Speaker Johnson to Bring Ziba Murat, Daughter of Detained Gulshan Abbas, Uyghur Doctor as State of the Union Guest

By Uyghur Times | With reporting credit to The Hill

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson will host Ziba Murat, the daughter of imprisoned Uyghur doctor Gulshan Abbas, as his guest at Tuesday’s State of the Union address.

According to reporting by The Hill, Dr. Abbas has been detained in China since 2018. Her family has long maintained that her detention was carried out in retaliation for the activism of her sister, Rushan Abbas, who has publicly criticized Beijing’s mass detention campaign and forced labor policies targeting Uyghurs.

“In 2018, Dr. Gulshan Abbas was forcibly detained and arrested by the Chinese Communist Party in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region days after her family member spoke out about the CCP’s heinous treatment of Uyghur Muslims,” Johnson said in a statement first provided to The Hill.

“As we continue to shine an international light upon China’s human rights abuses and call for the release of all those unjustly detained, it is my honor to invite Dr. Abbas’ daughter – Ziba Murat – as my guest at President Trump’s State of the Union Address,” he added.

Dr. Abbas’s case has previously been raised by members of the House Select Committee on China and other lawmakers.

In October, Rep. John Moolenaar, who chairs the committee, along with Sen. Dan Sullivan and Rep. Chris Smith of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, wrote to President Donald Trump urging him to personally raise Abbas’s case and the cases of other detained individuals during his next meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

President Trump last met Xi in October in South Korea, where discussions reportedly focused largely on trade. According to The New York Times, Trump is expected to travel to China from March 31 to April 2 for further talks with Xi.