29 May 2026
Press Release – For Immediate Release
East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE)
East-Turkistan.Net
contact@East-Turkistan.Net
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) today called on the United States and other free nations to support East Turkistan’s independence, after new satellite imagery first reported by Reuters showed that the People’s Republic of China has built more than 80 launch pads, hardened bunkers, and command-and-control nodes near the Qumul (“Hami”) intercontinental ballistic missile silo fields in occupied East Turkistan.
China conducted 45 nuclear tests at the Lop Nur site in East Turkistan between 1964 and 1996, with a more recent underground test reportedly carried out in secret in 2020. It has built one of its three new intercontinental ballistic missile silo fields there, at Qumul, as part of a buildup the Pentagon projects will give China 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.
The ETGE said the buildup places a nuclear arsenal aimed at the free world on the same ground where China is carrying out a campaign of genocide against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples, and that restoring East Turkistan’s independence is the only way to end the genocide and remove the threat.
The campaign of genocide began in May 2014, when Beijing launched what it called a “People’s War on Terror.” On May 23, 2026, it entered its thirteenth year. Over more than a decade, it has grown into the systematic destruction of the Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples of East Turkistan. Documented crimes include mass internment, enslavement through forced labor, forced sterilization, the separation of more than one million children from their families, the destruction of thousands of mosques and cultural sites, and the mass killing of Uyghurs for their organs.
The ETGE has long warned that the international human rights system has failed to stop these crimes. The United States determined in 2021 that China is committing genocide. Parliaments across the free world have condemned the crimes. A 2022 United Nations report found that the actions may amount to crimes against humanity. Yet no mechanism has halted the atrocities or addressed their root cause: China’s colonial occupation of East Turkistan. The ETGE says Beijing has used this inaction to try to make its colonial occupation permanent and, as the new imagery shows, to turn an occupied country into a strategic base for its nuclear forces.
“Beijing stages its nuclear arsenal aimed at the United States and its allies in the territory of its ongoing genocide,” said Salih Hudayar, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Security of the ETGE and President of the East Turkistan National Movement (ETNM). “A restored, free, and independent East Turkistan would neutralize China’s nuclear threat.”
The ETGE noted that China’s nuclear test site, ICBM silos, and the newly identified launch and command infrastructure are all located in occupied East Turkistan.
“Supporting East Turkistan’s independence is not only a moral duty but a strategic necessity,” said Dr. Mamtimin Ala, President of the ETGE. “The world’s security and our people’s survival are one and the same struggle.”
The ETGE urged the United States and other free nations to formally recognize East Turkistan as an illegally occupied country; to support its petition for decolonization and the application of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV), the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, and to support East Turkistan’s legal complaint demanding accountability for genocide and crimes against humanity through the International Criminal Court.
The ETGE further called on the international community to empower the people of East Turkistan to restore their freedom and independence, secure their survival, and resist Chinese aggression that threatens international peace and security.