By Lisa Rab, KFF Health News

If you are pregnant or a new mother who is struggling with depression or anxiety, you can call or text the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline, 24/7: 833-TLC-MAMA (833-852-6262). Postpartum Support International can help connect you with a local mental health provider at 800-944-4773 or psidirectory.com.

Before giving birth to her second child, Heidi DiLorenzo was anxious. She worried about her blood pressure, and the preeclampsia that prompted her to be hospitalized twice during the pregnancy. She worried that some terrible, unnamed harm would come to her 3-year-old daughter. She worried about her ability to love another baby as much as she loved her first.

Kellyn Haight and her daughter at their home in Brevard, North Carolina. Kellyn experienced debilitating depression when her daughter was younger. Now she’ s trying to have another child— and plans to keep taking Zoloft throughout the pregnancy. (Katie Linsky Shaw/KFF Health News/TNS)

But DiLorenzo, an attorney in Birmingham, Alabama, did not worry about taking Zoloft. She had used the medication to treat anxiety before she had her first child, and she continued it throughout that pregnancy and this latest one.

And since having her second daughter, in September, she credits an increased dosage with pulling her out of the “dark hole” of sadness she felt postpartum. “I wouldn’t be as good of a mom to my girls if I didn’t take it,” DiLorenzo said. “I wouldn’t have the energy.”

She is among the estimated 20% of women in the U.S. who have depression or anxiety during or after pregnancy. Yet only half of those mothers receive adequate treatment, according to Kay Roussos-Ross, who runs the perinatal mood disorders program at the University of Florida. And just 5% take a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, a class of medications commonly used to treat both conditions.

Now medical experts are concerned that a July panel discussion convened by the Food and Drug Administration could lead to more cases of untreated depression. Many of the 10 members of the panel expressed concern about the use of SSRIs, such as Zoloft, during pregnancy. They included Josef Witt-Doerring, a psychiatrist who owns clinics aimed at helping people wean themselves off antidepressants, and Adam Urato, an OB-GYN who recently petitioned the FDA to put stronger warnings on SSRIs.

While the discussion did not represent any official FDA guidance, the panelists — in claims the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called “outlandish and unfounded” — linked the drugs to increased risks of miscarriage, birth defects, and autism in children exposed to them in utero. The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine said its members were “alarmed by the unsubstantiated and inaccurate claims made by FDA panelists.”

Antidepressants are a safe, “lifesaving” tool, given that mental health issues such as suicide and overdoses are the leading cause of maternal death in the country, ACOG President Steven Fleischman said in a statement on the group’s website.

Christena Raines, a nurse practitioner who in 2011 helped found the nation’s first inpatient perinatal psychiatric unit, in North Carolina, said SSRIs are “probably the most well-studied medicine in pregnancy.” In long-term studies of children exposed to the drugs in utero, she said, researchers haven’t seen problems.

It’s too soon to know whether the panel discussion has affected prescribing rates — or whether those who are pregnant are avoiding the drugs more. But Raines, who teaches at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Medicine, said she’s already fielding questions from patients. She said the misinformation the panelists spread — along with President Donald Trump’s distorted claims about taking Tylenol during pregnancy — is making her job harder.

Dorothy DeGuzman is a family medicine physician who treats high-risk pregnancies in California. “There’s already so much stigma around taking antidepressants in pregnancy,” she said. “This will just add to the fear.”

The Panel

The July panel discussion was one of four the FDA has convened since May. In the past, the agency vetted members of advisory committees to avoid conflicts of interest. Yet these panels were chosen in private and the events were held with scant public notice. In a July investigative report by MedPage Today, researchers and consultants raised questions about the events’ ethics and legality.

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Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Emily Hilliard did not directly answer when asked about the panelist selection process. She called the panel events “roundtable discussions” in which experts review the latest scientific evidence, evaluate potential health risks, and “explore safer alternatives.”

The July panel appeared to be following an executive order Trump issued in February establishing the Make America Healthy Again Commission and directing it to “assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors” and other medications.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the FDA, is a frequent critic of such drugs. He has claimed, without evidence, that they might be contributing to school shootings.

