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For the past two decades, I have lived with a heavy burden: My human rights advocacy has come at the cost of my family. My parents have been unable to see their American children and meet their grandchildren. I could not participate in my father's funeral after he passed away in April last year.
China has sanctioned me due to my role in the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which has been vocal in its critiques of the Chinese government and recommendations to hold them accountable for violations of religious freedom and atrocity crimes. In particular, my work on Uyghur human rights for the past two decades has resulted in retaliation against my family members back in China.
My late father remarked a few years ago that he wished he had passed away already so he could have left this world with good memories. It pains me beyond words that I could not be there to carry my father's casket in the end and to hold my mother to mourn together. Upon receiving the news of my father's passing, I still carried on with my trip on behalf of the U.S. government agency. But I will feel forever deprived of what should be a fundamental thing in the free world: to attend a loved one's funeral and say final goodbyes.
My experience is commonplace in the Uyghur diaspora.
A year after losing my father, I am still struggling to reunite with my mother and introduce her to my children. The Chinese officials' refusal to let my mother go shows they are waiting for her to die as my father did, which would allow them to close the case without being pressed to account for their actions.
I have not seen my mother since 2004. This Chinese brutality is beyond the pale. My mother lost the life she knew and her husband of 53 years. She deserves to spend whatever time she has left in this world surrounded by her American children and grandchildren.
Mom often asks an impossible question: "What's my crime, to be separated from my children for so long? If my crime was to bring you, Nury, to this world and be your mother, then 20 years should have been enough punishment."
I can't give her an answer.
I am heartsick about the family separation that we have endured, and my inability to partake in the basic comforts of normal family life. The time with loved ones that the Chinese government robbed me and many Uyghurs of worldwide cannot be returned. The harm China caused us is irreparable.
China has stonewalled us, delaying the process without giving a clear answer as to why my mother can't leave. This is disappointing—but expected. The real question is: What is the Biden administration doing today and next week to secure my mother's release?
In comparison with more complicated cases, this is far less complicated. It does not set many precedents for success with any such cases if the administration is not successful on this one. Despite various U.S. officials raising the case since 2009, no progress has been made. I am not willing to hold the United States blameless for this. In all our push to preserve diplomacy, that very engagement has not produced results.
I had hoped to have a fresh start in life in my adopted country. I am sometimes in disbelief that my entire life, I have been unable to entirely escape the long arm of the Chinese State, even having moved away from China and become an American citizen and a congressionally appointed commissioner in a U.S. government agency.
Much more action is needed from governments around the world to ensure that they combat the brutal tactics used to target democracies and dissidents around the world.
Chinese leaders must face diplomatic consequences for inflicting harassment and retaliatory sentencing, as well as exit bans, on family members of U.S. citizens and asylum seekers. Officials responsible should be sanctioned and visa bans imposed. The United States government must continue to prioritize not only resettling those fleeing persecution by the Chinese regime, but also ensure that they find true safety and freedom.
If my own case, as a relatively privileged Uyghur-American serving the American people in an official capacity, is not met with progress, what hope do so many others have?
President Biden must intervene, in my own case as well as those of many others facing similar persecution. Doing so will send a strong signal on a larger scale about how the U.S. takes seriously acts of transnational repression.
I will continue to speak up against the severe human rights abuses of the Chinese government, even if it is through my own tears, to make Dad proud. But will the U.S. government demonstrate that its commitment to diplomacy goes beyond lip service?
Nury Turkel is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of "No Escape: The True Story of China's Genocide of the Uyghurs." He is also co-founder and Board Chairman of the Uyghur Human Rights Project and Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own, and do not represent those of the Commission.
