Campaign for Uyghurs is being honored with the 2025 Democracy Award for its tireless advocacy on behalf of Uyghurs and other Muslim communities persecuted for their faith and identity under Chinese Communist Party rule. Founded in 2017, Campaign for Uyghurs is a leading voice exposing the CCP’s campaign of repression in East Turkistan/Xinjiang. Through survivor testimony, international advocacy, diaspora empowerment, and interfaith coalition-building, the organization has helped bring global attention to the atrocities facing Uyghurs—from mass internment and forced labor to the erasure of cultural and religious life. Its work has been instrumental in galvanizing moral clarity and international pressure in defense of Uyghur rights.
Rushan Abbas, Campaign for Uyghurs’ founder and executive director, accepts the award on the organization’s behalf. In 2018, shortly after speaking publicly at an event in Washington, D.C., her sister, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, was detained by Chinese authorities and remains imprisoned to this day—a deeply personal loss that continues to fuel her leadership and pursuit of justice. Rushan is one of the world’s most prominent voices for Uyghur rights, leading extensive efforts across international and interfaith platforms to expose the CCP’s abuses and defend the rights and dignity of Uyghur communities.
The Democracy Award, presented annually by NED’s Board of Directors, recognizes the courageous work of individuals and organizations that have advanced human rights and democracy around the world. The award itself is a replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue raised by students in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989—a symbol of the universal aspiration for freedom. While the statue was destroyed, its image endures as a reminder that the human spirit cannot be silenced.
Remarks by Rushan Abbas upon accepting the 2025 Democracy Award for Campaign for Uyghurs:
Thank you, everyone, and thank you to the NED, its board, leadership, and staff, and Damon Wilson, for this tremendous honor and for your strong support for our work. Thank you for recognizing the Uyghur Muslims tonight.
This award reflects Campaign for Uyghurs’ dedication to advancing global democracy, defending natural rights, human dignity, and religious freedom, and empowering Uyghur women and youth to harness democratic systems as powerful tools to drive meaningful change.
What is happening to the Uyghurs is an active genocide, marked by mass detention, forced labor, sterilizations and abortions under coercion, forced marriages, and the criminalization of an entire faith.
But the Chinese regime’s repression does not stop at its borders. Uyghurs in the diaspora who speak out are also targeted through “kin punishment.” My sister, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, a retired physician who dedicated her life to caring for others, has now spent seven years in a Chinese prison because of my advocacy to expose the regime’s human rights abuses. She should be spending her years surrounded by her children and grandchildren, living in peace. But she has been unjustly imprisoned and denied the medical care she urgently needs in a cruel violation of international law and of our shared humanity.
One year after she was abducted, I left my career behind to fight for justice and freedom for Gulshan and for my people. I carry her photo with me wherever I go, because this is the only way I can feel close to her, the only way I can remind myself why I keep fighting, why I cannot stay silent. And none of this work for the Uyghur cause would have been possible without NED, thank you for standing with the Uyghur people in our darkest time.
In the Uyghur region, Beijing is using technology to erase a population in modern history by targeting the essence of who we are, our faith, and ethnicity.
It is orchestrating the world’s largest forced-labor scheme, tainting our food, our clothes, and infiltrating every aspect of our daily life. The surveillance system that enabled this genocide is now being exported to advance an authoritarian agenda.
Our homeland is a testing ground for a new model of authoritarianism, one that Beijing intends to spread worldwide, and so far, with alarming success. While whitewashing genocide, the regime uses economic and political power to intimidate the world and block accountability.
This is not an Uyghur issue anymore; it is China’s war on freedom and democracy, a war on women and children, and a war on humanity itself.
We stand at a turning point in history.
Our actions and choices today will determine the future of our children and grandchildren
Our faith, hope, courage, and the support of each of you are all we have left to carry on.
I accept this award on behalf of all those whose voices are silenced, including my beloved sister. Nothing in this world will slow me down. Please join me in this fight to protect humanity and the future of the free world we cherish.