In opening remarks at the July panel discussion, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary also voiced concerns about the medications. “From a national standpoint, the more antidepressants we prescribe, the more depression there is,” he said.

‘Not a Luxury’

The sole member of the panel who was both a board-certified psychiatrist and an OB-GYN — the University of Florida’s Roussos-Ross — raised a different concern. “Research shows that in women who stop their medications in pregnancy, they are five times more likely to experience a relapse,” she said.

Mothers with moderate to severe depression and anxiety during pregnancy are more likely to give birth early and have low-birth-weight infants, she added. If they don’t receive treatment, she said, they are more likely to misuse drugs or alcohol and are at risk of suicide. They can have trouble bonding with their babies, Roussos-Ross said, and those children are at higher risk for problems such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, depression, or anxiety — due to their mother’s mental health challenges, not the SSRIs.

“I want to stress that treating mental illness in pregnancy is not a luxury,” she told the panel. “It’s a necessity.”

Overall, about 19% of U.S. women in their 20s and 30s experience depression, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and roughly 10% take SSRIs. But studies show that half of women decide to stop taking antidepressants before or during their pregnancies.

One reason so few expectant mothers receive depression treatment, doctors say, is that they are already afraid to take any medications during pregnancy. The majority of DeGuzman’s patients rely on Medicaid, the government health coverage for those with low incomes or disabilities. Half are Latina. She often prescribes SSRIs, she said, but her patients rarely take them.

The issue is especially urgent for Black and Latina mothers, who experience higher rates of depression and anxiety than white, non-Latina mothers but are less likely to receive adequate treatment. Many factors contribute to this disparity, including systemic racism, exposure to violence, misdiagnosis, and a lack of access to care.

Shanna Williams, a perinatal mental health therapist who treats African American mothers in Philadelphia, said many of her clients were already more likely to trust friends and family over their doctors when it comes to whether antidepressants are safe to take while pregnant or breastfeeding. The FDA panel is “one other voice that’s saying you shouldn’t do this,” Williams said. “And that does not help.”

Judite Blanc, who studies perinatal mental health in women of color, said universal child care and paid parental leave would help. “My research showed that the most important thing we can offer is social support,” said Blanc, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. “We need the village to step up.”

Kellyn Haight experienced debilitating depression after she moved to the mountain town of Brevard, North Carolina. The former labor and delivery nurse had no child care for her then-2-year-old daughter and no family or friends nearby as her husband was traveling for work.

Her doctor prescribed Prozac — it didn’t help. She called her husband to return home, but her insomnia just got worse. One morning, she begged him to end her suffering. He took her to the emergency room, and staffers sent her to the psychiatric unit of a local hospital. She said she was stripped of her clothing and put in a locked room. “I felt like a creature, like an animal,” said Haight, now 37. “One of my biggest fears is that happening again.”

After she was released, Haight found a psychiatrist and started taking Zoloft. She built a community of friends and began to feel stable.

Now that her daughter is 5, she’s trying to have another child — and plans to keep taking Zoloft throughout the pregnancy. “I would rather be safe and present for my child,” she said. “I’m OK with assuming the risk, because I know what the alternative looks like, and I’m not going there.”

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By LUIS ANDRES HENAO and DEEPA BHARATH

On most Monday nights, the sanctuary of All Saints Episcopal Church — with its vaulted ceilings, stone arches and stained-glass windows — seamlessly transforms into a space of quiet contemplation.

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It’s in this Gothic Revival church in Pasadena, California, that Betty Cole, a longtime Zen practitioner and “card-carrying Episcopalian,” leads a weekly interfaith group in seated and walking meditation. The group has evolved into a “quiet fellowship” since she started it in 2001, Cole said.

“It’s mostly people who are really not very inspired by the liturgy, pomp and music of the church, but do enjoy the building, the quiet of the chapel and the sense of encouragement and accountability in that shared quiet,” she said.

Christian, Jewish and other religious congregations across America have in recent years been introducing meditation practices from Eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, or resurfacing ancient contemplative practices in their own religious traditions, now adapted to the needs of a fast-paced, modern world.

While longtime practitioners like Cole say these contemplative practices are inherently spiritual or religious, they recognize that mental health and social benefits are added attributes.

