17 April 2026
Press Release – For Immediate Release
East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE)
East-Turkistan.Net
contact@East-Turkistan.Net
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As May 23 approaches, marking twelve years since Beijing launched its campaign of genocide under the so-called “People’s War Against Terrorism,” new firsthand testimony published by senior researcher Dr. Adrian Zenz has once again confirmed what the ETGE has long documented and repeatedly warned: China’s genocide against the Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples of East Turkistan has not ended. It has been systematically concealed and reorganized.
The testimony of Zhang Yabo, a former Chinese police officer who served in Khotan from 2014 to 2023, corroborates what the East Turkistani people have lived. Zhang supervised the forced deployment of enslaved Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples to cotton harvests, witnessed the routine torture of detainees and deaths resulting from abuse, and facilitated the mass transfer of released internment camp detainees into the formal prison system. In 2020, Chinese authorities ordered the destruction of all reeducation camp files, the same year the ETGE filed its formal complaint before the International Criminal Court.
“Beijing did not dismantle its genocide. It professionalized it. Twelve years of documented atrocities and twelve years of international inaction have brought our people to the edge of erasure,” said Dr. Mamtimin Ala, President of the East Turkistan Government in Exile. “Recognition without enforcement has failed. The time for decisive action is long overdue.”
On January 22, 2026, UN Special Procedures experts warned that state-imposed forced labor affecting Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other non-Chinese peoples is so severe it may amount to enslavement as a crime against humanity. By 2025, mass enslavement deployments reached a record 3.4 million instances, with Kashgar prefecture alone forcibly transferring over 20,000 Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples to other Chinese provinces for slave labor.
“This is state-sponsored mass slavery,” said Salih Hudayar, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Security of the East Turkistan Government in Exile. “Governments that allow goods produced through this system into their markets are financing genocide and slavery. Accountability proceedings before the ICC and ICJ must begin without further delay.
Beijing’s so-called Ethnic Unity Law, passed in March 2026, has further codified these genocidal policies into statute, confirming the CCP faces no consequences for escalating its colonial domination.
“Global bodies must stop treating this as a domestic human rights issue and recognize it for what it is: the result of decades of illegal Chinese colonial occupation,” said Dr. Sayragul Sauytbay, Vice President of the East Turkistan Government in Exile and former insider witness to the internment camp system. “The international community must support our case before the ICC and support our struggle for decolonization and restoration of independence. Anything less is a form of complicity.”
The international community must now take four concrete steps. First, enforce existing forced labor legislation and extend scrutiny to facilities across China receiving forcibly transferred Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples held in conditions of enslavement. Second, impose targeted sanctions on officials administering detention, mass enslavement, and demographic engineering in occupied East Turkistan.
Third, advance formal accountability proceedings before the ICC and ICJ to prosecute those responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity. Fourth, and equally importantly, formally recognize East Turkistan as an occupied nation and support the East Turkistani people’s inalienable right to decolonization, national self-determination, and the restoration of independence under international law.