Oct 19 2026 (IPS) -
CIVICUS discusses the persecution of Uyghurs and activism in exile with Rushan Abbas, an Uyghur American activist, founder and executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs and chair of the Executive Committee of the World Uyghur Congress.
Rushan Abbas
Why did you leave Xinjiang?
I was born in Ürümchi, Xinjiang’s regional capital, during the Cultural Revolution. I started my activism as a student at Xinjiang University, where I co-organised pro-democracy protests in 1985 and 1988. In 1985, we mobilised over 20,000 students from seven universities, institutes and technical schools across the city. We demanded equality and an end to the forced sterilisation of Uyghur women and to nuclear testing in the region.
Those years brought a brief period of openness, but retaliation against the organisers came quickly. I was interrogated and, although I graduated with the highest academic honours, my job offer was withdrawn. All my prospects were denied. So in 1989, I left for the USA to pursue higher education and look for freedom and democracy.
Has danger followed you into exile?
It has, and it 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.
I quit my job after Gulshan’s detention to campaign full time for her freedom and for the Uyghurs suffering what’s effectively an ongoing genocide. 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.
Why does the Chinese government target Uyghurs?
The Chinese government targets us because of our distinct ethnic identity and heritage and because we are the owners of the land we inherited from our ancestors. Our Muslim faith and our culture and language stand in the way of Beijing’s absolute control. Our faith in God, rather than the CCP, as the ultimate authority threatens the regime. This fear drives the regime to try to erase our culture and beliefs.
Economic interests are also at stake. The Uyghur region is rich in natural resources, including coal, natural gas, petroleum, rare earths and critical minerals such as uranium. It accounts for 20 per cent of the world’s cotton, 35 per cent of its solar-grade polysilicon, used in solar panels, 10 per cent of its aluminium and PVC production and 70 per cent of China’s tomato production.
Geography matters too. The region connects China with Central Asia and the Middle East and is a gateway to Africa and Europe, including the Balkans. Once the heart of the ancient Silk Road, it now hosts four of the six major Belt and Road Initiative land routes, part of China’s global infrastructure programme. This makes it key to China’s economic and geopolitical ambitions. The result has been ever-tighter control and securitisation, which has escalated into full-fledged genocide.
What does this persecution look like?
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.
How is Campaign for Uyghurs pushing for accountability?
We document abuses, bring evidence to policymakers and international institutions and support Uyghur-led advocacy. Central to our work is equipping Uyghur women and young people in the diaspora with the knowledge and practical skills to lead advocacy efforts. We have run around 20 advocacy workshops worldwide, and we are proud to see a new generation of young Uyghur activists taking the lead.
We also work with civil society groups, interfaith organisations, think tanks and universities to turn evidence into tangible policy action. Our campaigns have contributed to US laws, including the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, and our coalition-building has helped put the Uyghur crisis on the political agenda.
With investigative partners, we exposed Volkswagen’s sham audit and its attempts to conceal links to state-imposed forced labour. We worked with The New York Times to reveal that cotton from the Uyghur region was used to make the viral Labubu dolls manufactured by Pop Mart. This work connects evidence from the ground with public scrutiny and action.
Why has there been so little international action since the UN’s landmark 2022 report?
China has enormous economic and political leverage. Many governments and companies are reluctant to jeopardise diplomatic, trade and investment ties, or have simply been pressured into silence. Such is China’s influence that the UN refused to debate human rights abuses in the Uyghur region.
There is also an often underestimated propaganda problem. China has spent years building a global media apparatus. It uses state broadcasters, partnerships with foreign media outlets, sponsored trips for journalists and influencers and coordinated messaging to drown out credible research and human rights reporting. China does not necessarily need the world to believe its propaganda. Creating doubt and making people hesitate to act can be enough.
Time is another obstacle. Every day without meaningful consequences normalises abuses, and a human rights crisis becomes the accepted status quo.
What should governments and the UN do?
Lawmakers should pass legislation to address transnational repression, ban products made with state-imposed forced labour and provide stronger protection for Uyghurs seeking refuge.
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.
CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.
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