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On July 4, 2026, I woke up to extraordinary news: Chinese Christian pastor Ezra Jin Mingri had been released from prison and reunited with his family in the United States.
For the first time in nearly two decades, China had released a political prisoner. More importantly, his release showed that when President Donald Trump makes the freedom of an unjustly imprisoned person a priority, Beijing listens.
I hope he will do it again.
My mother, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, is a 64-year-old retired physician serving a 20-year sentence in a Chinese prison on fabricated charges. To understand why her case matters to the United States, you must understand why she was imprisoned in the first place.
My mother was taken because the Chinese Communist Party wanted to silence my aunt, an American citizen living in the United States.
In September 2018, my aunt spoke at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., criticizing Beijing’s persecution of the Uyghur people. Six days later, my mother disappeared.
The message from Beijing was unmistakable: If you use your freedom in America to criticize the Chinese Communist Party, we can punish the people you love.
That is not merely repression inside China. It is transnational repression directed at an American citizen for speech protected by the First Amendment, delivered through the imprisonment of her family thousands of miles away.
And it should concern every American.
Freedom of speech means little if a foreign government can impose consequences on Americans for exercising it. Beijing should not get to decide what an American citizen can say in Washington, D.C. by threatening, detaining, or imprisoning her relatives in China.
Yet for nearly eight years, that is exactly what the Chinese government has been allowed to do to our family.
My mother was ultimately sentenced to 20 years in prison. We have received little proof of life and have had virtually no contact with her. This September will mark eight years since she was taken.
And the consequences of her imprisonment extend far beyond China’s borders. My mother has 24 family members who are American citizens. For eight years, those Americans have lived with the consequences of Beijing’s decision to retaliate against speech made here in the United States.
My nearly eight-year-old daughter has never hugged her grandmother. She knows Grandma Gulshan only through the stories I tell her and the hope that they will someday meet.
Time matters. My mother is 64 and suffers from high blood pressure, Type II diabetes, and an eye condition that requires regular medical care to prevent blindness. Every additional year she spends in prison raises the possibility that the damage to her health — and to our family — will become irreversible.
That is why Pastor Jin’s release gave me hope.
President Trump has already demonstrated that direct American engagement can secure the freedom of someone imprisoned in China. His administration now has an opportunity to build on that success.
As President Trump prepares to meet President Xi Jinping this September, I ask him to make my mother’s freedom a priority.
Bringing Gulshan Abbas home would reunite a family that includes 24 American citizens. But it would do something larger, too.
It would send a message to Beijing that American freedom of speech does not end where China’s intimidation begins. The Chinese Communist Party cannot be permitted to silence people in the United States by imprisoning their mothers, fathers, sisters, or brothers abroad.
Americans should never have to choose between exercising their constitutional freedoms and protecting the people they love.
My mother has spent nearly eight years in prison because Beijing tried to force an American citizen to make that choice.
President Trump can make it clear that America will not accept it.
China has already shown that it can make the decision to free a political prisoner. President Trump should ask President Xi to make the right decision again — and send my mother home.
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Ziba Murat is a Uyghur American advocate whose mother, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, has been imprisoned in Xinjiang since 2018.