In some deeply religious spaces, meditation has been disparaged as a gateway to the demonic; in some secular circles, it’s debunked as superstition. Skeptics raise concerns over cultural appropriation, particularly in cases where Eastern practices have been marketed as trendy self-improvement.

But nationwide, more people — religious and non-religious — seem to be showing more interest in such practices. Increasingly, houses of worship are encouraging a variety of contemplative practices.

Connecting to ancient practices

Voices chanting “Om” — a sacred sound in several Eastern religions — blend with sounds of singing bowls, piano and other instruments at meditation held in an Ivy League university chapel. A rabbi leads virtual meditation and breath work while drawing from Jewish scriptures. In the sanctuary of a Unitarian Universalist congregation, a group gathers to study Buddhist dharma and to be enveloped in the meditative practice of a sound bath.

Across centuries, meditation has been common in Buddhism, where the goal is to become enlightened like the Buddha, and Hinduism, in which the ancient spiritual practice of yoga is rooted.

Contemplative and meditative practices in many religions seek to find a direct connection with God. That includes the Desert Fathers and Mothers — early Christian ascetics who followed a form of meditation focused on silence in the Egyptian desert. It also includes Kabbalistic and Hasidic meditation techniques in Jewish tradition, and the whirling dervishes in Sufism, a mystical movement within Islam.

“The next resurgence that we’re seeing now, is people moving all the way out from saying, ‘I’m going to practice a religious tradition’ into ‘I’m willing to do some of the practices that exist within those traditions,’” said Lodro Rinzler, a Buddhist teacher and author of “The Buddha Walks into a Bar.”

For others, Rinzler said, it has helped rekindle a connection to their own religions and their ancient, lesser-known meditative practices.

“Some of the practices that have been spliced out and stand alone are now coming back under the umbrellas,” he said. “People are then being attracted to the traditions from which they’ve always been a part of.”

Meditation rooted in Jewish tradition

That’s the case of the Or HaLev — Center for Jewish Spirituality and Meditation. Launched in 2011 by Rabbi James Jacobson-Maisels, it seeks to give people access to a meditation practice rooted in Jewish tradition.

“We’re bringing Hasidic meditations and understandings to a contemporary audience,” said Jacobson-Maisels. “We’re also integrating that with Eastern traditions that have come from the West.”

These meditative practices, he said, are less known, mainly because of the effects of modernity and the Holocaust, which destroyed many communities and teachers who were preserving these traditions.

“As part of Jews’ assimilation to the modern world, many parts of the mystical tradition got rejected or cast aside because they were related to as unacceptable, irrational, not fitting to the modern world,” he said.

“Kabbalah was the most dominant theological paradigm in Judaism. But after modernity, it really was pushed to the side,” he said. “Now it’s experiencing, once again, a resurgence.”

Music meditation at a university chapel

Many have gathered at the Princeton University Chapel to attend meditation events that include chamber music, breathwork and the chanting of mantras.

“The feedback I’ve mostly gotten is that people say, ‘I want to do that again. I don’t know what happened, but I feel like whatever happened, I need more of it,’” said Hope Littwin, a composer who facilitates musical rituals for the meditations.

“People notice the mysterious quality and people feel changed by it,” said Littwin, who is pursuing her PhD in music composition at Princeton.

The university’s Gothic nondenominational chapel hosts concerts, weddings and interfaith services throughout the academic year.

“People from different religions, and even people with no religion at all … connect to meditation because meditation taps us into something universal, something deeper than belief systems or doctrines,” said A.J. Alvarez, a meditation teacher.

Buddhist meditation at a Universalist Unitarian Congregation

Meditation also has become a crucial part of spiritual life at All Souls NYC, a Unitarian Universalist congregation.

When the Rev. Pamela Patton, a Universalist and Buddhist, began the Mindfulness, Meditation, Buddhism program in 2016, she was unsure how it would be received.

In a decade, though, it grew into a community of about 800 members learning from teachers of different Buddhist lineages.

The Universalist religious movement welcomes people with diverse spiritual beliefs. Regarding her program, Patton said, “It’s brought a lot to our community.”

