Jewher Ilham was 18 when she and her father were set to board a plane to visit the United States in 2013 and Chinese authorities stopped and arrested him.
Jewher and her father are Uighur Muslims, a persecuted ethnic minority group. “The Chinese government [has] been making people disappear,” Jewher said. “People could be taken on the street or their home and sent to a so-called concentration camp.”
She was among the survivors of religious persecution featured during the U.S. Department of State’s 2019 Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. Learn more about her story and the treatment of Uighurs in China in the video above.
This video is part of an ongoing series documenting the faces of religious persecution. Others include the story of Pastor Andrew Brunson.
