The statement below is attributed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Security

The East Turkistan Government-in-Exile categorically rejects the false claims in the PRC’s propaganda film “Zuo Zongtang Recovers Xinjiang.” East Turkistan has never been part of China. Our sovereign nation was invaded by the foreign Manchu Qing Empire in 1878 under the command of Zuo Zongtang, a Qing imperial officer engaged in colonial expansion, and was unilaterally renamed “Xinjiang” (“colony/new territory”) in 1884.

Historical Chinese records from the Han, Tang, Song, Ming, and early Qing dynasties identified East Turkistan and other regions beyond China’s frontier at the Jiayu Pass, the westernmost limit of Chinese territory, as “Xiyu (西域, “Western Regions/Western Realms”)” or “Wài Guó (外国, “foreign country”),” clearly recognizing them as outside Chinese sovereign domain.

The Han-era “Protectorate of the Western Regions” was merely a coerced, temporary, geographically limited foreign presence in some parts of East Turkistan. This arrangement, comparable to China’s modern military base in Djibouti, Russia’s base in Syria, or U.S. bases in Japan, South Korea, and Germany, was a foreign military foothold that never constituted sovereignty.

Since the Qing occupation in 1878, East Turkistan restored its independence twice as the East Turkistan Republic in the 20th century before the PRC’s military invasion and subsequent occupation in late 1949. The present PRC occupation is the continuation of foreign colonial domination, aimed at erasing our national identity and existence through demographic change, political repression, cultural destruction, and genocide. The only foreign forces in East Turkistan are Chinese occupation forces.

— Salih Hudayar, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Security