<span class ="kicker">The Epoch Times article on Smith hearing</span>'Families Call for Release of Loved Ones in China as Xi Visits US'

This press release from Representative Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ) was published on 2026-09-23 and titled "<span class ="kicker">The Epoch Times article on Smith hearing</span>'Families Call for Release of Loved One".

<span class ="kicker">The Epoch Times article on Smith hearing</span>'Families Call for Release of Loved Ones in China as Xi Visits US'

By Eva Fu Published September 23, 2026 WASHINGTON—These are the faces that Beijing doesn’t want the world to see. They are political prisoners, ranging in age from their early 20s to nearly 80, each held behind bars because their beliefs or speech do not align with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Each of them is a father or a mother, a son or a daughter. In the United States and elsewhere, someone is thinking of them, waiting for the day they will be allowed to go home. Among those waiting are a mother of an 8-year-old, and a daughter undergoing chemotherapy, wishing to hold her father’s hand. As the U.S.–China summit looms over Washington, advocates see an opening to make that happen. One phone call to Beijing from the Oval Office, they argue, and these detainees could walk free. On Capitol Hill, the plight of the political prisoners has galvanized bipartisan lawmakers ahead of the bilateral talks. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said at a presser that he believes the “release of the hostages” is on the agenda. Five Democratic lawmakers have also presented the president with the names of 22 prisoners he could bring up with Chinese counterparts. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) hosted two hearings this month championing their cause. “It’s like that could be me. That could be my wife if she lives in China,” he told The Epoch Times. “We’re all God’s children. If we don’t raise [this cause], who will?” Butterfly in the Kitchen On the kitchen counter of her Florida home, Ziba Murat keeps an embroidered image of a swallowtail butterfly. It’s a small, tangible piece of Gulshan Abbas, Murat’s reticent mother, who’s now in Chinese jail under a 20-year sentence on terrorism-related charges. The United States has deemed those accusations as unfounded. Ziba Murat holds a photo of her mother, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, at Murat's home in Virginia in 2024. Ziba Murat keeps a framed image of a butterfly that was cross-stitched by her mother, jailed political prisoner Dr. Gulshan Abbas, in her kitchen. It was hard for Murat to connect the person she knows so intimately with the reality of life in prison. Abbas, as Murat remembers, smiled quietly at jokes and embroidered for hours with a patience Murat never possessed. Even after retiring, Abbas continued to go out of her way to help Uyghur patients, getting up early to meet them at the hospital just so they could see the right doctor and have everything they needed, Murat told The Epoch Times. Murat misses her. She misses her mother’s humming in the kitchen and the wonderful stir-fries she cooked during the months she spent visiting the United States. When it was time for Abbas to leave in 2016, Murat wanted her to stay. She remembers her mother telling her: “I have a 10-year-visa. I can come back anytime I want.” Murat said she had a sinking feeling as she watched her mother disappear through airport security. That was the last time they saw each other in person. (L–R) Ziba Murat; her mother, Dr. Gulshan Abbas; and her younger sister Zamira Murat during a 2015 visit to the United States by Abbas, in this file photo. For the next two years, the two talked on the phone every day. Then in 2018, days after Abbas’s sister Rushan made a public speech denouncing the Party’s mass detention of Uyghurs, Abbas became unreachable. It took two years for her family to learn of her imprisonment and sentencing in a secret trial. Holding her baby daughter, Murat walked around Congress frantically looking for help. Never a news junkie, she became glued to the screen, scanning for the slightest hint of change in U.S.–China policy. Guilt gnawed at Murat as she wondered what she could have done, thinking about how she was here in the United States living her life while her mother was suffering in a Chinese jail. Murat still can’t bring herself to tell the truth to her 8-year-old daughter. When the girl saw a photo of Rushan holding a photo of Abbas, she asked Murat what was going on. Rushan Abbas, executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs, holds a photo of her sister, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, during a rally in New York City on March 22, 2021. Dr. Gulshan Abbas, a retired Uyghur medical doctor, was sentenced in a secret trial to 20 years imprisonment for alleged terrorist activities. Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images Murat responded that her grandmother was “very far away” and that they were asking people to bring her back. Through all these years, Murat said, the girl hasn’t hugged her grandmother. She knows her grandmother through stories, photographs, and the hope that one day they will finally meet. “That’s the cruelty of transnational repression,” Murat said at a Sept. 16 event on China’s religious freedom. “It did not harm only one person. It steals birthdays. It steals holidays, ordinary family moments that you can never get back.” Dr. Gulshan Abbas's image is shown during a congressional hearing by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party titled “The Chinese Communist Party