WASHINGTON—As the U.S.–China summit looms over Washington, family members and advocates see an opening to secure the release of the country’s political prisoners.

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 issue], 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 unfounded.

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.

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.

“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.”

To Hold a Daughter’s Hand

It’s difficult to know how many political prisoners there are in China. The Chinese regime doesn’t provide such information and asserts that it doesn’t hold them.

A database from human rights nonprofit Dui Hua Foundation, last updated in December 2025, recorded more than 50,000 entries.

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China has tracked more than 11,000 cases. Neither comes close to the true number, advocates say.

“It’s millions of people that have to go through that,” Sam Brownback, former ambassador at large for international religious freedom, told The Epoch Times. “These are people that have families like I do, and they’ve just done what they believe is right and stood up for freedom.”

In Hong Kong, the number of political prisoners has also been rising over the six years since Beijing imposed a national security law to crush dissent.

One of the most prominent is Jimmy Lai, founder of one of the largest pro-democracy newspapers in Hong Kong, which folded following a 500-strong police raid in 2021.

His daughter Claire was diagnosed with cancer weeks ago and just started chemotherapy in London.

Lai received the news at the maximum-security prison where he’s serving a 20-year sentence.

At a Sept. 16 hearing highlighting Lai’s case, Claire’s brother Sebastien pleaded for compassionate release so that their father could “sit beside his daughter in her hardest moment” and hold her hand.

“She wants nothing more than to have him with her for this fight,” Sebastien Lai said.

Read the full report for more stories. 

—Eva Fu; Stacy Robinson

BOOKMARKS

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed 37 Hepatitis A illnesses over the past year across four states that are possibly connected to frozen clams. The states were Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, and Pennsylvania; the clams have been recalled.

A federal judge on Wednesday declined to block President Donald Trump’s White House ban of three outlets for now, as he weighs arguments from news outlets and the government. The ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico was announced by Trump on Sept. 18 and began being enforced the following day.

Shareholders sued The New York Times on Sept. 23, alleging the company has failed to prevent false reporting about Israel and other topics. “Journalistic standards have been weaponized within the company to serve the personal agendas of unchecked editors,” their court filing says.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs rejected a bid to seek immunity for and testimony by a longtime special assistant to Dr. Anthony Fauci. All eight Republicans voted in favor, but two Democrats would have needed to cross the aisle to get the necessary two-thirds majority.

—Stacy Robinson