The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, has invited the daughter of a Uyghur doctor to attend President Trump’s State of the Union address in Congress on Tuesday, February 24th. The woman’s mother has been imprisoned for over seven years for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party’s policies.
The invited woman is named Ziba Murat, and her mother, Gulshan Abbas, has been detained by the Chinese authorities since 2018. Murat and her aunt, Rushan Abbas, have long publicly stated that they believe Gulshan’s detention is a retaliatory measure against Rushan for openly criticizing the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghur people, including mass detention and forced labor.
Rushan Abbas is a Uyghur American human rights activist who serves as the Executive Director of the Washington D.C.-based advocacy organization “Campaign for Uyghurs” and the Chairperson of the Executive Committee of the World Uyghur Congress based in Germany.
According to The Hill, Johnson stated in a released statement, “In 2018, days after Gulshan Abbas’s family spoke out about the brutal mistreatment of Uyghur Muslims by the Chinese Communist Party, she was arbitrarily detained and arrested in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.”
“As we continue to expose China’s human rights abuses to the international community and call for the release of all unjustly detained individuals, I am honored to invite Dr. Abbas’s daughter – Ziba Murat – as my guest to President Trump’s State of the Union address,” Johnson continued.
Murat and her mother have been the focus of attention from members of the House Select Committee on the CCP and other lawmakers.
Last October, members of the House Select Committee on the CCP, including Chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI), and the Co-Chairs of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK) and Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), jointly wrote to President Trump requesting that he personally raise the cases of Abbas and other detained individuals with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at their next meeting.
President Trump is expected to visit China from March 31st to April 2nd.