This week, we'll be discussing China’s newly implemented Ethnic Unity Law, and what that may mean for both members of China's ethnic minorities currently living in China, those living abroad in exile, and journalists covering China and its human rights abuses abroad. We'll also be taking a look at the effects of the Trump administration's defunding and essentially shuttering of Voice of America and Radio Free Asia over a year after its drastic cuts to international programs.

Joining us on the program is an expert in all of those areas,  Gulchehra Hoja. She shares with us her experience growing up in East Turkestan, or as China calls it "Xinjiang Province," how she went from a host working for CHinese state media to a reporter for Radio Free Asia, the kind of work that she was able to do in that position, and the devastating and tragic effects the current Trump administration cuts have had. She also gives us her take on the chilling effect China's new legislation is likely to have at home and abroad. 

Read along with us:

China's new law: 1. China's new 'ethnic unity' law raises legal risk concerns in Taiwan (Wen Kuei-hsiang, Sophia Yeh, Chen Kai-yu and Sunny Lai , Focus Taiwan), 2. Is China’s new ethnic unity law a step towards forced assimilation? (Einar Tangen, Zumretay Arkin, William Yang, and Mohammed Jamjoom, Al Jazeera’s “Inside Story” podcast)

Hoja's past reporting: 1. Internment Camps in Xinjiang’s Aksu Separated by Crematorium Targeting Uyghur Families, Women & Children , 2. Uyghur refugees face deportation from Kazakhstan, 3. For Uyghur family, a legacy of rootlessness, 4. “Ethnic integration policy” and Uyghur assimilation Forced Labor Investigations

Hoja's book:  A Stone is Most Precious Where It Belongs: A Memoir of Uyghur Exile, Hope, and Survival (Gulchehra Hoja)