Rushan Abbas, a Uighur American business consultant, hopes to get her sister and aunt freed from Chinese detention by swaying United States policy.
ROSSLYN, Va. — Speaking last month at a Washington think tank, Rushan Abbas relayed tales of suffering she had heard about China’s repression of ethnic Uighur Muslims — including the detention of members of her husband’s family in a widespread system of mass internment camps .
Within six days, Ms. Abbas’ ailing sister and elderly aunt disappeared from their homes in northwest China. No family members or neighbors have heard from them in more than a month.
Ms. Abbas is an American citizen and Virginia resident; her sister has two daughters and both live in the United States. They all assume the women are being detained in the camps, which Western analysts estimate hold up to one million people.
Ms. Abbas said they had fallen victim to the persecution against which she had been campaigning — and because of her.
“I’m exercising my rights under the U. S. Constitution as an American citizen,” Ms. Abbas, a business consultant, said from her 12th-floor office in Rosslyn, Va., overlooking the Key Bridge and Potomac River. “They shouldn’t punish my family members for this.”
“I hope the Chinese ambassador here reads this,” she added, wiping away tears. “I will not stop. I will be everywhere and speak on this at every event from now on.”
Ms. Abbas, 50, is among a growing number of Uighur Americans who have had family members detained by Chinese police and placed in the anti-Islam camp system that is spread across the northwest region of Xinjiang. Chinese officials describe the internment as “transformation through education” and “vocational education.”
The Washington area has the largest population of Uighurs in the United States, so stories like that of Ms. Abbas are now common here. Chinese officers aim to silence Uighurs abroad by detaining their family members.
But that tactic is backfiring. Although some Uighurs abroad are afraid to speak out for fear that relatives in Xinjiang will be detained, Ms. Abbas said, there are ones like her who are more willing to voice their outrage.
Those in Washington could sway United States policy toward China, at a time when officials are debating a much tougher stand on defending Uighurs. Some like Ms. Abbas have acquaintances at think tanks, including at the conservative Hudson Institute where she spoke on Sept. 5, and in Congress and the White House. Ms. Abbas has also spoken to staffers at the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which is led by Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, and Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey.
“Harassing the relatives of U. S. citizens is what Chairman Mao used to call dropping a rock on your own feet,” said Michael Pillsbury, director for Chinese strategy at the Hudson Institute, noting that repression of Uighurs would also erode relations between China and Muslim nations.
