5 May 2026
Press Release – For Immediate Release
East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE)
East-Turkistan.Net
contact@East-Turkistan.Net
As the Uyghur Genocide enters its 13th year, Exile Government Files Petition for Decolonization Following Failed Human Rights Framework
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The East Turkistan Government-in-Exile (ETGE) and the East Turkistan National Movement (ETNM) today submitted a petition to the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization (C-24), formally requesting for the first time that the Committee recommend to the General Assembly the inscription of East Turkistan as a Non-Self-Governing Territory. Inscription would trigger a binding international framework obligating the United Nations to oversee East Turkistan’s path toward self-determination. No state or entity has ever formally challenged China as a colonial power before any UN body. Until today.
East Turkistan, which the Chinese government designates “Xinjiang,” meaning “New Territory,” had a functioning independent state, the East Turkistan Republic, when China invaded and occupied it in late 1949. No treaty of cession, no plebiscite, and no instrument reflecting the free and genuine will of its peoples has ever legitimized Chinese control. In seventy-six years of occupation, Chinese settlers grew from under 5 percent of the population to over 42 percent, while the native Turkic population fell from over 90 percent to roughly 55 percent.
“More than eighty nations achieved their independence through the decolonization framework,” said Dr. Mamtimin Ala, President of the ETGE. “Today, the peoples of East Turkistan formally assert that same right before the United Nations.”
The genocide of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples is entering its thirteenth year later this month. Every existing human rights accountability mechanism has failed:
- The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded in August 2022 that the abuses “may constitute crimes against humanity.”
- The United States Government and a dozen Western parliaments have recognized the atrocities as genocide and crimes against humanity.
- The International Criminal Court has failed to open a formal investigation despite four submissions of evidence since 2020.
Mass internment, credibly documented organ harvesting, forced sterilization, and the separation of nearly one million children from their families continue.China’s own five-year plan for the occupied territory projected 13.75 million forced labor transfers between 2021 and 2025. In January 2026, UN Special Rapporteurs warned that actual numbers have exceeded even that projection and that the transfers “may amount to enslavement as a crime against humanity.”
“The ongoing genocide is rooted in China’s colonial occupation of East Turkistan,” said Salih Hudayar, Foreign Minister of the ETGE and President of the ETNM. “Decolonization and the restoration of our independence is the only effective guarantee of our people’s survival.”
China is not only committing genocide, it is working to make its colonial domination irreversible. On March 12, 2026, the National People’s Congress adopted the “Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress,” codifying the erasure of distinct peoples and cultures into a single Chinese identity. As the 25-page petition declares: “The era of colonialism has not ended. It is being legislated.”
The petition makes eight formal requests, including that the General Assembly:
- Designate the PRC as the occupying power over East Turkistan, which the petition establishes is the largest colonial territory on earth by both population and area;
- Affirm the inalienable right of the peoples of East Turkistan to self-determination and independence; and
- Address China’s conflict of interest as a permanent Security Council member and participant in the very committee mandated to oversee decolonization.
The full petition is available here: