PRESS RELEASE – For Immediate Release
East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE)
East-Turkistan.Net
contact@East-Turkistan.Net
14 October 2025

The East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) calls on the Swedish government to use its upcoming diplomatic engagement with China on 16–17 October to take a firm and principled stand against the ongoing genocide of Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples in Chinese-occupied East Turkistan. Sweden, with its historic commitment to human rights, freedom, self-determination, and decolonization, has a moral responsibility to confront these atrocities. Engagement with a regime committing genocide and crimes against humanity must never come at the expense of justice and accountability.

October 12, 2025, marks 76 years since the People’s Republic of China invaded East Turkistan, and this year also marks 70 years since the PRC unilaterally designated East Turkistan as the so-called “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region”, a move intended to legitimize its illegal occupation and suppress Turkic self-determination. These anniversaries underscore decades of oppression, cultural suppression, and systemic violence against East Turkistani communities.

The ETGE calls on Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard to raise the following issues with Chinese officials:

• Forced sterilization of East Turkistani women, aimed at suppressing Turkic populations.
• State-sponsored abduction of over 1 million Uyghur/Turkic children aimed at assimilation and the eradication of Turkic cultural continuity.
• Mass internment of millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in concentration-style camps with forced indoctrination, torture, and labor.
• Mass enslavement of millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in forced labor programs, including goods tied to domestic and international supply chains.
• Annual deaths of tens of thousands of Uyghur youth due to organ harvesting.
• Suppression of Turkic language, culture, and religious practices.
• Transnational repression and Chinese espionage targeting East Turkistani activists, journalists, and academics abroad.

“Sweden has a historic and moral responsibility to confront colonial oppression and genocide. The Uyghur and other Turkic peoples in East Turkistan face systematic ethnic cleansing, cultural suppression, and brutal repression. Minister Malmer Stenergard must condemn these crimes, demand an end to forced sterilizations, child abductions, mass internment, and forced labor, and support our pursuit of justice, including through the International Criminal Court. Silence in the face of colonial genocide is complicity.”

Dr. Sayragul Sautybay, Vice President of the East Turkistan Government in Exile and Swedish citizen

The ETGE calls on Sweden to:

1. Publicly condemn China’s ongoing genocide in East Turkistan.
2. Condemn China’s illegal colonial occupation and formally recognize East Turkistan as an occupied country.
3. Support ETGE efforts to secure justice for victims of genocide and crimes against humanity , as well as accountability through international mechanisms, including raising the East Turkistan issue at the Assembly of States Parties of the Rome Statute in December.
4. Highlight the tainted nature of trade with China, including goods produced with forced Uyghur labor.
5. Address China’s transnational repression and espionage targeting East Turkistanis in Sweden and the diaspora.
6. Ensure Sweden’s foreign policy reflects its historic principles, making clear that engagement with a genocidal colonial regime is unacceptable.

Sweden’s leadership in addressing these issues will honor its historic values and send a strong message that genocide, forced sterilization, child abduction, mass internment, forced labor, and cultural suppression, and colonial domination will not be tolerated.