On May 12, 2025, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urged the US Congress to reverse the shutdown of the Uyghur language service of Radio Free Asia (RFA), warning that its closure would severely undermine the global community’s access to independent information from East Turkistan — a region the Chinese authorities refer to as "Xinjiang."

RSF editorial director Anne Bocandé stated, “Despite constant threats, RFA’s Uyghur journalists have tirelessly and courageously exposed the full extent of atrocities committed by the Chinese regime. Without RFA’s Uyghur service, the world loses its only reliable window into one of China’s most restricted areas. And the Uyghur people lose their only independent voice.”

RFA’s Uyghur-language service has long served as the only professional, independent news outlet for the global Uyghur diaspora. While there are a few small websites and YouTube channels, none come close to RFA’s level of journalistic integrity, institutional knowledge, and global reach.

In an interview published by RSF in April 2025, veteran RFA journalist Gulchehra Hoja described the long-standing repression Uyghur reporters have endured:

“Since the day I spoke on the radio under my own name, I’ve been a target. In November 2001, China issued a ‘Red File’ on me, destroying all my videos, photographs, and recordings from before I came to the United States. They held my family hostage. They pressured my parents. I have never been able to return home. In February 2018, I learned that 25 of my close relatives had been sent to the so-called ‘reeducation camps.’ In total, 50 family members of six RFA journalists were abducted. We did not bow to these threats. We continued to report.”
(RSF, April 2025 – Interview with Gulchehra Hoja)

Since 2016, the Chinese government has carried out a brutal campaign of repression in East Turkistan under the pretext of combating terrorism — a campaign that numerous international bodies have identified as genocide. According to the latest RSF data, at least 79 journalists and press freedom advocates are currently imprisoned in the region, including Ilham Tohti, recipient of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

Meanwhile, China continues to exert transnational repression against Uyghur journalists living abroad, especially those who report on the regime’s abuses. Hoja’s testimony illustrates the deeply personal costs of such reporting — not just to the journalists themselves, but to their families.

The threat to Uyghur journalism has intensified following US President Donald Trump’s decision in March 2025 to defund the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). This move crippled several government-funded broadcasters, including Radio Free Asia. In early May, RFA announced mass layoffs, including the dismantling of its Uyghur language service.

According to a 2022 report by the Council on Foreign Relations, more than one million Muslims, predominantly Uyghur Turks, have been detained in what Chinese authorities call “reeducation camps” since 2017. These detentions have been accompanied by systematic surveillance, forced labor, and involuntary sterilizations. In 2021, then–Secretary of State Mike Pompeo formally declared the Chinese government’s actions a genocide, stating that it sought the “eventual erasure” of the Uyghur people through forced assimilation.

The potential silencing of RFA’s Uyghur service would leave a dangerous information vacuum — one that benefits only the Chinese government. For now, RSF and Uyghur journalists continue to urge the US Congress not to allow that to happen.

Dilshat Sultan

May 13 2025