VOC Condemns Detention and Expulsion of Uyghur-American Scholar from Malaysia 

Chinese Communist Party pressures third-country government to detain and deport a US citizen, setting a dangerous precedent for human rights advocates 

WASHINGTON, DC — The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) use of the Malaysian government to detain and expel Abdulhakim Idris, executive director of the Center for Uyghur Studies and a prominent Uyghur-American scholar and human rights advocate, in a brazen act of transnational repression targeting a United States citizen.

On March 29, 2026, Idris arrived at Kuala Lumpur International Airport for an advocacy trip to launch the Malay-language edition of his book, Menace: China’s Colonization of the Islamic World and Uyghur Genocide. Despite holding a valid US passport and having no legal basis for denial of entry under Malaysian law, Idris was immediately pulled aside by immigration officers, had his passport seized, and was placed in a detention facility without explanation for 21 hours. He was given only one small meal and one bottle of water before being placed on a deportation flight to the United States, escorted by four police officers. His Malaysian partner confirmed that the denial of entry was the direct result of pressure from Beijing.

The incident is the latest escalation in the CCP’s systematic campaign to silence Uyghurs on the world stage. A detailed account of the ordeal was published today by Freedom House, whose transnational repression database documents that Uyghur individuals are involved in more than 20 percent of all physical cases of transnational repression recorded worldwide since 2014.

The timing of Beijing’s intervention is not coincidental. Just two days before Idris’s arrival in Kuala Lumpur, the Center for Uyghur Studies published a report documenting the CCP’s systematic influence campaigns across Southeast Asia, including Malaysia’s deep economic dependence on China as a key lever of political compliance. Idris was detained before that research could reach the Malay-speaking audiences it was written for.

Idris and his wife, Rushan Abbas — founder and executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs — have dedicated decades to exposing Beijing’s genocide against the Uyghur people. Twenty-four of Idris’s family members have been missing since 2017. His father died in Hotan in January 2023; Idris learned of it seven months after the fact from an anonymous source. The circumstances of his death remain unknown. Rushan Abbas’s sister, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, a retired physician with no political involvement who suffers from serious medical conditions, has been imprisoned since September 2018 on sham charges. Such acts are the deliberate instruments of a state that severs diaspora advocates from their families to buy their silence.

“The CCP’s campaign of transnational repression was designed to silence me, but it has had the opposite effect,” said Abdulhakim Idris, executive director of the Center for Uyghur Studies. “Having already lost so much, I refuse to live in fear. I will continue to travel, to speak, and to expose the truth about what is happening to the Uyghur people before the European Parliament, the United Nations, and throughout the Muslim-majority countries. Beijing is working so hard to keep us silent, but I will not stop until there is accountability and justice for every Uyghur family living under the terror of this regime.”

“Beijing has succeeded in using a third-country government to detain and expel a United States citizen for the crime of speaking the truth about the Uyghur genocide,” said VOC Senior Fellow and Director in China Studies Dr. Adrian Zenz. “This is transnational repression at its most brazen, and it demands an unambiguous response. If the international community allows this precedent to stand, no American advocate, journalist, or researcher operating abroad is safe from Beijing’s reach.”

VOC urges the United States government and the international community to take seriously the implications of what happened in Malaysia for Uyghur advocates, for American citizens, and for the broader effort to hold the CCP accountable for its systematic human rights abuses. The CCP’s campaign against its critics does not stop at China’s borders — and neither should the attention of the free world.

For press inquiries, please contact Serkan Tas at serkan.tas@victimsofcommunism.org or (202) 629-9500.