A campaign by China’s government to rewrite the cultural identity and history of the country’s minority ethnic groups and political dissidents is increasingly being waged on American shores, activists told a U.S. congressional hearing on Thursday. The Tibetan, Uyghur, Mongolian and Chinese activists said that while the United States once stood as a bastion of free speech and a redoubt of cultural preservation for groups targeted by the Chinese Communist Party, many now feared Beijing’s extensive reach.
Rishat Abbas, the president of the U.S.-based Uyghur Academy, told the hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China that his sister Gulshan had been jailed in China on a 20-year sentence due to his and other family member’s anti-government activism abroad.