Gulchehra Hoja is now one of the most prominent voices in Uyghur journalism. She began her career with Chinese state media in the 1990s and has since dedicated herself to the fight for press freedom. Currently in exile in the United States, she has long faced repression from the Chinese government for reporting on Beijing’s persecution of Uyghurs.
“China punished my family for my journalism. After losing my brother and my father, I am asking the United States to help bring my mother home.”
I have lived a life in which I had to choose between staying silent and speaking the truth.
I chose to speak.
For more than two decades, I served the American public as a journalist, reporting on the persecution of Uyghurs and documenting the Chinese government’s abuses in East Turkistan. I believed journalism mattered because truth matters — and because people living under repression deserve to have their stories heard.
I knew there could be a price for speaking.
What I did not know was how much my family would have to pay.
Over the years, Chinese authorities detained or disappeared 25 members of my family. My family was targeted because of my work as a journalist in the United States.
My younger brother, Abduqeyum Hoja Kaisar, was the first member of my immediate family to be detained because of my journalism. He was taken in September 2017 and spent more than three years in detention.
He was eventually released. But the suffering did not end.
In 2021, my brother and my mother appeared on Chinese state television and were made to speak against me.
On Aug. 3, 2026, my younger brother died suddenly at his home in Urumqi. He was only 51.
My family waited about a week before telling me. They were afraid I could not bear the news.
Then, on Sept. 3, my father died at the age of 85.
I had not seen my father or my younger brother for 25 years.
Now my mother is alone.
And she is still in China.
For 20 years, my mother has hoped to travel to the United States to see me and her grandchildren. But her efforts to leave China have repeatedly been blocked. She has told us that local authorities accepted her paperwork and then refused to let her leave, telling her that she was not allowed to cross the border.
She does not need anyone to explain why.
She knows.
And I know.
This is not only my family’s story.
In 2018, then-Sen. Marco Rubio, who was chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, recognized the broader pattern. In an opening statement at a CECC hearing on Xinjiang, he referred to the detention of family members of U.S.-based Uyghur journalists employed by Radio Free Asia and said such detentions appeared intended to silence effective reporting and human-rights advocacy. He also welcomed me by name as a witness at that hearing.
That was eight years ago.
The United States recognized the problem then.
But for families like mine, the consequences have continued.
Today, Marco Rubio is secretary of state. President Donald Trump is in the White House.
I am asking the U.S. government to look at my mother’s case not simply as a private family matter, but as another human consequence of the transnational repression that the United States has already recognized.
I am asking the United States to use every appropriate diplomatic channel to urge the Chinese government to allow my mother to leave China and reunite safely with her daughter and grandchildren in America.
I am not asking America to solve every injustice in the world.
I am asking America to help one elderly mother come home.
I chose to speak because I believed in America.
I believed in the promise of this country to defend freedom, protect human rights and stand with people who are punished for telling the truth.
My children were born and raised in America. They are American citizens. I have taught them to believe in this country — not simply because of what I have told them about America, but because of what America does when its values are tested.
Their pride in America will not come only from my words.
It will come from your actions.
My mother wants to come home. She wants to see the grandchildren she has known mostly from a distance. She wants to embrace them. She wants, after decades of separation, to be with her daughter.
She is still looking toward her family — and toward America — with hope.
I wept when I learned that my younger brother was gone.
I wept again when I lost my father.
But I still did not stop speaking the truth.
Because silence is exactly what repression asks of us.
China uses the people we love as weapons to silence us.
I will not let that happen.
In 2018, the United States recognized what was happening to families like mine.
Today, I am asking America to act on that recognition.
Please help my mother come home.