WASHINGTON, April 16, 2026 — A bipartisan group of U.S. senators is calling on Chinese President Xi Jinping to release detained Uyghur doctor Gulshan Abbas. The appeal comes ahead of an expected meeting with the U.S President Donald Trump, who is scheduled to visit Beijing next month.
The resolution was led by Sens. Dick Durbin and Ted Cruz. It urges Trump to raise her case directly with Xi.
“No one should fear political imprisonment for standing up for democracy and freedom,” Durbin said in a press release announcing the resolution. He called for the “immediate release” of Abbas and others.
“As an American citizen, it’s heartening to see my mother’s name recognized in the U.S. Senate,” said Ziba Murat. “It’s a reminder that she hasn’t been forgotten.”
Abbas is a retired physician. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence since 2019. U.S. lawmakers and rights groups say her detention is linked to the overseas activism of her sister, Rushan Abbas.
Murat said she wants Trump to raise the case “clearly and directly” with Xi.
“My mom turns 64 in June and has multiple chronic health issues,” she said. “She should be home with her family and grandkids, not in prison.”
Murat pointed to the timing of the detention. It came days after Gulshan Abbas’ sister, Uyghur rights activist Rushan Abbas, spoke at a Hudson event in Washington in September 2018 about abuses in the Uyghur region, also known among Uyghurs as East Turkistan. Abbas later became executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs.
“She was detained six days after her sister spoke out,” Murat said. “My mother is a retired doctor. She is a grandmother of four. She is not a political figure. And yet she became a target.”
“It has been more than seven years,” she said. “She is still in prison.”
“The Chinese Communist Party is a brutal authoritarian regime,” Cruz said in the same press release. He said the resolution seeks to “secure the release of wrongly detained individuals.”
The resolution also calls for the release of Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai and Chinese Christian detainees, including Pastor Jin Mingri, Pastor Gao Quanfu and Gao’s wife, Pang Yu.
Lawmakers say the cases reflect a broader pattern. They point to the detention of Uyghurs and restrictions on religious and political expression.
“The Chinese government has persecuted and wrongfully detained thousands of people,” Sen. Tim Kaine said in the press release.
Researchers and rights groups say more than one million Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples have been held in detention in China since 2017.
In 2021, the United States has determined that China’s actions against Uyghurs constitute genocide and crimes against humanity. The resolution is nonbinding.
Mamatjan Juma is the Executive Director of Uyghur News Network (UNN) and a longtime newsroom leader with more than 18 years of experience in international journalism. He previously served as Deputy Director of Radio Free Asia’s Uyghur Service, where he managed editorial operations, standards, and cross-language workflows and helped guide major coverage of China’s mass detention system, forced labor networks, and the expanding surveillance state in the Uyghur region (East Turkestan).
Under his editorial leadership, RFA’s Uyghur Service received major journalism honors, including the Burke Award (2019) and the MINS Award for excellence in international broadcasting. Its reporting has been cited by major international outlets, helping shape global understanding of the crisis. Juma is fluent in Uyghur, English, Mandarin Chinese, and Uzbek, and also works as a translator.
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