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.