Why China’s Communist Party ‘Hates All Religion’: RFA Uyghur Journalist Gulchehra Hoja

Jan Jekielek

Senior Editor

Jan Jekielek is a senior editor with The Epoch Times, host of the show “American Thought Leaders.” Jan’s career has spanned academia, international human rights work, and now for almost two decades, media. He has interviewed nearly a thousand thought leaders on camera, and specializes in long-form discussions challenging the grand narratives of our time. He’s also an award-winning documentary filmmaker, producing “The Unseen Crisis,” “DeSantis: Florida vs. Lockdowns,” and “Finding Manny.”

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August 9, 2019Updated: August 15, 2019

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What convinced Gulchehra Hoja, a former producer for a state-controlled TV station in Xinjiang, China, to risk her life and defect to America?

Why has the Chinese Communist Party detained over one million Uyghur Muslims in re-education camps in Xinjiang, where they are brainwashed and tortured?

And why is the Communist Party taking Uyghur children from their homes and putting them in state-run facilities, where they’re forbidden to speak their language and observe other parts of their culture?

In this special episode of American Thought Leaders ??, Epoch Times journalist Venus Upadhayaya hosts an interview with Gulchehra Hoja, a prominent Uyghur journalist for Radio Free Asia. Before her defection to the United States, Gulchehra worked as a program producer for Xinjiang TV, a state-controlled network that is part of the Chinese regime’s vast propaganda apparatus.

We discuss her defection from China and the heavy price she has had to pay for her activism and public stance against the Chinese Communist regime’s treatment of her people.

We also look deeper at what exactly compels the Chinese Communist Party to brutally persecute Uyghurs as well as other religious and spiritual groups in China.

American Thought Leaders is an Epoch Times show available on Facebook and YouTube.