Rumi and yoga

Omid Safi, a professor of religion at Duke University who conducts Sufi meditation tours and retreats, said he sees young Muslims practicing yoga, mindfulness and breath work who are looking to integrate them with their religious identity. That, he said, comes from the recognition that Islam has its own tradition that goes back over 1,000 years developed in conversation with Hindu and Buddhist traditions.

Safi speaks of one fundamental Sufi practice of directing the breath into the subtle centers of perception in the human body called “lataif” — similar to chakras in yoga — but with an important difference.

“In the Sufi model, it’s a whirling model that whirls in your inner landscape and enters your heart,” he said. “It’s not about pure transcendence, but balancing earth and heaven.”

Meditation has historically not been done in mosques, but adjacent to them, perhaps with an Islamic teacher leading a session of poetry, music and meditation, Safi said.

In the Sufi tradition, music is “the sound of the movement of the celestial spheres,” he added. “Music is invisible, but you feel it in the heart. Poetry speaks in a symbolic language. The spiritual experiences we have are the same way.”

Catholic contemplative practices

Susan Stabile, a spiritual director who leads meditation retreats nationwide, said Catholic parishes are seeing a resurgence in contemplative practices, including meditation. Raised Catholic, Stabile became a Buddhist in her 20s and lived as a nun for a few years in Asia. She returned to Catholicism after marrying and having children. Stabile says Buddhism helped her better understand her Christian faith.

“Some in the Catholic tradition are suspicious of some of these contemplative practices such as the centering prayer,” she said, referring to a silent prayer developed in the 1970s by Catholic monastics as a way to deepen a relationship with God.

She said that’s because many Christians are unaware that early Christian hermits developed these practices.

“I didn’t know it was in my own tradition,” she said. “No one had ever told me about it.”

Stabile says she’s seeing more people wanting that deeper experience and desiring to learn about mysticism.

“My hope is that more people will allow themselves to be transformed,” she said. “To live more fully in creation and the image and likeness of God.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

By DAVE COLLINS

Authorities on Monday identified two pilots who died after their helicopters collided midair in southern New Jersey.

Kenneth Kirsch, 65, and Michael Greenberg, 71, were friends who both lived in New Jersey and would often have breakfast together at a cafe near the crash site in Hammonton, about 35 miles southeast of Philadelphia.

Hammonton Police Chief Kevin Friel said in a statement that Kirsch, of Carney’s Point, was pronounced dead at an area hospital after being flown there, while Greenberg, of Sewell, died at the crash site.

“Statements from witnesses had the two helicopters flying close together just before the crash,” he said. “The crash site was approximately a mile and a half from the airport in a farm field.”

Authorities look over the scene after two helicopters crashed in Hammonton, N.J., on Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025. (WPVI-TV/6ABC via AP)

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were at the site Monday, authorities said.

Friel said rescuers responded to a report of an aviation crash at about 11:25 a.m. Sunday. Video from the scene shows a helicopter spinning rapidly to the ground. Police and fire crews subsequently extinguished flames that engulfed one of the helicopters.

The Federal Aviation Administration described the crash as a midair collision between an Enstrom F-28A helicopter and Enstrom 280C helicopter over Hammonton Municipal Airport. Only the pilots were on board each aircraft.

Sal Silipino, owner of a cafe near the crash site, said the pilots were regulars at the restaurant and would often have breakfast together. He said he and other customers watched the helicopters take off before one began spiraling downward, followed by the other.

“It was shocking,” he said. “I’m still shaking after that happened.”

Hammonton resident Dan Dameshek told NBC10 that he was leaving a gym when he heard a loud snap and saw two helicopters spinning out of control.

“Immediately, the first helicopter went from right side up to upside down and started rapidly spinning, falling out of the air,” Dameshek told the TV station. “And then it looked like the second helicopter was OK for a second, and then it sounded like another snap or something … and then that helicopter started rapidly spinning out of the air.”

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Hammonton is a town of about 15,000 people located in Atlantic County in the southern part of New Jersey. The town has a history of agriculture and is located near the Pine Barrens, a forested wilderness area that covers more than 1 million acres.

Investigators will likely first look to review any communications between the two pilots and whether they were able to see each other, said Alan Diehl, a former crash investigator for the FAA and NTSB.

