Today, President Donald J. Trump and Chairman Xi Jinping are set to hold bilateral talks on trade and artificial intelligence. While this may appear to be a promising avenue for cooperation, one of the Trump administration’s top priorities should be to secure the release of political and religious prisoners held hostage by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

This concept is not purely sentiment. It is leverage. When America leads with our values instead of our shopping list, we set the terms. Defending religious freedom on American soil is how you push back against CCP transnational repression and remind Beijing that cooperation is not a blank check.

As Americans, we must stand up for religious freedom in all countries, for all people. Religion is often the first target of tyrants, because when belief and conscience are controlled, societies become ripe for “genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.” We have seen this play out in historical totalitarian regimes, like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and the same atrocities and dehumanization tactics that these brutal regimes committed against people of faith are happening today in China.

Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri’s release was a real win. Trump asked, and Xi moved. His freedom was rightfully celebrated by many, but there are still millions of Uyghur Muslims detained in brutal internment camps (so-called reeducation camps) in Xinjiang, China. Upon imprisonment, Uyghurs are subjected to forced sterilizations and abortions, forced labor, and the denial of medical assistance.

Like other totalitarian regimes, China uses fear to undermine religious views, which threaten its state-centered ideology. The repression of ethnoreligious minority groups in China has been thoroughly documented, and yet the systematic imprisonment and genocide of Uyghurs continues.

The meeting will not end the camps overnight. It can, however, place the issue squarely on the agenda, press for the release of political prisoners, and make clear that discussions on trade and artificial intelligence cannot be separated from China’s ongoing human rights abuses.

Dr. Gulshan Abbas is one of the cases that should sit on the table. It deserves our immediate attention and action as it highlights the urgency of China’s authority reaching into our own backyard. In 2018, Dr. Abbas was disappeared in Xinjiang days after her sister, Rushan Abbas, spoke out in the United States. That is not a coincidence. That is punishment aimed at an American family for using the First Amendment on American soil.

Dr. Gulshan Abbas’s case is the clearest example of CCP transnational repression. The message was unmistakable: Chinese-American families who use their First Amendment rights here will see relatives pay the price in China.

Dr. Abbas’s daughter, Ziba Murat, was a guest of Speaker Mike Johnson at this year’s State of the Union, yet her mother remains unjustly imprisoned. If the oppression of the Uyghur population and other minority religions in China continues with impunity, then the CCP’s threat looms over those safely on American soil with loved ones in China — that they may exercise their First Amendment rights on U.S. soil, but it will certainly be met with consequences across the ocean.

I have dedicated much of my professional life to religious freedom because I believe it is not one right among many. It is the first one listed in the Bill of Rights for a reason. Speech, press, assembly, and petition are empty if a government can dictate what you may believe.

Jefferson put it plainly: a nation’s liberties are not secure once the people stop believing those liberties are a gift of God. The West was built on the conviction that every person has inherent dignity because they are made in the image of God. Strip that out, and the rest of the architecture starts to crack.

Trump already proved personal pressure can work. It worked for Pastor Jin. It should work for Dr. Abbas. It should work for the Uyghurs still in the camps, as well as Pastor Wang Yi, still serving a nine-year sentence for leading an unregistered church; the Panchen Lama, missing since childhood; and Zhou Deyong, a Falun Gong practitioner whose wife and son live in the United States. Sadly, the list of political prisoners in China is much longer than this.

If we keep negotiating and cooperating with a power that is openly at war with our values — and committing the same atrocities we have gone to war to stop — we do not look sophisticated. We look like we have forgotten who we are, and we hand China the moral high ground we used to occupy without apology.

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Sarah E. Makin is a former White House and National Security Council official who served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor on International Religious Freedom from 2017-2021. She is a human rights advocate, filmmaker, visiting fellow at Independent Women, and runs a strategic advisory firm in Washington, D.C. Follow her on X: @DCSas.

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Religious Freedom Belongs On Today’s Agenda With Xi