Washington, DC – February 4, 2020
The statement below is attributed to ETGE’s Prime Minister Salih Hudayar
Editorial Note: East Turkistan is the country under China’s occupation which Beijing calls “Xinjiang (New Territory)”.
On behalf of the people of East Turkistan, we again call on the international community to immediately take action to prevent China’s 21st Century Holocaust of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples in East Turkistan.
According to the US Department of Defense, since 2016, China has detained some 3 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples in concentration camps. Detainees are being subject to forced political and cultural indoctrination, forced starvation, forced medication, rape, torture, organ harvesting, and even brutal executions.
Numerous reports have merged that people are dying in these camps, with Radio Free Asia reporting in October 2019 that over 150 people had died in one camp alone (in a period of six months). Many detainees have been forcibly sterilized as a result of forced medication, and many others have developed various diseases including tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis has severely increased in East Turkistan over the past few years with Chinese state media reporting in December 2019 that China has “treated 56,900 tuberculosis cases” in East Turkistan. Reports continue to merger of people dying from TB and other diseases inside the camps due to the unsanitary and cramped conditions of the concentration camps.
Amidst the ongoing Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, the international community has failed to pay closer attention to China’s brutal persecution in East Turkistan and mass interment of millions of Turkic peoples in concentration camps. The coronavirus is rapidly spreading across East Turkistan to where the Chinese government has declared any information on the spread of this outbreak in East Turkistan a “state secret.”
Given the unsanitary and cramped conditions of the concentration camps, we fear it will become a hotbed for the spread of the coronavirus and tuberculosis. Thus, we urgently call on the World Health Organization, world governments, organizations, health professionals, and researchers to immediately send in monitors and health professionals to prevent the deaths of millions of innocent Uyghurs and other Turkic people.
We again call on China to immediately shutdown the so called “re-education” concentration camps, show full transparency in its efforts to tackle the coronavirus, and to cease its illegal occupation of East Turkistan.
The Holocaust did not happen overnight. Thus, we again call on all governments across the world to recognize China’s atrocities in East Turkistan as a genocide and recognize East Turkistan as an occupied territory and take necessary measures to bring an end to China’s brutal oppression and occupation.