“Virtually all midair collisions are a failure to what they call ‘see and avoid,’” Diehl said. “Clearly they’ll be looking at the out-of-cockpit views of the two aircraft and seeing if one pilot was approaching from the blind side.”

Although it was mostly cloudy at the time of the crash, winds were light and visibility was good, according to the weather forecasting company AccuWeather.

By SIMINA MISTREANU, Associated Press

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — It is a soulful folk song, filled with feeling and history: A love-stricken young man tells God about his hopes and dreams of happiness. Generations of Uyghurs, the Turkic ethnic minority in China’s Xinjiang region, have played it at parties and weddings.

But today, if they download it, play it or share it online, they risk ending up in prison.

“Besh pede,” a popular Uyghur folk ballad, is among dozens of Uyghur-language songs that have been deemed “problematic” by Xinjiang authorities, according to a recording of a meeting held by police and other local officials in the historic city of Kashgar last October. The recording was shared exclusively with The Associated Press by the Norway-based nonprofit Uyghur Hjelp.

During the meeting, authorities warned residents that those who listened to banned songs, stored them on devices or shared them on social media could face prison. Attendees were also instructed to avoid phrases like “As-salamu alaykum,” the greeting common among Muslims, and to replace the popular farewell phrase “Allahqa amanet,” which means “May God keep you safe,” with “May the Communist Party protect you.”

The policy has been corroborated by interviews with former Xinjiang residents, whose family members, friends and acquaintances have been detained for playing and sharing Uyghur music. AP has also obtained rare access to the court verdict of a Uyghur music producer sentenced last year to three years in prison for uploading to his cloud account songs deemed sensitive.

How a single song fits into a broad crackdown

The renewed crackdown on cultural expression in Xinjiang, classified as an “autonomous region” but tightly controlled by the central government, suggests a continuation of the past decade’s repressive policies. They have culminated in the extrajudicial detention, between 2017 and 2019, of at least 1 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China such as Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Huis, rights activists and foreign governments say.

In 2022, the United Nations accused China of rights violations it said might amount to crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, where Beijing also faces allegations of forced labor, forced sterilizations and family separations as part of a broader assimilation campaign.

The Chinese government maintains its policies in Xinjiang rooted out terrorism and religious extremism after sporadic bouts of violence rocked the region in previous decades. Beijing doubled down on that narrative in particular after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks brought antiterror policies into the accepted global mainstream.

“The Chinese government has cracked down on violent terrorist crimes and eradicated the breeding ground for religious extremism in accordance with the law, resolutely safeguarding Xinjiang’s development and stability,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

It added that “anti-China forces” have “maliciously hyped up issues related to Xinjiang,” including by “linking audio and video recordings of Xinjiang departments cracking down on the propaganda of violent terrorism and religious extremism in accordance with the law to specific regions, ethnicities, and religions.”

Reached by phone, a Xinjiang government official wouldn’t confirm whether a faxed request for comment had arrived and did not pick up subsequent calls from AP.

A sign of continued repression in Xinjiang

After facing international backlash and sanctions over the alleged arbitrary internment of ethnic minorities, Beijing in late 2019 claimed the detention camps were closed and life had returned to normal in the region. China now aims to refashion Xinjiang into a destination for tourism.

Although many of the more glaring signs of repression such as internment camps and frequent traffic checkpoints appear to have been decommissioned, the list of banned songs indicates repression in Xinjiang continues, albeit more subtly, said Rian Thum, a senior lecturer in East Asian history at the University of Manchester.

Other, less conspicuous forms of control include the expansion of boarding schools, where middle-schoolers are educated while separated from their families and learn almost exclusively in Mandarin Chinese, and random checks of phones for sensitive material are common.

Chinese authorities, Thum said, seem to be normalizing a policy for long-term control in Xinjiang.

“I’m not at all surprised to hear these accounts of people either being threatened with detention or being detained or imprisoned for listening to the wrong music,” he said. “It’s the kind of thing that hasn’t stopped.”

Seven categories of ‘problematic’ songs

During the Kashgar meeting, authorities played a prerecorded message warning residents against listening to, downloading and sharing seven categories of so-called problematic songs.

