WASHINGTON – Before U.S. President Donald Trump flew to Beijing last month, Uyghur activist Rushan Abbas hoped the summit would bring a breakthrough for her imprisoned sister, who has been detained in a Chinese prison for nearly eight years.
Both the Senate and House passed resolutions just days before Trump’s departure urging him to push for the release of six Chinese Communist Party detainees – including her sister, Dr. Gulshan Abbas.
“I am asking the leader of the free world to look a dictator in the eye and demand the return of my sister, a soul who has been stolen by the machinery of hate,” Rushan Abbas wrote in a May 14 commentary in The Hill.
Trump’s meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, however, failed to produce any immediate breakthroughs for the Uyghurs’ decade-long plight, and neither side mentioned human rights even coming up.
The news hit Uyghurs living in the United States differently. Some were bitter, but Abbas said she was trying to remain hopeful.
