10 December 2025
Press Release – For Immediate Release
East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE)
East-Turkistan.Net
contact@East-Turkistan.Net
WASHINGTON, DC – The East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) marks International Human Rights Day by unequivocally condemning the ongoing genocide and 75-year occupation of East Turkistan by the People’s Republic of China.
The ETGE affirms that human rights cannot be protected under Chinese occupation. China’s invasion on October 12, 1949, and its overthrow of the independent East Turkistan Republic on December 22, 1949, initiated a brutal, ongoing campaign of colonization. The ETGE asserts that only political rights, national self-determination, and the full restoration of East Turkistan’s independence can guarantee the fundamental human rights and very existence of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples.
In 1955, Beijing unilaterally designated East Turkistan as the “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.” This “autonomy” framework has served as a legal instrument to strip East Turkistanis of fundamental rights, justify foreign occupation, and facilitate systematic colonial domination. Those who resist are punished, surveilled, or imprisoned, exposing an inherent contradiction: under Chinese rule, “autonomy” exists only as a tool for subjugation.
The scale of China’s crimes is unparalleled in the twenty-first century. Beijing has constructed approximately 1,400 concentration camps, detaining more than three million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples. Detainees face indoctrination, torture, forced labor, sterilization, and organ harvesting.
Outside the camps, the oppression continues:
- Mass Imprisonment: Between 2014 and 2019, nearly 580,000 Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples were sentenced to prison terms ranging from five years to life.
- Forced Labor: More than three million Uyghurs remain enslaved in forced labor facilities.
- Family Separation: Over one million Uyghur children have been forcibly separated from their families, while millions of babies have been forcibly aborted under genocidal population-control mandates.
- Demographic Warfare: Thousands of Uyghur women have been forced into marriages with Chinese men as part of a state-directed system of rape and demographic warfare.
China’s actions violate the UN Genocide Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and core obligations requiring states to prevent and punish genocide. The ETGE stresses that recognition without action is meaningless in the face of the wholesale destruction of a nation.
“On this International Human Rights Day, the world must confront the reality that colonization and genocide are underway in East Turkistan,” said Dr. Mamtimin Ala, President of the ETGE. “Human rights cannot exist under occupation. The human rights and survival of our people depend on ending China’s colonial occupation and restoring East Turkistan’s independence and sovereignty.”
The ETGE calls on international governments to uphold their commitments to the universal right to self-determination. We call on the international community to support East Turkistan’s pursuit of justice before the International Criminal Court, address the root of the ongoing crimes, and support East Turkistan’s decolonization and restoration of independence.
The ETGE urges all states and institutions to act on their legal obligations and stand with the peoples of East Turkistan until they can live freely and securely in their independent homeland.