They range from traditional folk ballads such as “Besh pede” to newer tunes that emerged from the Uyghur diaspora. “Besh pede” was flagged for its religious content, though the song hardly incites religious extremism, said Rachel Harris, a professor of ethnomusicology at SOAS University of London.

Religion is referenced in the context of romantic tropes, with exhortations such as “Oh, God, I love you!” said Harris, who focuses on Uyghur culture.

“That’s very clearly the problem with it,” she said.

Targeting religious expression has been a cornerstone of China’s crackdown. The Communist Party is suspicious of any community organizing, especially as it pertains to religions. Over the past decade, residents have been detained for praying, fasting and storing religious books; mosques have been repurposed or stripped of their authentic role.

Music “became part of my upbringing, and removing that is like removing the soul,” said Rahima Mahmut, a Uyghur singer and activist in London who performs songs with religious connotations abroad.

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Even songs once featured on state TV have been banned. “As-salamu alaykum,” a pop tune that starts with the Islamic greeting recited in the style of a call to prayer, was performed on the talent show “The Voice of the Silk Road,” a spinoff of “The Voice,” on state-run Xinjiang Television.

The performance aired in 2016, the year China started amping up its campaign of repression against Uyghurs. Now, the tune is prohibited for “forcing people to believe in religion.”

Another category of problematic songs: those “inciting terrorism, extremism and smearing the Chinese Communist Party’s rule of Xinjiang.” Among the tunes listed is “Yanarim Yoq,” a song based on the poem “No Road Back Home” by the imprisoned Uyghur poet Abduqadir Jalalidin. The sorrowful song, evoking entrapment and hopelessness, has spread across the diaspora in recent years; one of its most popular renditions is performed by the Turkish artists Kilich and Yenilmes.

“Atilar,” or “Forefathers,” by the famed Uyghur musician Abdurehim Heyit, is also accused of inciting terrorism and extremism. The nationalistic song was likely flagged for describing the Uyghur forefathers as martyrs ready for battle, Harris said.

Heyit, like many other Uyghur cultural elites, was detained at the height of China’s campaign in Xinjiang. Many remain in detention.

In fact, a common denominator across the banned songs is that many were written or performed by imprisoned Uyghur musicians, said Elise Anderson, a nonresident senior fellow at the New Lines Institute who specializes in Uyghur issues.

Anderson isn’t certain that every artist associated with a banned song has been detained, but “at least a number of them have,” she said. “I think just by association with those individuals, those songs are going to be seen as — you know — dangerous, sensitive.”

Three years in prison for uploading songs

Authorities at the Kashgar meeting said those found with the songs would be “heavily prosecuted” but did not specify punishment — something that gives authorities flexibility in enforcement. The prerecorded message gave the example of several people who had served 10 days in detention for being found with the banned songs.

For Uyghur music producer Yashar Xiaohelaiti, punishment has been much more severe.

The 27-year-old was detained in 2023 in Bole, a city in Xinjiang, on charges of promoting extremism. According to his verdict, Xiaohelaiti wrote and produced 42 “problematic” songs, which he uploaded to his account on NetEase Cloud Music, a Chinese streaming service. He was also convicted of downloading eight “problematic” e-books, according to the document. He received three years in prison and a 3,000 yuan ($420) fine.

Two Uyghurs interviewed by AP said they brushed up against the songs ban themselves. A man who asked that his name not be revealed, fearing repercussions, said he was called into the police station and his phone searched after he commented on the social media post of another Uyghur living abroad. While at the police station, he said he spoke to others who had been summoned specifically for storing or sharing certain Uyghur songs.

Separately, a former official from Xinjiang said a family friend was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for playing traditional Uyghur instruments and singing Uyghur songs. Several family members and friends who watched the performance were also sentenced, she said. AP could not independently verify the interviewees’ claims.

In a separate incident, the official said two teenagers were detained after sharing Uyghur songs online.

“Because they sent each other a Uyghur song on WeChat, they were arrested,” the former cadre said, referring to the teens. “I remember it very clearly. At the time we were saying, ‘What song were they listening to?’ How could they be arrested for listening to a song?’”

AP journalist Dake Kang in Beijing contributed to this story.